Toronto – Page 129 – Michael Eats

Hogtown Smoke

Published on June 14, 2013 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: All over the place (check their Twitter account)
Website: https://www.facebook.com/hogtownsmoke

Over the last few years, Toronto’s food truck scene has gone from a handful of trucks selling stuff like hot dogs and fries to something much, much more interesting (there are enough to necessitate a website like this one to keep track of them). It’s certainly been a welcome phenomenon, and has made events like the recent Woofstock much more interesting, food-wise.

On this particular day, Hogtown Smoke had a few interesting looking items on their menu, though I decided to go with the Brisket Po Boy. The sandwich featured a fairly substantial amount of brisket dipped in au jus sauce, cheese, onions (which I honestly couldn’t even taste), and horseradish aioli.

It was a perfectly tasty sandwich, though I kinda wish I had just gone with the plain brisket. Good brisket is hard to prepare; it has the tendency to be a bit dry and tough, but this was moist, with just the right amount of fattiness and a nicely subtle smokey flavour. It was good enough that the other stuff felt more like a distraction than anything else; with brisket this good, all you really need is meat and bread, with maybe a little bit of barbecue sauce for flavour. There were a lot of flavours going on in this sandwich, and ultimately they just took away from the brisket.

The bread was perfect po boy bread — lightly crispy on the outside and soft and fluffy on the inside. The whole thing was pretty good, but I’ll definitely be going for the plain brisket if I ever find myself back in the vicinity of this truck.

Chodang Soon Tofu

Published on May 30, 2013May 29, 2013 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 5130 Dundas Street West, Toronto
Website: None

Ah, Chowhound. As a resource for discovering hidden gems, it is second-to-none. Case in point: Chodang Soon Tofu.

The place specializes in fiery red soups that come to the table in a piping hot stone bowl; it’s a roiling inferno of a soup that is pretty much guaranteed to burn your tongue. As I’ve had the soup here a couple of times (and it is quite tasty, despite the pain), I decided to get something different. I went with the Tofu Kimchi, which is a bit more expensive than the other items on the menu at $12.98 (all the soups are eight bucks).

Korean food is traditionally served with a variety of side dishes — banchan, in Korean — and they definitely don’t skimp on that here. Before the main course, we received soft, fresh tofu with a soy-sauce based dipping sauce, two different types of kimchi, bean sprouts, and a breaded, fried fish. All tasty stuff, and all free with the meal, so it’s a pretty great value.

And as it turns out, the Tofu Kimchi was more expensive because it is clearly meant to be shared. I’m not sure if the picture adequately conveys the scale of this dish, but it was massive. I got about halfway through and had to throw in the towel.

It’s a fairly simple dish; stir-fried kimchi with thin strips of pork belly and green onions, surrounded by soft, creamy tofu. It seemed a bit simple when I first started eating it, but the spicy kimchi and pork mixed with the creamy tofu turned out to be a suprisingly addictive combo.

Grand Electric

Published on May 26, 2013May 26, 2013 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 1330 Queen Street West, Toronto
Website: http://www.grandelectricbar.com/

I don’t need to tell you about Grand Electric. It opened in 2011, and since then, everyone in the GTA with even a vague interest in food has been there and has raved about the place. Everyone.

I was afraid that it had been over-hyped to a level that no restaurant could reasonably reach. I was wrong. It is crazy delicious.

The small, no-frills restaurant is laid out with the menu written on a blackboard on the back wall. And yes, as you have heard, it is very loud. They like their hip-hop here, and they like to crank it up. I could converse with my dining companion without having to raise my voice too much, so it wasn’t too bad (though I went for lunch and I suspect it gets louder in the evening).

The menu is very reasonably priced, with all the tacos being sold individually for $3.60. I went with Pork Tinga, Beef Cheek, and Scrapple. I also got an order of the Pig Head Fries, because how can I resist a menu item entitled Pig Head Fries? (the answer: I cannot.)

Did I mention that it was crazy delicious? Because it was. All three tacos were pretty great, though the highlight was the scrapple. Featuring a rectangular, crispy-on-the-outside-and-deliciously-porky-on-the-inside patty of pure deliciousness, which is topped with avocados and green onions and features a perfectly complimentary sweet sauce, it is one of the best things I’ve eaten in a while. If you told me this was all I could eat for the rest of my life, I’d be cool with that.

The other two tacos were more traditional and were perfectly delicious, though they never quite reached the levels of transcendent awesomeness of the scrapple.

As for the Pig Head Fries, they were crispy and salty, with a creamy interior and a delicious dipping sauce that tasted vaguely like the Big Mac sauce from McDonald’s. They were quite tasty.

Bake Sale – Carrot Cake

Published on May 9, 2013October 17, 2019 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 3076 Bloor Street West, Etobicoke
Website: http://www.bakesaletoronto.com/

So the carrot cake from Bake Sale bakery? Best store-bought cake I’ve ever had. Seriously. Most store-bought cakes have the same airy, vaguely processed texture that I find somewhat unappealing. Not this cake; this one is dense, moist, and very close to cake perfection.

It has walnuts interspersed throughout, which add a satisfying textural component as well as a vague nuttiness that complements the cake quite well.

The cream cheese frosting is rich and sweet, but not overly so. It’s also really well proportioned, giving you a perfect amount of cake and frosting in each bite.

It’s raisin-free, which I found delightful. Hey raisins: what’s the point of you? Go home. No one likes you.

Look, it’s a classic carrot cake. They’re not reinventing the wheel here. This isn’t someone’s take on a carrot cake; it is a carrot cake, executed to absolute perfection.

Panera Bread

Published on May 5, 2013May 7, 2013 by Michael Nusair2 Comments

Location: 197 North Queen Street, Etobicoke
Website: http://www.panerabread.com/

One thing I like about Panera Bread is that its Canadian and American menus seem to be pretty consistent. A lot of times there’ll be an interesting item introduced on the menu at a fast food joint, only for it never to materialize here in Canada (like KFC’s boneless chicken, McDonald’s Egg White Delight McMuffin, or Taco Bell’s Doritos Locos Tacos, among many others).

Panera Bread, on the other hand, seems to actually let Canadians try its new menu items, which is nice.

The latest thing at Panera is pasta. They’ve got Tortellini Alfredo, Pesto Sacchettini, and Rustic Penne Bolognese. I went with the Sacchettini, which is described as a “purse-like pasta filled with six cheeses.” Pesto? Six different cheeses? Sign me up.

There’s a choice between small and large, and though the small initially seems comically undersized, it’s actually fairly heavy and a good amount for lunch.

It’s not bad. It is, as advertised, quite cheesy, and the generous amount of pesto clinging to each Sacchettini gives it a good amount of flavour.

It was, however, unevenly hot in the way that only food that has been quickly microwaved gets. It’s also pretty much the opposite of al dente, with pasta that is disconcertingly close to Chef Boyardee in the texture department.

It comes with either a soup or a salad. I got the Classic Salad, which is dressed with a passable balsamic vinaigrette. It complimented the pasta fairly well; the occasional bite of the vinegary salad helped to cut the richness of the oily, cheesy pasta (and the pasta is definitely not kidding around with the oiliness — when I finished, there was a pretty substantial pool of oil at the bottom of the bowl).

It’s not bad, but at the price I don’t know how heartily I can recommend it. I got it with a lemonade to drink, and it came up to almost 15 bucks, which is kind of absurd for the caliber of food you’re getting.