T.O.bites | Toronto Food & Restaurant Blog

Le Petit Dejeuner (LPD) is tucked in right next to Gabby’s making it pretty easy to miss amidst the countless number of furniture stores adorning King street east.  But if you do happen to be near George Brown College’s downtown campus, be sure to check this little Belgian brunch spot out.

LPD has a very interesting brunch menu with such delights as an apple and brie panino, caramelized french toast, and authentic belgian waffles.  We decided to go with what we assumed most people would order; the Hungry Gal breakfast.  It comes with two eggs, toast, apple coleslaw, home fries (though the menu says potato rosti) and comes with a choice of bacon, sausage terrine, fishcakes, fruit salad, or peameal bacon.

One of ours was ordered with the fishcake, and the other with sausage terrine.  The food came relatively quickly, but I was a bit worried that there was no rosti.  Low and behold, underneath my toast was a sprinkling of home fries.  Is this their version of rosti?  Because if so, they’re not even close.  I sort of wish that the potatoes weren’t underneath my toast as it made my toast really soggy within a matter of minutes.  My second complaint was that the dishes never came with condiments as a default.  Ketchup and jam had to be requested and were put into mini side-bowls.

Back to the potatoes which aren’t rosti –  they were a little undercooked in the middle. but otherwise weren’t too bad. They could have be cooked for a little longer though to give them more of a crisp (and cook the middle).  The fishcakes weren’t too bad, but be warned, they do taste pretty fishy.  Sausage terrine, if you’ve never had it, looks like a cross between meatloaf and spam.  It wasn’t too bad, nice and flavourful, but a little on the dry side.  The apple coleslaw wasn’t all too bad though I couldn’t seem to find any apples in mine.  Perhaps the name was referring to the dressing?  It’s interesting to have a salad with a breakfast dish since they’re usually accompanied by fruit rather than vegetables.  The toast, like I mentioned earlier, was soggy.  Quite possibly from sitting atop the potatoes.  One thing we noted that the waitress never asked if he wanted brown, rye, or white.  I’m guessing brown is the default for this place (or possibly the only type of toast they have).

I would have like to have tried a few more things there.  Mainly the apple and brie panino.  I’m slightly indifferent as to how I feel about LPD.  There were some flaws with their food, but they weren’t bad enough to deter me from ever coming back.

Ah, it’s been a while since I’ve posted a Foodventures.  I’ve been saving a huge collection of photos and writings from my  foodventure travels in hopes that some day I’d be have enough time to compile them all into a book.  Also, I’m hesitant to post them on a website that’s called T.O.bites.  T.O. meaning Toronto.  But I felt I had to share this one with my fellow Canucks since it was just too interesting to leave in the vault.

Seattle, the wet city on the American west coast is home to the Space Needle, the Mariners (which had their asses handed to them by the Jays when I was there – woohoo!) and the first Starbucks.  The first Starbucks sits alongside another historic attraction, the Pike Place Market, right by the bay.

The first Starbucks as a free tourist attraction is great, but the first Starbucks as a first Starbucks is a little disappointing.  Decorated with the original brown logo and a wall full of nothing but Starbucks paraphernalia, the first Starbucks is nothing more than a tourist trap designed to pull you in and get you to buy a bunch of mugs.  Honestly, could you expect less from a giant coffee chain?

I might be a little harsh as it does offer the usual Starbucks items such as coffee and teas.  The staff are also incredibly chipper and highly knowledgeable about locations around the world.  While I was nosing through the cups, I heard the barrista chirping at the tourists various things about their home cities like “Wow you’re from Austin?  I love that Austin prides on being weird.  I can’t wait until I get to go to Eyeore’s Birthday Party.”, “How is Calgary?  It must be great getting all that nice cool air from the Rockies.  I’ve always wanted to go to the Calgary Stampede.”

When it came time for me to go up and buy a mug and have her ask me about my own city, her response was, “How is the weather in Toronto?  It must be a bit cooler than here.  I hear that Toronto is the most multicultural city on the planet!”  Good for her that she didn’t mention the CN Tower or the fact that Rogers is taking over our city, street-by-street.  That would have been far too easy.

