Roncesvalles – Michael Eats

Outstanding Pastries at Steven Tran Chocolatier Pâtissier

Published on December 24, 2025December 24, 2025 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 476 Roncesvalles Avenue, Toronto
Website: https://steventranchocolates.com/

Steven Tran Chocolatier Pâtissier (that just rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?) is clearly doing pretty well. When I visited just after 1:00pm on a recent Saturday, the place was pretty much cleared out, with just a handful of pastries remaining.

I don’t know if I would have tried the salted caramel brownie if it weren’t one of the only things in stock, but wow, I’m glad I did.

This might have been one of the best brownies I’ve ever had? It has a perfect chewy texture and a delightfully intense chocolatey flavour. That’s not to mention the salted caramel on top, which is borderline burnt in all the best ways, with a slight bitterness that balances out its sweetness.

After I finished it, I was extremely tempted to walk back into the store and order another one, which basically never happens. Seriously, seriously good.

I should note that I actually went back a couple of weeks later and ordered the brownie again, and it was just as good. If I’ve ever eaten a better brownie, I certainly can’t remember it.

Because I’m a glutton, I also tried the mont blanc, and yeah, that was stellar, too, with a nice creamy/crispy contrast from the cream and the crispy meringue, a satisfying chestnut flavour, and some nice fruitiness from the sauce (blackberry?) in the middle.

I went back one more time and tried the canele, and like everything else, it was stellar. Perfect light crispy exterior, and the interior is delightfully custardy. So, so good.

Guava BBQ Shortrib Medianoche at La Cubana

Published on June 28, 2019July 10, 2019 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 392 Roncesvalles Avenue, Toronto
Website: http://www.lacubana.ca/

I had a bit of an iffy meal on my last visit to La Cubana, but if the sandwich I just had was any indication, that was just a blip on the radar. La Cubana is still very, very good.

Specifically, I had the Guava BBQ Shortrib Medianoche, which Toronto Life recently called the 11th best sandwich in the city. I don’t always agree with Toronto Life’s opinions on food, but in this case they’re dead on. It’s outstanding.

The sandwich features a very generous amount of shortrib topped with “red cabbage slaw, chimichurri, pickled jalapeno, crispy onion.” It’s served on a soft bun they bake in-house.

The shortrib itself is absurdly good. It manages to be melt-in-your-mouth tender while still retaining its texture. It has a nice beefy flavour that’s complemented perfectly by the guava BBQ sauce — the sandwich is saucy as hell (there was a huge pool on the plate when I was done eating), but the sauce is so good that it feels just right. It’s sweet, but it has a tangy, zippy bite that balances it out.

Everything else complements it perfectly. The crispy onions are really tasty, and you get a good amount of crunch and acidity from the slaw and the jalapenos. It’s a great mix of flavours and textures.

And the bun is soft and fluffy, with just enough substance to hold up to the saucy, generously stuffed sandwich. It’s so good.

Burnt Marshmallow at Ed’s Real Scoop

Published on June 21, 2019 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 189 Roncesvalles Avenue, Toronto
Website: https://www.edsrealscoop.com/

I’ve mentioned before that the ice cream at Ed’s Real Scoop can be a bit hit and miss. One of their more consistent flavours, however, is the burnt marshmallow. It’s pretty much always delicious.

I mean, how could it not be delicious? It’s basically sweet cream, which is clearly the best flavour at Ed’s, with a rich, deeply flavourful caramel sauce swirled in. It only just barely tastes like burnt marshmallow (it tastes more like creme caramel to me), but more importantly, it tastes delicious.

And the ice cream itself is nice and creamy, though like all of the ice cream at Ed’s in the last few years, it has a slightly gummy texture that I find marginally off-putting. It’s not a huge deal, but it’s there and it’s unfortunate (I will concede that in this particular case, the gumminess could be attributed to the fact that this is a marshmallow flavour. But it’s there in all of their flavours, sadly).

Average Mexican Food at Cinco Mexican Restaurant

Published on October 9, 2018 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 131 Roncesvalles Avenue, Toronto
Website: https://www.cinco.restaurant/

Cinco is an unassuming Mexican restaurant on Roncesvalles that’s been serving up tacos and rotisserie chicken for about a year. Nothing about it particularly stands out, but if you’re in the area, I’m sure you could do worse.

I tried a couple of things. The first was the cochinita pibil taco: “marinated braised pork in adobo, six hour slow-cooked pork belly, queso oaxaca, topped with habanero onions.”

It wasn’t bad, though I wish they had taken the same amount of meat and split it into two tacos, because it’s kind of absurd.

The bites where you get a bit of everything — the shredded pork, the cilantro, the pickled onions — are really good. But there’s such a heaping mound of meat that many (most?) of the mouthfuls are pork, pork, and nothing but pork.

This wouldn’t have necessarily been a bad thing, but the pork was quite dry despite being shockingly greasy (seriously, the amount of oil dripping out of the taco was insane. The entire plate was swimming in it by the time I finished).

Still, it was tasty enough — the adobo-braised pork was tasty, the two blue corn tortillas were nice and fresh (the thin layer of cheese between them was a nice touch, but it was a bit too subtle to add much to the overstuffed taco), and the mouthfuls with a bit of everything had a nice balance of richness from the meat and acidity from the pickles.

I also tried the the chicken quesadilla, a daily special. This was a bit of a head-scratcher; it was filled with pieces of plain chicken, and… that’s about it. No cheese, no other ingredients (that I could taste, at least), just a whole bunch of stale-tasting chicken chunks. But it was fine, I guess — especially once I started dipping it into the pool of porky grease from the taco.

Middling Gelato at Ed’s Real Scoop

Published on September 26, 2018 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 189 Roncesvalles Avenue, Toronto
Website: https://www.edsrealscoop.com/

I’ve mentioned before that I quite like Ed’s Real Scoop, but that really, their sweet cream is where it’s at. It’s outstanding. Their other flavours are disappointingly hit-and-miss.

But in all my dozens of visits to the place over the years, I’ve never bothered to try their gelato. This is going to be a short post — more of a PSA than anything else — because it’s not very good. I’d advise that you stick to the ice cream. Specifically, stick to the sweet cream.

I tried the pistachio and the bacio (chocolate hazelnut), and both of the flavours were pretty weak. There just wasn’t much there, other than a generic sweetness. This tends to be an issue with their ice cream, too, but at least in that case they’re starting with a great quality base.

Alas, the gelato itself was thin and underwhelming, with barely any creaminess at all. It’s a waste of time when the ice cream is right there.