West Restaurant + Bar on Granville Street serves contemporary Pacific Northwest cuisine, and it is one of seven restaurants in the Toptable Group restaurant group.Helmed by Executive Chef Quang Dang, West came highly recommended by my good friend Mijune of Follow Me Foodie. Even though it was not on my Vancouver restaurant "hit list", I was more than happy to try out Westgiven that Mijune and I have very similar taste in food.
West's sophisticated dining room boasts a temperature-controlled wine wall (on the right), a Werner Forster installation from the ceiling (Forster was a well-known Vancouver architect), etched stone tabletops, and Mario Bellini designed original chairs found at MoMA. There are also two chef's tables for guests who like to see all the action in the kitchen.
Pretty pink cocktails to start. Forgive me but I don't remember what spirit and ingredients were in them. All I remember is that they were very tasty and, contrary to how they may look, not crazy sweet.
I finally had a chance to visit Vancouver last month, a city I haven't been to in more than 20 years (I blame the ridiculously expensive airfare). I spent one very chill week in and around Vancity just eating, drinking and hanging out. It was exactly what I needed; I came back home very well rested (7 lbs heavier!) and I didn't feel like I needed another vacation from my vacation (I hate that feeling). Anyway, researching which restaurants to check out naturally became my main mission before the trip. My final list consisted of around 7-8 places, withHawksworthbeing on the very top of my list. Hawksworth Restaurant (Instagram: @hawksworthrest, Facebook: Hawksworth Restaurant) has received an impressive number of awards and accolades since it opened in 2011, some of which include Best New Restaurant from enRoute Magazine, Canada's Restaurant of the Year from Maclean's Magazine, Second Place in Canada's 100 Best list, Chef of the Year, Sommelier of the Year, and Best Upscale Restaurant from Vancouver Magazine Restaurant Awards, etc, etc. The list goes on and on (click here for the full list of awards). So, to say I was "excited" when my friend Mijune of Follow Me Foodie snagged a reservation there is clearly an understatement.
Located in the gorgeous Rosewood Hotel Georgia, Hawksworth serves contemporary Canadian cuisine. The restaurant's menu is seasonal and features local Canadian ingredients. We left it up to Chef de Cuisine, Chris Stewart, to feed us that evening. It's always better that way, trust me.
PUFFED BEEF TENDON (amuse)
Iberico ham, liquefied fat trimmings
Take a look at that iberico. Thinly sliced with a dark-ish red hue and some natural fat infiltration, the 48-month old iberico had a sharp flavour and an oily texture (amplified by the liquefied fat trimmings). The fried beef tendon puff had an intense crunch that quickly dissolved on the palate. Yum. I couldn't have asked for a better way to start the meal.
Wine Director, Bryant Mao, leads the award-winning wine program at Hawksworth. Here is Bryant pouring Mijune and I our first glass.
HALIBUT
Buttermilk poached halibut, fresh peas, pea puree, pea veil, pea tips, pea powder, edible flowers, puffed rice.
Pairing: Little Farm Riesling 2015, Mulberry Tree Vineyard, Cawston, BC.
So much yes for pea season! Nothing symbolizes the sweet, light, and freshness of spring quite like peas. Underneath the velvety pea puree, the poached halibut was soft and flaky, and the puffed rice added just the right amount of texture to the plate (or bowl). Beautiful flavours, textures, depth and colour. This was a wonderful representation of the terroir of Vancouver, with land and sea uniting to form a perfectly made dish.
Happy Chinese New Year to all my Chinese friends! 2017 is the year of the Rooster, and because I have no idea what that entails, I googled it. I found this nifty graph showing how people born in a year of the Rooster (i.e. 1933, 1945, 1957, 1969, 1981, 1993, 2005, 2017, and 2029) will do in 2017 when it comes to work, love, wealth and health. Check out how scientific the folks at Chinahighlights.com made it all look:
This shows what's lucky and unlucky for Roosters. Note the cockscomb (obviously) and how Roosters should never, ever, venture east.
I'm not superstitious at all but it's fun to look at horoscopes sometimes, especially during Chinese New Year! But y'all know what's more fun than zodiacs during CNY? Eating the food my Mom makes.
This year, my Mom switched it up a bit. Instead of making multiple dishes, she made poon choi, or 盆菜, which literally means "basin vegetables" in Chinese. Ingredients are cooked separately, layered carefully and topped with an assortment of delicacies. Each person at the table takes food from the "basin", layer by layer, from the top to the bottom. Eating 盆菜, or "big bowl feast", signifies abundance and richness in the coming year.
FYI. According to Wikipedia, poon choi was invented during the late Song Dynasty. When Mongol troops invaded Song China, the young Emperor fled to the area around Guangdong Province and Hong Kong. To serve the Emperor as well as his army, the locals collected all their best food available, cooked it, and because there were not enough serving containers available put the resulting meal in large wooden washbasins.
