Delicious Roast Pork at The Carvery

The Carvery
Location
: 486 Front Street West, Toronto (inside Wellington Market)
Website: https://thewelltoronto.com/directory/the-carvery/

Wellington Market at the Well recently expanded a bit — they have a handful of new restaurants, including locations of BEAR Steak Sandwiches, Chen Chen’s Nashville Hot Chicken, and the one I checked out, The Carvery.

This is an outpost of a Windsor restaurant that specializes in various roast meats — chicken, pork, lamb, and beef — that you can have in a sandwich or on a plate.

I went with the roast pork plate, which comes with the pork, a crispy piece of crackling, peas, carrots, squash, potatoes, and a dinner roll.  At $13.90 for a massive plate of food, it’s an incredible deal.

The Carvery

No, it’s not the most photogenic dish ever — it’s basically just various shades of brown, though there is a generous amount of vegetables buried under there.

But if it tastes this good, I can’t say I’m too concerned about what it looks like.

Most importantly, the roast pork is great — it’s tender and nicely seasoned, with the gravy on top just amping up its flavour.  There’s also the ultra-crunchy piece of crackling on top, and yeah, that’s good stuff.

The Carvery

As for everything else, the vegetables are all cooked perfectly (the potato has a satisfyingly crispy exterior), and the roll is clearly fresh, with a nicely buttery flavour.

And again: it’s $13.90.  It’s an amazing value for the quantity and quality of the food you’re getting here.

Crispy Pork Belly Sandwich from BEAR Steak Sandwiches

Crispy Pork Belly Sandwich from BEAR Steak Sandwiches
Location
550A College Street, Toronto
Websitehttps://bearsteak.ca/

The Great BEAR sandwich is a collaboration between BEAR Steak Sandwiches and Great Fountain Fast Food, and it’s only being served this weekend (June 7 and 8).

That’s just not enough time for a sandwich this great.  I think it’s safe to say that this is the most upsetting thing happening in the world right now.  No, I’m not going to look at the news.  You look at the news.  I want to eat this sandwich for the rest of my life.

Crispy Pork Belly Sandwich from BEAR Steak Sandwiches

The Great BEAR sandwich, as per Instagram: “crispy pork belly, black vinegar sauce, black pepper aioli, pickled onions, scallions, black sesame bun.”

Yes.  Yes to all of that.  For whatever reason, the notion of putting Chinese roast pork in a sandwich had never even occurred to me, but yeah, of course.  Of course that’s good.

The pork is fatty and perfectly cooked, and while my first few bites were a bit lacking in crispy skin, the back half of of the sandwich was loaded with the stuff.

Crispy Pork Belly Sandwich from BEAR Steak Sandwiches

The meat itself is so tender and and flavourful that you could throw it on a bun and call it a day, but the other stuff here really amps up the flavour of the sandwich.  And the zippy pickled onions and black vinegar sauce do a great job of cutting through the richness of the unctuous pork; the sandwich is very finely tuned, and never feels too heavy.

The bun looks a bit big in the photos, but it’s pillowy and light, and lets the pork be the star of the show.

So no, sorry BEAR Steak Sandwiches.  This can’t just be a limited-time thing.  I won’t allow it.

Amazing Roast Pork at B’s Sizzling Kitchen

B's Sizzling Kitchen
Location
: 430 Horner Avenue, Etobicoke
Website: https://www.bsizzlingkitchen.com/

B’s Sizzling Kitchen is one of those places that you’d probably never discover if you hadn’t heard about it from a friend or read about it online, since it’s kinda hidden away in a very nondescript industrial/residential area of Etobicoke.  But it’s absolutely worth coming out of your way for.

It’s a Filipino restaurant that specializes in Cebu lechon — ultra-tender roast pork with delightfully crispy skin — and man, it’s good.

B's Sizzling Kitchen

I started with the lechon sisig fries, which features a heaping portion of tasty pork on top of crispy, crinkle-cut fries.  This was everything you want it to be.  It’s porky, crispy, sweet, and addictive.  It’s profoundly delicious.

But of course, the Cebu lechon is what you’re here for, and it’s just the absolute best.  They make it with pork belly, and… I mean, just look at it.

B's Sizzling Kitchen

Look at it.

B's Sizzling Kitchen

The meat is melt-in-your-mouth tender, it’s perfectly seasoned and intensely flavourful, and the crispy skin is the stuff dreams are made of.  Just give me a big bag of that skin and let me eat it like potato chips.

I’m going to like pretty much any well-prepared fatty pork dish by default, but this one is something special.

B's Sizzling Kitchen

As I was leaving, there was a whole suckling pig sitting on a table waiting to be picked up, and I don’t think I’ve ever wanted anything so badly in my entire life.

Amazing Roast Pork at Luen Hing Barbecue

Luen Hing Barbecue
Location
: 888 Dundas Street East, Mississauga (inside the Mississauga Chinese Centre)
Website: None

If a restaurant has an enormous slab of tasty-looking roasted pork hanging in the window, you should eat at that restaurant.  That’s just a fact.  Is that a law?  I think that might be the law.  If you see a restaurant like that you have to eat there or you’ll go to jail.  That sounds fair to me.

Luen Hing also has chicken and duck hanging in the window, and clearly I have to go back, because that pork… wow.

Luen Hing Barbecue

I ordered the roast pork and barbecue pork on rice, which comes with a seriously generous amount of tasty eats for about twelve bucks.  It’s a great deal, that’s for sure.

I actually brought this home instead of eating in the food court, and I had resigned myself to the fact that the pork skin probably wouldn’t be particularly crispy.  It’s hard to retain your crunch when you’ve been steaming in a sealed take-out box.  But oh man, that skin was crisp.  It was at delightful, kettle chip levels of crunchiness.

Luen Hing Barbecue

And the pork itself was so good.  Super flavourful, nice and tender, fatty but not too fatty, and of course, the aforementioned super crunchy skin.  Delightful.

The barbecue pork wasn’t quite on the same level — it was a bit dry — but it was still quite tasty, with a nice balance of sweet and savoury.

The steamed cabbage and the sauce they poured on top were also quite good.  It all adds up to a seriously satisfying version of this dish, and a restaurant that I’ll almost certainly be returning to in the near future.

Amazing Roast Pork at Wilson’s Haus of Lechon

Wilson's Haus of LechonLocation: 365 Wilson Avenue, North York
Website: https://www.facebook.com/wilsonshausoflechon/

If you’re looking for tasty roast pork, go to Wilson’s Haus of Lechon.  Trust me on this one; just do it.

Wilson's Haus of Lechon

As you might imagine, this place specializes in lechon, the Philippines’s version of roast suckling pig.  I knew I was probably in good hands as soon as I walked in the door and saw the whole, glorious pig sitting behind the counter.

Wilson's Haus of Lechon

I wound up trying the roast pig and the roast chicken, and both were pretty much incredible.

The pork is absolutely fantastic; it’s tender, juicy, and absolutely exploding with flavour.  The meat itself was thoroughly infused with a delightfully garlicky, herby punch of flavour.  But the pork itself still shines through.  It’s so good.

Wilson's Haus of Lechon

I wish the skin had been a bit crispier, but it was otherwise so delicious that it didn’t really matter.

Wilson's Haus of Lechon

The chicken was also pretty amazing, though it’s hard for anything to compare to that pork.  I wanted dark meat and wound up with a breast, but it was surprisingly tender for white meat, and of course it had that same garlicky/herby flavour.

The combo comes with sticky rice and lumpia Shanghai, which is a very tasty pork-stuffed Filipino spring roll.  It’s all so good.