T.O.bites | Toronto Food & Restaurant Blog

I’ve been wanting to check out Lola’s Commissary for a while now, especially after reading about the “sexy potatoes” at Foodhogger.  Their weekend brunch menu was quite enticing: Cheesecake Stuffed French Toast, Egg White Frittata, Eggsmopolitan… all really excellent sounding.

Lola’s sits just south of Bloor on Church street in an old Victorian house.  A sign just before the staircase on the first floor points out that the steps are a little crooked and you should be careful when ascending them, but hey, that’s what gives the house great character along with the paintings strung up around the front dining area.

There was such an awesome selection of iced teas (some sweetened with maple syrup) ranging from peach to chai.  If I could remember them all, I’d list them here, but all I can remember is the peach iced tea since it’s the one I ordered.  The maple syrup really brings out the flavour of the peach in the tea and I highly recommend trying out one of the iced teas offered that are sweetened by it.

I craved the cheesecake french toast.  Alas, I refrained, because it’s a huge plate of carbs, but we did ask to find out what it was exactly.  It’s a puree’d slice of cheese cake that’s put in between two pieces of bread and done up like french toast.  Instead, I ended up going with the second most interesting sounding item on the menu – the kitchen sink.

The kitchen sink is described as “lots of lovely bits, scrambled eggs, cheese, toast” mind you the toast is on the side, not in the eggs.  As for those “lovely bits”, they turned out to be spinach, tomato, and possibly bacon and a few other things I couldn’t really make out.  That’s why pictures speak a thousand words.  It was quite wonderful tasting, like an amazing mash up of everything brunch.  It was a little bit runny though so those with food texture issues may want to pass on this one.

We also ordered the Eggs Lola which was poached eggs and pulled ancho chicken on a tortilla with a side of avocado.  The ancho chicken tastes quite nice with the added flavourings on it.  One small complaint was the tortilla underneath was a bit hard, possibly from overcooking but since they’re so thin, I imagine they get hard quite fast.

We also grabbed an ancho chicken wrap which is the same chicken from the Eggs Lola but inside of a wrap.  Each of our brunch orders came with a choice of a side of frites, sexy potatoes, or a salad.  All three of us decided on sexy potatoes (we couldn’t pass up trying them out thanks in part to the name).  The sexy potatoes are a mix of sweet potato bits with regular home style fries.  It’s great to have a mix of those two potatoes together as I love ordering sweet potato fries but often get sick of them after a few fries, so have both together was quite nice.  One small complaint was that although they were cooked and were quite browned on the outside, they were still a little soft and didn’t really have much of a crunch or crisp to them.  They were still quite good though.

I’m looking forward to returning to Lola’s again soon and will be bringing a few friends along who want to share a Cheesecake Stuffed French Toast with me.  I’ll feel a little less guilty if I’m sharing it.

Last September, when Zelda’s closed and ran up Yonge street, people started to cry out that due to the rising cost in rent, the village was doomed to become a collection of high-end stale corporate chain shops and restaurants.  Heck, there was even a rumor that McDonald’s was going to take over the old Zelda location.  To make matters worse, Lettieri closed up shop a few months later and is now a Hero Burger.  Then Il Fornello decided to take off.  What’s going on?  Thankfully, there’s been a slight change in the doom and gloom of the neighbourhood: the Church St. Diner recently opened back up and a new comer, Chi-ko-roo, has taken up the space once formerly housed by Il Fornello.  I had the chance to sit down and have a bite to eat there just a few days after their opening. (more…)

Sara hyped up the experience we were about to have in a bad way, “If you’re late, they’ll give your table away. If you wear jeans they won’t let you in. If all people in your party aren’t yet present, they won’t seat you. These kinds of restaurants hate it if you don’t order a drink.  I bet they have the Winterlicious people all come in early so they can move them out quick and have the high paying patrons come in.” Needless to say, I wasn’t completely looking forward to the evening we were about to have.

