Fried butter balls aside, the CNE always dishes out some amazing food choices yearly. We’ve now come to expect the beaver tail, the tiny tom donuts, and now the hamburger in a bag to tickle our taste buds at the end of every summer. An interesting new addition (though not necessarily new to this year) is the taco in a bag, which much like the hamburger in a bag, is ground beef, tomatoes, salsa and other taco condiments mixed around in a bag of doritos.

The Food building itself has a lot of history within it’s walls. It’s one of the few buildings that has been around for decades which hasn’t changed too much. It’s a practical use of space, but at the same time, you’ll spend almost as much time trying to find a seat to sit than you will figuring out what to eat from the dozens of food vendors in there.

The most interesting addition to the Food building this year is the Mac & Cheesery. For less than $8, you’re given 5 different choices of how you want to eat your mac & cheese, from a breakfast plate with eggs and bacon up to an interesting but classic hot doc mac. Not to out perform the deep fried butter balls, the Mac & Cheesery also offers Deep Fried Mac “N” Cheese for just $5 bucks. And if you’re like my good friend Ashley who raves for a good grilled cheese, they also offer a few different Grilled Cheese platters starting at $6 bucks. Sadly, they only offer potato chips with the grilled cheeses as opposed to actual fries.

Aside from the Mac & Cheesery, all our old favorites are there from the Montreal smoked meat delis to the chinese food options. Bouchards Poutinery has returned (though I can’t remember if they were under a different name last year) with all their interesting poutine options. I do have to say that I miss the big chocolate and candy stand they used to have in the centre of the food building where for a mere $8, you could get a bag full of your favorite convenience store candies worth about $20.

One interesting thing I’ve been noticing over the years is the prominence of Coca-Cola’s branding over the fair grounds. It seems like all the food vendors have to agree to only sell Coke products which is too bad because I’m more of a Pepsi guy.

Outside of the food building, there are a few great and interesting options around the fair grounds. Most of them appear to be inside the trade buildings with my personal favorite being the British food stand. They always seem to have the most interesting potato chips there.. Prawn Cocktail chips, anyone?

One interesting stand that I found would have to be the Animal Fudge Apple stand which contained a huge case filled with different fudge coated candy apples shaped in some of our favorite animals such as pandas, pigs, frogs, and monkeys.

If you’ve been to the CNE last year, then I can’t say you’ll be seeing anything different and new this year. Though I head to the CNE yearly to try and recapture a piece of nostalgia, the fact is it’s changed from what it was 20, 30, even 80 years ago, and many of my fellow peers agree that it will never be what it used to be.

Made to keep your kids warm and safe at night? Um, no.

Thankfully though, a lot of my nostalgia of the CNE revolves around such foods as the Tiny Tom Donuts, and I’m grateful that they will always be there year after year (even if I didn’t buy them this year). If you haven’t been to the CNE before, then it might be worth your $15 to go and check it out, otherwise I’d spend the entrance fee on a good meal at Kensington Market which has more cultural market appeal without the admission cost.

My friends on foursquare can probably tell you that after trying Cold Stone Creamery last month, I’ve been in love with the place having gone back about 4 more times in the last 4 weeks. The price is a bit cheaper (You can get one of their small signature creations for less than $5) but you can tell the ice cream is of slightly lesser quality than Marble Slab. Never the less, it’s still pretty darn good.

The frozen slab at Cold Stone, where the magic happens!

I find that whenever a place lets you go wild with the ingredients, I’ll always stick with the recommended/pre-selected creations as they’re usually more tried and tested. I’ve tried my own random Cold Stone ice cream creation of Cookie dough ice cream with oreo and strawberries but it just wasn’t that great. However, their signature selections are heck of a lot better. My favorites would have to be the Cookie Mintster (Mint ice cream with oreo cookies), and Our Strawberry Blonde (graham cracker pie crust, strawberries and caramel).

I know it’s been a year since they first put Cold Stone in the Timmy’s up at Bay and Bloor, but I do hope they roll out a lot more of them around the city.

Chew Chew's train mural

The giant mural of a train on the side of the restaurant is sure to get a few groans along with the ironic name of the diner, but if you actually step inside the front door, you’ll quickly see that this bustling little diner’s train theme actually works quite well for itself without getting too tacky.

The scene of some Canadian mountains is displayed right next to the booths lined up against the wall, acting as a faux outside window of the mock train you’re sitting in.  It’s a bit tacky, but it works.

I was told the best thing to order at Chew’s would be the Conductor’s special, but I wasn’t feeling like breakfast today so I went with the standard diner fare of cheese burger and fries.  We also ordered a hot hamburger chicken plate also with fries.

Chew's cheeseburger

The burger was quite good and came piled with lettuce, tomatoes, and onions.  The bun was nice and grilled too (I hate floppy untoasted burger buns as they got soggy right away).  The side of coleslaw was really good with shredded veggies in it, and it wasn’t too tangy, just right.  The fries were quite excellent and still had the potato skins on which is exactly how fries should be.