During my wandering around Seattle, I happened to come upon something more unique than the first Starbucks itself; a Starbucks that serves wine!  Yes, you heard me, wine.  I don’t really drink much wine, let alone any alcohol, but none-the-less, I was excited to find this gem of a place.  Oh and did I mention they served beer too?  I only happened to find this place because I misheard the directions to Capital Hill, and went wandering up Olive Way.  Getting lost, I saw a really swanky looking Starbucks up the street and decided to hop inside quickly to use the free wi-fi and find out just how lost I was.

On top of all the booze that comes from this place, they also serve full meals at this place.  Nothing too exciting though but more of an expansion of what they already served at most Starbucks.  I’m sort of regretting that I went all the way to Seattle, found a Starbucks that serves alcohol, and didn’t even have a drink!  Though I did enjoy soaking in the atmosphere of caffeine and booze consumption.  By the way, wine service starts at 2pm.  The clever signage around the place is pretty clear about this.

The King is finally back, risen from the dust and rubble of it’s former location across the street.  But does it still deserve the crown of tastiest, fastest, and cheapest thai food in Toronto?

Salad King has always been a fast yet deliciously good and cheap stop for Thai food in Toronto.  It’s a favourite among Ryerson students, alumni and pretty much any Torontonian who frequents downtown.  Unfortunately, last April 2010, a wall of bricks came showering down onto the street just mere steps from Salad King’s doors.  Salad King had to shut it’s doors, but in the meantime, the owner decided rather that instead of waiting to see if the building could be repaired, he would take the spot above Foot Locker just a few steps away.  Reaffirming that he made a good choice in moving the restaurant, the former building also happened to be burnt down by arsonists last December.

It’s been a long year, and after millions of dollars in renovations and a few months of delays, the King is finally back.  Despite it’s new location, not much had changed which is a good thing.  The long cafeteria style steel tables and benches are still there, but added are a few booth type seating areas which I personally absolutely love (sorry folks, I just wasn’t big on rubbing elbows at the long tables with people I didn’t know). When you first walk in you’ll notice that the decor has taken on this sort of web 2.5 twitter-ific bright over-the-top graphic-ey design element to it.  I guess the thought going into it is that it would appeal to the 20-somethings, which are the main clientele of this place.  But being a 20-something, I’m not really a big fan of the printed artwork up everywhere, but I do love the overall aesthetic of the new place with it’s dark hardwood and steel meshed together.  Though the new place is on the second floor above the Foot Locker, there is an elevator you can take up to it if you have difficulty climbing stairs.

So on to the food.  We ordered our three favourite dishes from the past to see if they still stood up to what we had remembered.  Those three dishes are the chicken panang curry, vegetable pad thai, and spicy fish.  Right away we noticed something different – the prices have all gone up by about a dollar.  Okay, that’s easily forgiven.  Prices do go up frequently and they did just spend tons of money on building the new place.  Plus, $8 to $9 for a good thai dish still isn’t too pricey.

Thankfully, much like in the past, service at the King is still top notch.  Your glass of water is always always nearly kept topped off, the servers are usually asking you how everything is every 5-10 minutes, and the food comes relatively quick.  Another favourite feature about Salad King is that you have to choose how many chilis you want in your meal.  I believe the number is between 0 to 20 but people rarely ever go above 5 in my party.  I usually settle with 2 as it that gives the meal enough bite, but without leaving too much of that lingering chemical burn feel on your tongue and throat after each mouthful.

