T.O.bites | Toronto Food & Restaurant Blog

It took long enough but my Guu cherry has finally been popped. The reason why it took so long is because I could never figure out why anyone would want to wait over an hour just to eat at a restaurant. Sure, it’s getting rave reviews, but is it really worth it to wait an hour in the pouring rain to go inside?

Yes, it’s worth it, but with the Church street location being so close to various coffee shops and Eatons Centre, I hardly see why anyone would wait around outside, especially when Guu will give you a courtesy call 15 minutes before your table is ready.

When you first enter Guu, nearly all the staff stop in their tracks and greet you with a really loud “irasshaimase!” Get used to the volume now because they’re going to be shouting it every time someone else walks in the door.

Our party ordered around 9 tapas (which came to about $70.. pretty cheap) and I’ve got almost no complaints about any of them. The food came instant and was fresh and hot.  The service was amazing with the waitress constantly checking on us to see if we needed anything else or wanted to order more.  They also gave you nice lemon scented warm hand cloths to wipe your hands before you eat – a really thoughtful touch.

Since I’m sure most people have already heard countless times how amazing Guu is, I’m going to forgo describing everything in my usual great detail and instead present you with a bunch of food photos and their description. So here goes…

My low light iPhone photos do the food no justice.  Guu is good, really good.  However, waiting nearly 2 hours to eat said food isn’t fun unless you plan your evening around it.  Guu doesn’t take reservations so if you don’t want to wait, you should go pretty early around 4pm when the place is starting to open.

For one reason or another, I’m very hesitant to review anything that’s either a chain or a franchise unless it’s local.  I feel like my time is best dedicated towards reviewing locally based restaurants.  I have made a few minor exceptions in the past and I’m about to make one now with The 3 Brewers.  Though, technically, there is only one place in the world called “The 3 Brewers” because all the other locations are all in Quebec and are known as “Les 3 Brasseurs.”

Much like the name says, The 3 Brewers centers around the creation and presentation of beer.  The reason why they’re called a microbrewery is because, low and behold, they make their own beer there.  You can even request to take a tour of the place and see all their lovely beer vats.

However, I’m not here for the beer (for the most part), I’m here for the food!  T3B has your standard pub fare.  Burgers, sandwiches, pizza, salads, and even sauerkraut.  But given that this is a micro-brewery, it’s their beer selection that really shines -they have an interesting menu full of different types of beers (white, blonde, amber, brown, and the special brew) and a colourful assortment of different beer cocktails.  We ended up going with the beer cocktails: a monaco and a titi du quartier.  The monaco is a mix of blonde beer, sprite, and grenadine while the titi has creme de cassis instead of grenadine.  Both were decent but I personally preferred the titi du quartier since I’ve come to realize that I don’t like grenadine that much.

For food we ordered the Royal Sauerkraut and a Pulled-Pork Sandwich.  In an astounding 8 minutes after placing our order with the waitress, one of the kitchen staff had our food promptly in front of our faces! A wise foodie friend once told me that food which is served directly by the kitchen staff is good service since you know your food isn’t waiting under a hot lamp for the waitress to eventually pick it up.

The Royal Sauerkraut was amazing.  It had a combination of sausage, grilled ham, and a pork shank.  The sausage was really thick and incredibly flavourful, the grilled ham was really juicy and nice, and the pork shank was exceptionally well made, nice and tender.  There was also enough sauerkraut on the plate to feed you for a week.

The pulled pork sandwich was full of flavour and sauce.  The pork literally just melted in your mouth!  The topping of onions and swiss cheese were the cherry on top.  The bun that it was in was nicely baked and quite crispy.  This is probably one of the best pulled pork sandwiches I have had.

As long as you don’t mind waiting up to an hour for your table and congregating with the mass of toursits to be seated, then I would highly recommend that you go check out T3B.  The place has great food, prompt and friendly service and, above all else, excellent beer.  Given the amount of negativity that a lot of my fellow locals and “whiners” seem to give this place, I’d like to add that when I went the place wasn’t that packed (it was a cold and rainy Monday evening).  We didn’t have to wait for a table and our service was prompt.  I can see having a different experience if the place is packed to the brim and the food is being rushed out even faster.  But 8 minutes from order to fork on a slow day is still pretty amazing.

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!

I guess the actual way of spelling it this wonderful Lebanese restaurant would be Tabülè (according to their signage). But since the internet, and their own website, seems okay with spelling it sans accents, we’ll stick with Tabule.

Tabule is a hop, skip, and a jump away from Davisville station, situated along the strip of Yonge street that isn’t quite yet Eglinton, but still has an interesting selection of places to eat.

For our starters, we chose to try the sampler, which allows you to pick three dips.  We picked the humus (or hümus), the babaganüj, and labni.  It came with a basket full and plentiful of pita bread.  I wasn’t too keen on the babaganüj but the humus was my personal favourite with the labni coming in for a close second.  In fact, I used some of the remaining labni to spread over my main course when it came.  Oh and labni, for those who don’t know, is a mix of Lebanese cream cheese and garlic, but it actually had the consistency and the slight flavour of yogurt.

As a second appetizer, we also ordered a plate of kübbè, which sort of looked like falafel balls but this stuff has nothing on falafel!  It’s was nice and crispy on the outside while soft and meaty in the middle.  It sort of reminded me of the deep fried meat dumplings you would get for dim sum, but not nearly as doughy.  A few of us remarked that there was a heavy taste of lamb from the meat and pine nut filling in the center, but since I like lamb, I had not problems with it.

For our entrees, we ordered the Kebab Kefta and the Tawuk. Since Jennifer wasn’t feeling it for the main entrees, she ordered one of the appetizers, spicy sausage, but was able to turn it into an entree for just a few dollars more with the addition of vegetables and rice.

The kebab kefta wasn’t anything too special.  I felt that the meat lacked any significant pop in flavour and just tasted like your standard masked meat kabob.  On the other hand, the rice that came with the meal was really well done and very plentiful.  In fact, all of the plates came with a nice portion of rice and food.  As I mentioned earlier, I did use some of the left over labni to spread on my kabobs to give it a boost in flavour.

The tawuk, which is just chicken skewers, was also not a bad choice but the problem, I felt, was that these main dishes lacked some kind of dipping sauce for the meat so we improvised with what we had left over from our sampler.  The spicy sausages were indeed spicy, but not too much that you couldn’t stop eating them.  I like that the restaurant staff were very accommodating to our needs and did allow Jennifer to turn the sausage appetizer into a full entree.  I think they should list this in their menu though as I’m sure there will be people in the future who wish to turn their appetizer options into an entree dish.  If memory serves me right, only one appetizer on there said that you could turn it into an entree, but I believe their flexible enough to do it to anything.

A major conversation topic that arises when we discussed this restaurant post-meal was the belly dancer.  Yes, they have a live belly dancer there and she’s quite good at it.  At one point during her dance, she was even balancing a sword on her hip.  She sort of prances around the restaurant from table to table entertaining the guests as whim.  It’s a nice touch that really adds to the experience of the restaurant, though I can’t help but feel bad for her while she was dancing up near the front of the restaurant – it was a really cold winter’s night when we went and a lot of people kept coming in and out of that door!

If you want some great high quality Lebanese food at some pretty amazing prices, then I highly recommend you go ahead and book your reservation now!