pork – Page 6 – Michael Eats

Tasty Noodle Soup at Wonton Hut Noodle Bar

Published on January 26, 2025 by Michael Nusair2 Comments

Location: 671 Queen Street West, Toronto
Website: https://wontonhut.ca/

There are a bunch of great wonton noodle soup restaurants in the GTA — at least in places like Markham and Mississauga. In Toronto itself, it’s a bit harder to find. Enter: Wonton Hut Noodle Bar, which is on Queen Street and serves a very tasty bowl of the stuff.

They actually have a decent variety on the menu (including a handful of Vietnamese dishes, oddly enough) but of course, the place has “wonton” and “noodle” in its name, so you’ve gotta get the wonton noodle soup.

It’s good. The wontons themselves are seriously tasty, with big chunks of perfectly cooked shrimp and a very satisfying flavour. And the noodles are satisfyingly springy.

The flavour of the soup itself is a bit on the subtle side, but is nicely amped up by a couple of spoonfuls of the legitimately fiery chili oil they have on the table.

Great Ramen at Kaminari Ramen Bar

Published on January 19, 2025 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 1330 Queen Street West, Toronto
Website: https://www.bykaminari.com/

Kaminari Ramen Bar actually has a few types of ramen on the menu: clear Tokyo-style, creamy, “duck umami,” vegan, and a soupless yuzu ramen. The waiter said they don’t really have a specialty, so I went with the clear Tokyo-style.

The ramen, as per the menu: “Clear chicken broth, pork cha-shu, chicken cha-shu, wonton, Tokyo Negi, bamboo shoot, and nori seaweed.” You can get it either shio (salt) or shoyu (soy sauce); I went with the latter.

It’s a very good bowl of ramen. This style of ramen isn’t quite as common in the GTA as the more omnipresent creamy tonkotsu or tori paitan, but done well, it’s just as delicious.

The soup has a very rich and savoury soy-sauce-infused flavour. It’s the type of broth that never feels one-note or overly salty, no matter how much of it you have.

And everything else here was quite tasty, from the chewy, thin noodles to the tender chicken and pork. It’s a top-notch bowl of ramen.

Porky Goodness at C-Block Taiwanese Bento

Published on December 17, 2024 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 690 Bloor Street West, Toronto
Website: https://www.instagram.com/cblock.to/

C-Block Taiwanese Bento is a delightful little take-out counter (they have a couple of seats, but mostly, it’s take-out only) serving up a whole bunch of Taiwanese classics.

Their specialty are bento boxes that come with rice, one meat dish, and three veggie sides. I went with the braised minced pork, green beans, eggplant, and tomato scrambled egg.

This actually turned out to be not quite what I was expecting; the dish I thought this was going to be features braised pork belly and is thoroughly delicious. But then this was quite tasty too, so I can’t complain.

It’s really satisfying, with a spice-packed flavour that reminded a bit of Sichuan cuisine.

The sides were solid as well, with the highlight being the tomato scrambled egg; the contrast between the tender chunks of tomato and the firm, meaty egg was actually quite delightful.

Stellar Ramen at Ramen x Remix

Published on December 14, 2024 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 424 Queen Street West, Toronto
Website: https://ramenxremix.com/

I feel like Ramen x Remix really deserves to be more popular. I’m going to assume (and hope) that they do better in the evenings, because I showed up for lunch on a Saturday, and the place was a complete ghost town. Based on the quality of ramen I was served, this is a crime. The place should be packed with a line out the door.

I ordered the Signature Yuzu Scallop Shio Consommé (“signature slow cooked clear chicken broth, pork and chicken chashu, clam meat, yuzu, lemon, sashimi grade torched scallop, pork shrimp wonton, menma, onions”) and it was absolutely fantastic.

It reminded me a lot of the ramen from Afuri. I liked that quite a lot, but I think this was even better.

The soup itself had such a clean chicken/seafoody flavour, with a subtle bright sweetness from the yuzu. A lot of ramen can be a real face-punch of flavour — and I love that, don’t get me wrong — but I really enjoyed how subtle this was. But it’s still complex enough that I wasn’t even close to sick of it by the time I got to the bottom of the bowl.

And everything else was great, from the super-tender pork and chicken to the sweet, fresh scallop and the noodles, which were nice and chewy. It’s a very tasty bowl of ramen.

A Cheap, Tasty Lunch at Brandt European Food Market

Published on December 2, 2024 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 1878 Mattawa Avenue, Mississauga
Website: https://brandtmeats.com/brandt-food-market/

I’ve written about hidden gems on this blog before, but it doesn’t get much more hidden than this place. It’s located along a dead-end industrial road, and unless you happen to work in the area, there is zero chance that you’d drive by the place.

(And even if you did, it’s so nondescript that you likely wouldn’t even realize that a delightful little Eastern European supermarket and restaurant can be found within.)

It’s actually a factory outlet for Brand meats, a Mississauga-based manufacturer of various Eastern European sausages and meats, and it features the aforementioned supermarket, along with a hot table with a nice spread of stuff like schnitzel and cabbage rolls.

I went with the BBQ pork chops, which features tender braised pork and mushrooms in a zippy sauce. The meal comes with two chops piled on top of a mountain of sides (you can pick two, and they are generous). I had the potatoes, which are basically like hash browns, and the sauerkraut, which is well above average.

Nothing about it particularly blew my mind, but the plate cost ten bucks and was piled high with food, so it’s a fantastic deal.