If you love the panang chicken, like myself, then you’ll notice that the above photo looks a tad different from the old panang chicken you used to get.  Instead of getting the dish in a giant plate with rice mushed on one side and the curry chicken everywhere, they instead put it separately in a bowl.  On the upside, this does give the meal a cleaner presentation.  However, on the downside, there’s less curry.  In fact, there wasn’t as much chicken pieces in it as there was before.  The good thing is though it’s still incredibly yummy

The pad thai is still an excellent choice at the King, especially the vegetarian one.  I do love the soy pieces they put in it.  However, much like above, there’s less pad thai than there was in the past.  Perhaps also, by raising the prices, they’ve lowered the portion amounts to help get back the money they’ve lost? Who knows…

Finally, the spicy fish.  The sauce that they use is sort of a sweet but savory type of watery sauce that every kernel of rice absorbs.  That’s actually what makes this dish so great is the sauce they use.  The fish pieces were also pretty good, as they were in the past, but once again, there were only 6 tiny pieces of fish in the whole dish.  The amount of fish used to be a lot more plentiful in the past.

Without a doubt, I’m glad that Salad King is back.  The food is still great, the service is top notch, and the place is always bustling.  However, I’m a bit saddened by the portion control that’s going on with the dishes.  It could just be opening pains (since today, the 22nd, is the first official day of the reopening), possibly cutting the amount of meat to save costs, or even just holding back the amount to make sure they don’t run out today.  No one really knows and they could definitely up the amounts in a few weeks once they figure out what their daily stock requirements are.  Regardless, I still love Salad King and highly do recommend you go back again!

The Annex; a chic, yet somtimes shunned, hot spot for the trendy undergrads and bearers of thick rimmed glasses sans prescription.  On that popular strip of Bloor street, where restaurants (and tea shops) come and go like night and day, sits quite a few choices for weekend brunch.  Unfortunately, with the closure of Mel’s a while back, most of the choices are rather limiting, unless you prefer to do sushi for lunch.  Thankfully, By The Way Cafe does have a rather decent lunch menu at an edible price.

For this particular brunch, we ordered an omelette, huevos divorelados, and eggs benedict.  If you’re a regular reader of this blog, I’m sure you can figure out who ordered the last ones.  Despite how buzzing the place was, service was generally pretty good there with a constant refilling of our water glasses and we received our plates generally quick.  One quip though was one of the waitresses was going about a round of clearing tables – not of dishes though, but the condiment trays.  Literally moments after we ordered, she had come by and wanted to take away our bowl of creams, sugars, and our holder of fine jellies, jams, and peanut butters.  We let her take the last two since none of us ordered any coffee or tea, but we told her we’d like to keep the jam holder to which her reply was “well you can take what you need then give it to me” which we told her we weren’t sure what we’d need yet since our food hasn’t arrived.  I’m not sure why she was in such a rush to clean off the tables of condiments as they were not getting in our way or anything.

Since we were pretty hungry, we also ordered an appetizer of apples with melted brie.  It was pretty decent although the brie wasn’t too strong and I felt they could have added a few more pieces of pita bread to the plate.

The huevos divorelados weren’t too bad though the only problem we felt with the dish was that the salsa had a very “chemically” taste, both the green and the red salsa.  Though, over all, it was pretty nice having both the red and the green salsa on one dish.

The Italian sausage omelette I had was a good choice (though I opted out on having jalapenos on it as per Sara’s recommendation that dill and jalapenos might not work so well together).  The sausage gave a nice bite to the dish though my only complaint would be that the ingredients of the omelette were all sort of clumped in the middle and not spread out through the entire egg.  The home fries were amazing, nice and crispy on the outside and soft in the middle.  Definitely made from scratch at this place.

The eggs benedict was also a great choice.  You may have noticed in the photos that the hollondaise sauce looks a little greener than you’d expect.  Mostly because this sauce has a sprinkling of dill and isn’t too rich like most sauces on eggs benedict are.  It was quite good and Sara mentioned that the sauce had a nice kick to it.

So, to conclude the jam drama, by the end of our meal we had used up seven jams.  Had we have chosen the amount of jams before seeing our meals, we would have each only taken one, then bothered the waitresses for more.  So folks, the lesson here is keep your jam tray handy!

Though we do consume our jams more than the average person would, it’s just more convenient having extra jams within arms reach when you need them.

Overall, I would recommend By The Way Cafe for a nice weekend brunch spot in the Annex.