T.O.bites | Toronto Food & Restaurant Blog

It only feels like it was just last week when Antony, Sara, and I sat down for brunch and discussed food and brunch websites.  It’s not like there was a void of decent Toronto foodie websites, but we all wanted to contribute.  The main focus was going to be on reviews, to allow me to brush up on my writing skills and learn to be more critical and subjective.  So started T.O.bites (or is it Tobites, or T.O Bites or T– heck, all forms are acceptable) with a review of Maggie’s, also considered my most controversial and incorrect in being that I gave it such a positive review but the place hasn’t been as glowing.  For the record, I do not know the owners nor am I “related” to them.  I may have been a little too easy on my first review but I did actually love the place at first.  I have been back there recently and I will agree that the quality of their food has gone down significantly.

Before I went to China and took a month long hiatus from blogging, I wrote a post about late night study places. As you may or may not know, I’m a student who happens to hang out with many grad students and we do a lot of late night studying.  This entry was actually my highest viewed/searched/googled/bing’d post for months.  Last time I went down to the Golden Griddle on College street late in the evening, there were about 6 or 7 people plugged in with their laptops working away.

The fall brought a few points of interest:  Caplansky opened up his deli and ran out of smoked meat, my niece had a birthday cake distaster thanks to one establishment’s mess-up (and consequently failing to make the situation any better), and rounded off the season with the closure of the popular New Generation Sushi in the annex due to the slaughtering of a worker from a dispute with another co-worker (beef sashimi, anyone?).

The holiday season brought together Helen and I for some cooking adventures.  First, some delicious Chai Gingerbread Cookies, and secondly the amazing Orea cookie and cream vegan cupcakes.  I also finally got around to trying out Smoke’s Poutinerie in which they were having a turkey dinner themed poutine full of gravy and cranberry sauce.. more importantly, I’m still trying to figure out whether the receipt was supposed to actually say “light cheese, bitch”.  The comma changes everything.

My friends and I had an interesting experience this January at the King Edward hotel.  I’m not so much referring to the afternoon tea (which was good) but more to the sex scandal happening in the washroom.  Though I omitted it from the initial review, we have our suspicions that it was actually an employee, possibly the female who served us who kept flirting with the bell boy, who was making the ecstatic moaning sounds.

All in all, it’s been a great year and I just wanted to thank the many countless people who’ve helped the blog be what it is today.  A big thanks goes out to all my friends who’s names I’ve mentioned (and possibly not have mentioned) in my reviews.  If I didn’t have you guys with me to tell me how good or bad what we’re eating is like, then I’m sure my blog would be more caveman like “it’s good… you go eat!”.  A special thanks to Sheryl Kirby for sending me some traffic from time to time.  Your Lucky Dip and What’s Cooking entries have really opened my eyes to how much foodie related goodness happens around our city.   Finally I’d like to thank Ashley D for letting me use her amazing photographs on many of my posts.

I’m looking forward to another year of blogging and I do apologize that the last few months have been a little lackluster due to my travel and work schedule.  Here’s to hoping that the next 12 months bring many more interesting foodie adventures for me and my friends.