There are all the ingredients that went into my Mom's poon choi:
⇒ Bottom layer: white radish, carrots, cabbage (白蘿蔔, 紅籮蔔, 長紹菜)
⇒ Top layer: black moss, abalone, soy sauce marinated tiger shrimp, egg tofu and broccoli (發菜, 鲍魚, 豉汁明蝦, 玉子豆腐, 西蘭花)
A short Instagram video of my Mom pouring homemade chicken broth into the pot on the stove. That sizzle thooo (don't mind my Dad talking in the background).
Each bite of the poon choi was such a treat - I wouldn't change a thing. The poon choi fed the five of us no problem..there was so much food in there! Before I go, I want to mention the most precious ingredient in the poon choi, which was the abalone. My mom bought this "Gold Price" boiled canned abalone from the supermarket. With just two abalones inside, this can was close to $70. The mollusks were tender with a bit of chewiness to them, and due to the salt water they lived in, the meat tasted a bit salty.
Like always, my Mom totally spoiled us :) Thanks, Mom!
French-inspired Korean cuisine. Have you tried it before? Not me, at least not until I visited Doma back in December. Doma(Instagram: @domatoronto, Facebook: Doma) is a French-inspired Korean restaurant that meshes French cooking techniques with traditional Korean ingredients and flavours (or vice versa). According to Doma's website, their menu changes every month, which is in line with chef/owner Paul Kim's philosophy of using local ingredients as much as possible. Each month's menu would include Kim's new creations, as well as two to three popular dishes from the previous month.
Located on Clinton and College, the Doma space was previously occupied by Backwoods Smokehouse, and before that Red Sauce, and before that Acadia. The decor is minimalist and simple; clean lines with white walls and light-wood furnishings. I personally find the room a bit bleak. Also, maybe it's the OCD in me but because all the tables and chairs are angled diagonally, I had a really strong urge to move everything so that they would be parallel to the wall.
Anyway, enough about the room, let's talk about the food. I was really eager to try Doma because I always viewed Korean food as a more casual type of cuisine; as in, I've never experienced "Korean fine-dining" or "refined Korean food" before. Which is why I was really excited to try Doma, especially having heard that chef Kim studied at Le Cordon Bleu in Ottawa. Combining his knowledge in French techniques with his Korean background, I was pretty sure that Kim would be debuting a refined menu that none of us have ever tried before.
By the way, I love the long and slender cutlery at Doma. They are a more stylish matte black versions of the silver ones you would normally find in traditional Korean restaurants.
My friend and I chose the $65 per person tasting menu which consisted of an amuse, six courses and a dessert. You basically get to try the entire menu with this tasting so I highly recommend getting it.
AMUSE BOUCHE
Steam bun filled with mushroom, caramelized onion and sweet doenjang
It has been a long time since I've been excited about a new restaurant here in the city. Maybe I'm harder to please now that I'm older, but I feel that the Toronto dining scene is pretty stagnant currently when it comes to creativity and offering people new things. As in, do we need another Italian restaurant? Do we really? I'm also tired of seeing gimmicky and/or "instagrammable" foods that do not deliver on taste. Do these "creations" deserve that much attention? And, sorry, I'm just not that into barbecue. Finally, against popular opinion, I want more "fine dining" or "upscale" restaurants, and less "fast casual" restaurants, please!*End rant*
So, let me just put it out there: Canis Restaurant is now one of my favourite restaurants in Toronto. Canis, which opened a month ago on 746 Queen Street West, does upscale, yet approachable, Canadian cuisine. Their menu is intricate, thoughtful and original. Canis is good. Real good.
The interior of Canis is sleek and modern with a bright open kitchen at the back. The modest dining room features mostly concrete, wood and leather.
To start, my friend opted for beer (below) while I opted for a glass of bubbly (not pictured).
WAG THE WOLF HOPFENWEISSE ($14)
Canis' dinner menu is divided into snacks, starters, mains and desserts. I asked chef Jeff Kang if he could just bring out dishes for us since we do not have any allergies and we eat everything. So, here we go!
BREAD (complimentary)
Sourdough from Clark's Bread served with whipped garlic butter, and fresh ricotta & chimichurri. Mix together the cheese and chimichurri, and you'll literally get the best spread ever. The garlic in the butter was a bit too subtle for my taste (I love my garlic) but the sourdough was excellent.
Sorry for being MIA for the last little while. I was in Tokyo for two weeks and then needed a week after coming home to recover from jet lag and to get back into the groove of things. Anyway, I've returned and I hope you guys missed me! :) I will be sharing some of my Japan travels on the blog soon too, but before that, I want to write about my experience at 98 Aroma(Instagram: @98aroma, Facebook: 98 Aroma), a Northern Chinese restaurant I visited for dinner a couple days before my Japan trip.