Winterlicious is the time of the year when the city’s finest restaurants open up their menus and offer affordable prix fixe dinner options.  Is it fair to review a restaurant’s Winterlicious offerings?  I don’t see why not.  Most restaurants use it to allow people to sample their foods, so there should be no reason why it doesn’t wholly reflect on their non-Winterlicious plates.

Auberge du Pommier sits just north of North York Centre station, right against Yonge Street.  From the outside, it looks like a small single floor cottage, but looks can be deceiving.  From the inside, it’s a nicely decorated place where you’re first greeted with their huge wall of wine bottles in a gigantic fridge.  Upon arrival, only 3 of us arrived for our party of 5 (two of us were still on their way) so we had our jacket’s checked in, and were asked to wait while our table was being setup.  About ten minutes later, we were brought to our table which was seated on one of the side rooms by the windows with a roaring fireplace on the end.

We ordered a few drinks, a cocktail for Sara and a iced tea concoction for myself.  They were offered on the Winterlicious menu we were given but at an additional cost.  I believe my ice tea was $6 but I can’t remember how much Saras was.

Now, you’ll have to excuse the lack of food photos as the iPhone doesn’t work so great in low light.  We arrived around 5pm, but didn’t actually order our meal until around 6pm.  So our light source was limited to a single candle on the table.

There’s a picture of the menu here, so I won’t go over each item offered as part of the prix fixe, but I ordered the foie gras, seared pork loin, and the warm apple fraiche cake as my dessert.

I’ve never tried foie gras before so I have nothing to compare this to.  There’s a bit of a controversy behind foie gras.  Essentially, it’s duck liver pâté, but what makes it controversial is the fact that they force feed the duck corn to make it really fat.  It sort of has the consistency of dry tuna, but is incredibly fattening and leaves a film in your mouth after eating.  It was too rich for me to handle eating the whole portion so I had to pass it off.

The pork loin came next and it was amazing.  It melted in your mouth with every delicious bite and had a nice hint of honey mustard.  It sat atop a serving of pomme pureé, which I could only describe as mashed potatoes.  It was good to the last bite.

When the dessert came, we all had something different.  The apple fraiche cake came with a small scoop of ice cream on the top.  It was nice but a bit underwhelming as it tasted like a muffin you’d buy at Tim Horton’s.  I tried some of the Pot de Creme that Antony ordered with his meal which was a bit better than what I had, but it had a very strong dark chocolate flavor.  I’m not really a fan of dark chocolate unless it comes with mint.

The service at Auberge du Pommier was top notch and spot on.  Our server was very attentive to ours needs, and there was no pressure while we were waiting for our other two guests to arrive.  Even though we were being served the Winterlicious menu (which meant a cheaper meal resulting in a smaller percentage based tip), we were treated with the same respect as everyone else there.  Surprisingly, our bill for 5 people came to almost $350.  This is including all the drinks and such we ordered, so for a high end restaurant, it still worked out to be quite a deal.

I would definitely return to Auberge du Pommier again if the opportunity ever presented itself.  Although we had our doubts about going out for Winterlicious at the beginning, I would chalk this one up as a great experience.

*It was not Sara’s birthday!  It was Jenn’s birthday but she had other plans and we used her reservation instead.  Being the only female at the table, Sara had to pretend she was the birthday girl.

Traditionally, among my friends, dim sum is best enjoyed in the late mornings and early afternoons.  My friends typically see it more as a late breakfast type of meal.  I used to be able to say the same for pancakes, but thanks to places like Fran’s and Golden Griddle, people enjoy pancakes anytime of the day.  I guess both are very subjective.  Speaking of subjectivity, I’m going to be writing this piece from an inexperienced westerner point of view, so if you’re just looking to find out whether this restaurant is worth visiting or not, I suggest you skip down a few paragraphs and ignore all the bits about dim sum itself.