Hot Hamburger Chicken

The hot hamburger chicken was smothered in some nice beef gravy and sat atop a piece of texas toast bread.  It also came with some fries and some nice steamed vegetables which included broccoli and carrots.  I don’t think I’ve ever had a “hot hamburger” reviewed or mentioned on this site before, so if you’re not familiar with it and are wondering why it doesn’t look like my cheeseburger, that’s because hot hamburgers are just meat on a piece of a bread with gravy on top.  I was slightly confused the first time I ordered one years ago at Dangerous Dan’s diner and wondered where my hamburger bun was.  The waiter explained to me that hot hamburger plates is an idea that comes from the southern US and incorporates a hamburger patty placed on a piece of bread and covered in gravy.  Wikipedia tells me that it’s “occasionally compared to the poutine” if that helps at all… that statement actually allows me to revel in my state of food confusion, but hey, it’s still great food.

Chew’s is a great addition to the Cabbagetown restaurants and I do plan on going back some day and trying the conductor’s special.  One of the great things about this diner is it’s open concept kitchen area.  I know there’s a great deal of older restaurants that have their cooking area right out in the front, but I just think it’s great that you can see your food being cooked while you wait.  Thank goodness they didn’t make their staff wear conductor uniforms.

Sukiyaki hot pot... just make sure you ask for the original broth

The best part about Natural Sushi are their lunch specials.  But this review is about dinner as you can see by the really red lighting of the photos.  Much like Okinomi House around the corner, Natural Sushi has also adopted the Japanese red lanterns to adorn their decor.  I can’t say I’m a fan of the red lighting.

"den kaku" aka eggplant

Natural has been known as one of the best places to get cheap sushi, but it’s definitely not bad sushi.  Tonight, we ordered a Tepanyaki with teriyaki chicken and their beef sukiyaki hotpot.  The hot pot has become a favorite of ours but since we haven’t been to Natural in almost a year, we were shocked to find out that our sukiyaki hot pot broth tasted bland and salty like the broth from an udon soup.

We asked the waitress about this and she said that due to many complaints about the sukiyaki being too “sweet”, they modified it and started using the udon brother instead.  She said next time to let them know that you want the original brother and they’ll take care of it.  Fortunately, after a bit of persuasion, she agreed to get us a bowl of sukiyaki with just the original broth in which we transplanted the noodles, beef, and veggies from the not-so-good broth to the good one.  So keep this in mind if you’re going there for the sukiyaki.

Tepanyaki with Teriyaki Chicken

The tepanyaki was pretty good and the chicken was of high quality.  The plate came out of the kitchen with a nice loud sizzling sound which lasted a good 3 minutes while sitting on my table – beware of the grease splatters!  It comes sitting on a bed of sprouts with some broccoli on the side.

If you’re in the Bloor and Yonge area and are looking for a cheap and decent sushi place to eat, then be sure to head to Natural Sushi.  Out of the handful of sushi restaurants in that area, Natural may not be the best, but it’s a great value for your dollar.

Just Thai is just ok.  I don’t eat Thai food that often and haven’t actually consumed any of it in months, but I’m pretty sure when you order something that says in the menu that it’s supposed to taste like peanuts, it should taste like peanuts, not pineapples.

Maybe I’m starting this review on a bad note because the food wasn’t overall that bad albeit a little pricey. We started by ordering the appetizer sampler which is a mix of some of the appetizers offered on the menu.  Satay shrimp (which I asked to replace with chicken due to my allergy), cold rolls, mango salad, crispy beef rolls, and fried calamari.  The mango salad was excellent with a sprinkling of crushed peanuts all over it.  The fried calamari, chicken, and the beef rolls were okay too but were made even better with the dipping sauces you get with it.  Unfortunately, I felt the cold rolls contained a bit too much lettuce.  As you can see in the photo, nearly 85% of the roll was lettuce.  I’d rather them remove half of the lettuce and give a smaller roll.

The appetizer sampler

We ordered the Island Chicken (with Mango Chicken being our first choice but we felt since the appetizer sampler came with mango salad that we’d be all mangoed out) and were looking forward to it’s “peanut flavour”.  Unfortunately, it came tasting more like pineapples than peanuts.  In fact there were no peanuts on it at all.  Mind you, it wasn’t awful tasting, it just wasn’t what we were expecting.

The Island Chicken... which tasted more like pineapple than peanuts

It seems like if you’re interested in trying Thai food then I’d say your best bet would be to head over to Yonge street and check out the Friendly Thai.  But if you’re looking for good service (the waiters were quick and quite friendly) and decent food that could be Thai with a few alterations, then go ahead and check out Just Thai.  The food isn’t bad, but it just isn’t what I was expecting.

Photo courtesy of tasteofthedanforth.com

Just a reminder that Taste of the Danforth is this weekend.  Yours truly will be sneaking a peak along with some samples early on this afternoon but you definitely won’t catch me beyond then.  Looking at the photo of the crowds above already frightens me.

If you love crowds and love the yearly bottle-necking of them near Pape and Danforth, then be sure to check out this years Taste of the Danforth.  It starts today at 6pm but you can probably go earlier (like me) and it runs all weekend ending Sunday at 8pm.  It goes on between between Broadview and Jones.  Your best bet is to start off at Jones (Donlands station) and walk westerly towards Broadview as the crowds are usually less dense east of Pape.