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Amazing Cookies at Bakery Pompette

Published on February 22, 2026 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 655 College Street, Toronto
Website: https://www.pompette.ca/bakery

I’ll admit that I hadn’t heard of Bakery Pompette prior to Toronto Life ranking them number four on their list of the best new cookies in the city. Which is crazy, because based on how good the cookie is, I feel like everyone should be talking about this place. You’ve all failed me.

The pecan caramel cookie (“pecan chocolate chip cookies topped with coffee caramel and pecan praline”) is pure magic. It’s basically a chocolate chip cookie, but greatly enhanced with the addition of pecans and the two sauces on top.

It’s cookie perfection, with a great crispy/chewy texture, a generous amount of good-quality chocolate chips, and a nice nuttiness from the pecans.

You’d think the caramel sauce on top would be overkill, but the pleasantly mild bitterness from the coffee does an amazing job of cutting through the cookie’s sweetness.

Every element here just works. It’s a seriously, seriously good cookie.

Quick Bites: La Casa Dolce, The Fourth Man in the Fire, Petite Bouchée Patisserie

Published on February 16, 2026 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Chocolate chip cookie from La Casa Dolce

I certainly wasn’t in a rush to go back after my last visit to La Casa Dolce, but I was in the area and craving something sweet, so sure, why not? I went with the chocolate chip cookie this time, because it’s basically impossible to mess that up. That’s one of those things where even when it’s bad, it’s still pretty good. And this one: not bad! Not great, certainly, but it had a good amount of decent quality chocolate chips (bittersweet, I think), a nice chewy texture, and it wasn’t too sweet. It felt like something was missing, however (vanilla, maybe?), which held it back from being much better than pretty good, but I still enjoyed it.

Meatball sandwich from The Fourth Man in the Fire

I’ve written about the pizza from The Fourth Man in the Fire a couple of times on this blog, and in case you don’t feel like clicking on that link: it’s great. I like it a lot. So I decided to try their meatball sandwich this time (“Meatballs (Beef and Pork Mix), Povolone. Served on Fresh Baked to Order Bread”), and yeah, it’s good. In particular, the flavourful, tender meatballs were actually pretty amazing, and the ultra-rich tomato sauce they come with is the stuff dreams are made of. I want to bathe in the stuff. Oddly, I was expecting the bread to be the highlight (I like the crust on their pizza quite a lot) and it wasn’t. It got the job done, but I think it might have been slightly underbaked, with a mildly doughy consistency that I wasn’t crazy about.

Chocolate cake from Petite Bouchée Patisserie

I picked up a chocolate cake from this place after reading several references to it being the best in the city, and hey, wouldn’t you know it — it just might be. The cake itself is delightfully tender and fluffy, and the rich and creamy frosting is crammed with a delicious, chocolately flavour. It’s very sweet, but not in a way that feels overwhelming or cloying. Immediately after eating it, we were all making plans to order another one. So yeah, it’s quite good.

Tasty Cheesecake in a Jar at Laila’s Cheesecake Co.

Published on February 10, 2026 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 855 Browns Line, Etobicoke
Website: https://www.lailascheesecake.com/

It’s hard to go wrong with cheesecake, and Laila’s definitely makes a tasty one. Which is good, because it’s literally all they serve.

You can get whole cheesecakes, slices, or individual jars of cheesecake, which seems to be their specialty. The jars come in two sizes: four ounce or eight ounce. I found the four ounce serving to be a perfect amount, but eight is there if you really want to cheesecake it up (or if you’re sharing).

They have a variety of flavours like salted caramel, blueberry, and cherry; I went with caramel chocolate pecan.

It’s really good. It’s sweet but not too sweet, with a nice balance of flavours between the chocolate, caramel, and tart cheesecake (with another nice dose of texture and flavour from the graham cracker crust at the bottom). The NY-style cheesecake base is just the right amount of dense and creamy. It’s a satisfying dessert.

Frank’s RedHot Hot Honey Sauce at McDonald’s

Published on February 6, 2026 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 1001 Islington Avenue, Etobicoke
Website: https://www.mcdonalds.com/ca/en-ca.html

I recently tried the Frank’s RedHot Original McCrispy and found it to be pretty disappointing. It just didn’t particularly taste like Frank’s RedHot, which is odd, considering it’s right there in the name of the sandwich.

I figured I’d have a bit more luck with the Frank’s RedHot Hot Honey dipping sauce. Surely a Frank’s RedHot sauce would taste like Frank’s RedHot?

Yeah, about that.

Here’s how McDonald’s describes it: “A dipping sauce with the sweet taste of honey and the heat of Frank’s RedHot® to treat your McNuggets® to a flavour they’ve never experienced before.”

The problem here is that the sauce doesn’t really taste like honey or Frank’s RedHot. It’s just a mildly spicy sweet goo. I can’t find the ingredients online, but I’d be shocked if it wasn’t mostly corn syrup with a teeny-tiny bit of honey so they can legally put honey in its name. As for the Frank’s RedHot, the vinegary flavour of the hot sauce is almost completely wiped out by its intense sweetness.

If you like a very (very very) sweet dipping sauce, you might enjoy this — but I can’t say I did.

A Nostalgic Dessert at Alice Marie Bakery & Coffee

Published on January 31, 2026 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 807 Gerrard Street East, Toronto
Website: https://www.alicemarie.ca/

Alice Marie Bakery & Coffee serves a cake they call “Deep N’ Nostalgic,” which is their upscale take on McCain’s Deep’n Delicious chocolate cake.

It’s been many, many years, but I actually have a good amount of nostalgia for the Deep’n Delicious cake — probably because it came with a family-sized meal KFC sold back in the ’90s called the Mega Meal, which I used to regularly harass my parents about ordering until, once every few months, they’d cave and do it. It was a pretty key part of my childhood.

The version at Alice Marie definitely nails the look, right down to the plastic-domed container it comes in.

They might have fancied it up a little too much, however (it had better be fancy, for twelve bucks for a relatively small piece); their website says they use Valrhona Satilia Noire 62% chocolate, which I’m going to go out on a limb and say is slightly nicer than the chocolate McCain uses.

It’s a tasty cake, with a rich chocolatey flavour and a restrained level of sweetness. I don’t know how much it recalls an actual Deep’n Delicious cake, outside of the look, but it’s definitely a good quality dessert.

The biggest issue is the buttercream icing that it’s topped with. They serve the cake fridge-cold, and the stuff is rock hard. The smart thing to do would be to wait maybe like half an hour for the cake to come to room temperature and for the icing to soften. But I regret to inform you that I absolutely, positively do not have that kind of patience or willpower. If you want me to eat that cake at room temperature, you should serve it that way. Put a tasty chocolate cake in front of me, and tell me it will get better if I wait a few minutes? That cake is going down my gullet immediately. Sorry.