Sara had been having a craving for some dim sum for a while.  I guess I can say the same too since I haven’t really had any since I returned from Hong Kong last summer.  We decided to stray slightly off the beaten path that is the Bright Pearl Restaurant.  So we decided to go check out Noble Seafood Restaurant’s dim sum instead.  Apparently Noble used to be called Rainbow at one point in the time.

According to Valerie Pringle has left the Building, dim sum means “touch the heart”.  Now before you go all “aww.. how cute!”, I’ve been told that the word heart is very literal to your blood pumping heart and not so much the ? type. Now, the differentiation between the literal and the metaphorical heart can be an interesting history lesson along with the real origins of Valentine’s Day… but that’s what Google is for.

As I’ve mentioned above, dim sum is traditionally enjoyed between the hours of 11am to 2pm.  So for most dim sum restaurants around town, if you manage to go earlier or later than the above said times, they usually have a bit of a discount.

So what exactly is dim sum?  I used to think it was a type of soup until I actually went for it the first time a few years back.  Boy, was I wrong.  It’s a collection of different small servings of food you can share.  From vegetables, to meat, to fruits and desserts.  There’s usually two ways to order dim sum depending on the place you go to.  You can either fill out a menu card stating which dish you want and how many or some places have people walk by with carts of food where you can pick what you want from their cart.  Some places have both but most places seem to be moving away from the cart system.  Noble uses the menu card system, which I actually find to be the most efficient because you’re not waiting around for the mango pudding cart to show up.

Now I won’t go into the specific types of food you can get for dim sum but if you want to read about it, you can check them out here.  The usual staples are turnip cakes, dumplings, congee, and fruit pudding options usually including mango pudding.  Some of the dishes we ordered included the above, but we also had Shanghai style soup dumplings, shrimp dumplings with roe, lo mai gai (steamed rice wrapped in a lotus leaf), BBQ pork buns, and chicken with mushrooms on rice.

I couldn’t get to try the shrimp dumplings due to my allergy but Sara said they were pretty good and bursting with flavor.  You may be thinking when you first hear about the Shanghai style soup dumplings (which do have a specific chinese name that escapes my mind) that they’re dumplings in a soup.  Quite wrong you are.  They are actually dumplings with soup inside.  Yes, inside.  It makes eating them a bit of a trick but I find if you bite the top off and suck the soup out, then eat it, it makes for a nice dumpling.  I had them the first time I was in Hong Kong, then again in Shanghai, but this was the first time I’ve had them back in Toronto and they were almost as good as the ones in Hong Kong.  Almost.

Shanghai style soup dumplings and Mushroom chicken on rice

The mushroom chicken on rice was pretty decent.  I’m not really a fan of mushrooms but they did add a bit of extra flavor to the dish, which would otherwise be boring.  The mango pudding is usually my favorite part of dim sum, and they usually shape it into a small heart.  Noble did not disappoint.  It’s not pudding in the traditional sense when we think of custard type pudding, but more like gelatinous formed Jell-O’esque type pudding.  It’s a mix of puree’d mangos and milk.

Dim sum is a very carb-tastic meal, much like breakfast, so I can see why it’s consumed mostly in the earlier parts of the day.  By the time I got to the lo mai gai, I was pretty stuffed with starch from the buns and dumplings, so I wasn’t too thrilled about eating more starchy rice.  It was still pretty good though, but unraveling the lotus leaf can be a bit tricky the first time you do it.  It kind of absorbs a bit of the flavor of the leaf it was boiled in, which has a slightly plant-like taste to it, but it’s not overpowering and by the time you get to the chicken in the center, you can hardly notice it.

Everyone seems to know about the Bright Pearl for dim sum, and it’s ghost stories and haunted past make it an interesting place to talk about, but how does Noble Seafood Restaurant compare?  In terms of food quality, they’re pretty comparable.  So if you don’t really want to endure the weekend crowds at Bright Pearl, especially with Chinese New Years coming up this weekend, I do recommend you give Noble a try.  Gong hai fat choy, lai see sou loi! (Yeah, I do want my lucky red envelope!)