The first thing I noticed about the restaurant was its interior. Traditional decor executed with a modern touch, 98 Aroma differentiates themselves instantly from all the other Chinese restaurants in Chinatown. Without even having to taste the food, you know they are striving for something different. In photos, the blue mood lighting may seem a bit much but in real life they work well. It's too bad the exterior of 98 Aroma doesn't match its upscale interior - it needs a lot more work, in my opinion (sorry I forgot to take photos of the outside).
I really like the look of these booths.
98 Aroma brings forth refined Northern Chinese food. Its menu consists of some popular Northern Chinese dim sum, such as scallion pancakes, dumplings, and pan fried steamed buns, as well as many traditional dishes that most of us may not be familiar with or have heard of before.
SUMMER BREEZE ($9.99)
I normally don't care for salads but 98 Aroma's signature salad served with carrots, lettuce, cabbage and topped with fried shredded taro was a winner. Mix all the components together with their sweet vinaigrette and you'll find yourself loving every bite. Or, at least, I did.
Paese Ristorante has been serving Italian inspired food for over 25 years in North York. Owner and operator Tony Loschiavo was three years old when he moved to Canada from Southern Italy in 1965.Growing up with a passion for food and its preparation, Loschiavo’s early start in the restaurant industry was with two acclaimed Toronto restaurants of the time: Fenton’s and Noodles. In 1983, he founded L-eat Catering and in 1989 opened Paese Ristorante(Instagram: @paeseristorante, Facebook: Paese Ristorante). The L-eat Group cultivates a 3,000 square feet urban garden in midtown, producing fruits and vegetables used for their catering events, and everything from tomatoes and chili peppers for the chefs, to mint and lavender for the bartenders at Paese.
I visited Paese for some Italian cooking on a Saturday night. As usual, we started with cocktails.
PAESE COLLINS ($14)
Beefeater gin, lemon, thyme-infused syrup
OLD ITALIAN FASHIONED ($14)
Campari, Maker's Mark bourbon, sugar cube, orange
COMPLIMENTARY FOCACCIA
Tapenade made of tomato, roasted eggplant and red pepper.
Paese's dinner menu features a selection of salads, antipasti, pastas, pizza, fish and meats, and sides.
GRILLED OCTOPUS ($16)
Potato, grilled escarole, mint, lemon and chill
This was a marvelous appetizer, and it's no wonder that this dish is so popular at Paese. Coupled with an impressive presentation, the grilled octopus here is soft and tender yet still had good texture and chew. The creamy sauce and the hearty potatoes were perfect accompaniments to the octopus.
It's been almost a year since my last visit to KAKA, an all-you-can-eat Japanese restaurant located at First Markham Place (read about my experience at KAKA here). Since then, KAKA All You Can Eat (Instagram: @kakaallyoucaneat, Facebook: KAKA All You Can Eat) has introduced several new items on their already sizable menu, and I was invited back to the popular AYCE spot to have a taste.
I started the meal with Mio Sparkling Sake, a very light and bubbly sake.
The newly introduced items include three varieties of poke salad bowls and two types of tacos. I applaud KAKA's effort in offering the trendy poke to their menu but I was not crazy about them. In general, the poke bowls were under-seasoned and had too many competing ingredients. In my opinion, the best poke bowls are often the simplest ones with cubed fish seasoned with soy sauce, sesame oil, and sweet onions, then finished with a sprinkle of sesame seeds or scallions. That's it. I thought KAKAwas overly ambitious with the number of ingredients. The tacos, on the other hand, were quite delicious. I would order them again.
Salmon, nori, sesame, avocado, cilantro, green onions, tempura bits
YUZU PONZU POKE
Butterfish, cucumber, avocado, sweet egg, green onion, melon, yuzu sauce
TACOS
FISH TACO
Asian slaw, avocado puree, chipotle mayo
SHRIMP TACO
Pico de gallo, avocado puree, wasabi mayo
After the poke and tacos, we continued to make our way through the KAKA menu. Highlights for me were the Ox Tongue Skewer, Chicken Meatball Skewer, the very creamy Bacon and Mushroom Carbonara and the Grilled Okra.
With 7.5 million meals per month and 850,000 subscribers globally, HelloFresh made their way to Canada in May 2016. HelloFresh (Instagram: @hellofreshca, Facebook: Hello Fresh CA) is a meal delivery subscription service that delivers locally sourced fresh ingredients and recipes straight to your doorstep. HelloFresh's team of in-house chefs create easy-to-prepare, nutritious recipes, and pre-measured ingredients are delivered right to your door every week. The recipes are quick and easy to follow (they all take 30 mins or less), and don't require any fancy equipment or techniques. All you need to have available at home is salt, pepper, sugar, cooking oil, and butter.
HelloFreshdelivers on Tuesday and Wednesday of each week and delivery typically occurs between 9am-5pm. If you are not home during delivery, their courier will drop the box off at your front door (or wherever you specify in your delivery instructions). HelloFresh's subscription service is very flexible; there's no minimum length for subscriptions and you can deactivate at any time. You can even pause your subscription, just as long as it's done before midnight on Wednesday before the following week's delivery. HelloFreshcurrently deliversacross Southern, Central, and Eastern Ontario (see delivery zones here).
Every week, HelloFresh's Pronto and Family Boxes feature 4 meal choices: 3 with meat options and 1 vegetarian option. You can choose your top 3 favourites each week and also set personal preferences such as Beef Free, Fish Free, Pork Free, Seafood Free, or Shellfish Free as choice defaults. I was sent a 3 Meal Pronto Box for Two to try.
You can now receive $30 off your first box order and another $30 off your second box order (total savings of $60 overall) when you use my codeFOOD_JUNKIEat checkout!
HelloFresh have specially designed boxes that are lined with thick liners and are 100% recyclable. I love how each recipe and its ingredients are in separate boxes. This keeps everything neat and in-place.
Underneath the boxed ingredients is a separate layer containing protein and ice packs.
Everything in my 3 Meal Pronto Box for Two are shown below. HelloFresh offers three types of boxes (prices include delivery):
There are two more days left of Summerlicious! This year, the citywide restaurant event began on July 8th and will end on July 24th, so you still have this weekend to check it out. With over 220 restaurants participating, including 24 new participants, I'm confident that you'll find a 3-course menu to whet your appetite. Summerlicious (Twitter: @LiciousTO, Facebook: LiciousTO) prices range from $18 to $28 for lunch, and $28 to $48 for dinner.
Drinks are not included in Summerlicious but they are a requirement for me :) Azure serves VERY boozy drinks (note the bold, italics and caps for "very")!
MAPLE MAHATTAN ($14)
Knob Creek bourbon, maple syrup, sweet vermouth, Dillon's DSB bitters
OLD FASHIONED ($14)
Canadian Club Rye, cane sugar syrup, angostura bitters, water
For Summerlicious, Azure is featuring a $28 lunch and a $48 dinner (both with vegetarian option available). My friend and I dropped by for dinner last night, and before I talk about what we had, I want to let you know that I'm quite sad that Azure got rid of their bread basket. If you take a look at all my previous Azure write-ups (links at the end of this post) I always made it a point to mention how great their bread basket was. However, during this visit, we were given two pieces of bread each. It's better than nothing, of course, but I do miss that bread basket very much. When I asked my server, Coco, she told us that it was more economical and less wasteful this way because the restaurant always end up throwing out a lot of bread (since most diners do not consume all the bread in the basket). Totally makes sense but I can still be sad :(
APPETIZER
TRUFFLE HONEY FIG & PROSCIUTTO TARTINE
Focaccia, mascarpone, balsamic & baby watercress
Azure substituted figs with blackberries because they ran out of figs. Boo. I was disappointed because I love figs, and the entire time I couldn't stop thinking about how perfect truffle honey figs would go with the savoury prosciutto and the sweet-tartness of the balsamic. Thankfully, the blackberries worked well too. The baby watercress added a very welcoming "lightness" to the appetizer. I also thought the presentation was very pretty.
CRAB & SWEET CORN FRITTERS
Pea shoots, shaved fennel & rémoulade
These fritters tasted much better than I expected, not that I thought they would be bad but they certainly exceeded my expectations. I couldn't taste much of the crab itself but the sweet corn flavour really came through. Fried to golden brown, the crispy fritters were delicious with the cool and creamy rémoulade underneath.
The modern and casual sandwich shop is conveniently situated across the street from University of Toronto, making it an ideal spot for students, whether it be quick grab-and-go lunches or sit-down meals in between classes.
Which is your favourite ramune flavour? Mine are "Original" and "Melon" :)
At Teara Lab(Twitter: @TearaLab, Facebook: Teara Lab), diners have the option of getting a sandwich or a sandwich combo, which comes with seasoned fries and a drink. Teara Lab's drinks selection is pretty impressive so don't go for just soda. Customers can choose from a variety of fruit teas (passion fruit green tea, mango green tea, fresh watermelon juice), slush (mango or match red bean), milk teas and creamas.
My friend and I ordered a Hokkaido Milk Tea ($5) and a LemonDada ($5). Both were fantastic! I would actually consider just dropping by the sandwich shop for a drink if I'm ever in the area.
