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.

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.

High/Afternoon Tea

The first image that springs to my mind when I think about high tea is a British grandmother sitting in a hotel lobby and sipping on some earl grey tea with her pinky sticking out.  It’s rarely an activity that I associate a group of late-twenties grad students participating in.  Interestingly enough, this is exactly what our group was composed of (not counting myself since I’ve yet to become a grad student).

My first introduction to the world of high tea, or afternoon tea, was last summer during my whirlwind trip to China.  I got to see the high and mighty eating yummy sweets and sipping their tea at the Penninsula Hotel while I merely walked by, drooling over their scrumptious arrangement of treats.  It was actually Antony’s idea to do high tea for his birthday as opposed to a yummy steak at the Keg (my poison of choice for birthdays).  Toronto actually has a fair share of choices for high tea such as the famous Windsor Arms and the chic Four Seasons.  We went with the King Edward since it had great reviews and wasn’t overly pricey (at about $20-$30 a head depending on the set you choose).

Teas for sniffing

We were first presented with a open box of all the teas, allowing you to sniff each one so that you can make your selection.  Sara went with the Darjeeling Oolong tea while Antony and myself went with the traditional English Breakfast tea.  Jenn decided on the house blend, her choice being influenced by having a tea that she can put both honey and milk into.

The tea strainer

The interesting thing about high tea is that the tea leaves are placed right into the pot with the water, otherwise known as loose tea.  The filtering happens through use of a tea strainer which is placed right on top of your china tea cup.  A couple of times, we’d forget to place the strainer on our cups before pouring and would have to pick out the leaves after.

I can’t really comment much about the tea besides that it took a while to steep and become strong enough to taste in the back of your mouth.  Infact, with Sara’s tea, it didn’t finally come on strong until the tea was already cold.  Fortunately, this is somewhat remedied by our server who would kindly pour more hot water into our tea pots through the course of the meal.

The King's Tea set

For our food platter sets, we each went with the traditional choice of the King’s Tea serving.  This comes with a few finger sandwiches, some scones with clotted cream, and a few tarts.

The seafood based sandwich had a very overwhelming fishy taste.  It only consisted of smoked salmon with chopped bits of shrimp and mayonnaise.  Thanks to my shellfish allergy, I couldn’t try it, so my previous comment is actually based on the opinion of my friends.  On the other hand, the ham sandwich was great.  It was a nice melody of chopped ham and chicken with some herbs and a bit of mayonnaise.  The set also came with a cucumber sandwich and an egg salad sandwich, both were okay but nothing too special.

Clotted cream.. clotted for clotting your arteries!

Now onto the scones.  First off, allow me to display my shallowness by saying that my original thought behind clotted cream was “yuck!”.  Why does this make me shallow?  Well because on an episode of The Girls Next Door (see?), the girls went to London and tried clotted cream and were mostly disgusted by it.  Fortunately, I loved the stuff.  I know it’s pretty much composed of all of the fat and bad-for-you stuff of milk, but it’s so darned smooth and good, especially on the cranberry scones.  Plus, top it off with some jam and you’ve got yourself one of the best afternoon snacks you could treat your taste buds to!

The treats at the top weren’t too noteworthy.  I guess the meringue tart was probably the most memorable with it’s crunchy meringue and fresh raspberry sitting on a chocolate filled tart.  It makes a great taste all together if you manage to fit a bit in your mouth.  I ate my meringue first.

It was a nice experience trying out high/afternoon tea for the first time, and I regret not doing it while in London or Hong Kong, but I do plan on doing it when I visit said places again.  Oh, and since this is mainly an experience piece, I thought I’d make note of Sara’s bathroom experience.  While she was utilizing the facilities post-tea time, she could hear the pleasurable ecstatic moans of a female coming from the service room.  Hopefully her experience at the King Edward Hotel was as tasteful as ours.

(I can hear Sara already saying, “Aww why did you have to write about that on your website?”)

Saigon Sister was popular?

If you want cheap eats near the Yonge/Bloor area, everyone knows (aside from fast food) that you’d just head over to Ginger.  Alternatively, you can now head across the street to Hue’s Kitchen, which is a lot like Ginger.  Well, I guess that’s probably because it’s owned by the same people.  Hue’s Kitchen offers pretty much the same stuff Vietnamese/Thai cuisine that you can get across the street for roughly the same price.  But they do have a few interesting additions to their menu.  They offer butter chicken, caramel chicken, and even breakfast.  But aside from a few sauce changes, it’s essentially the same stuff.

Antony, Tona, and myself decided to go check it out today and order a few different things from their menu that aren’t really offered at Ginger.  I went with butter chicken served with naan and mango chutney.  Antony went with the caramel chicken-mango, and Tona, decided to be brave and go with pad thai.  I say ‘brave’ because everyone knows that Ginger’s pad thai isn’t the greatest.  Actually, let me widen that statement — any pad thai in Toronto isn’t that greatest.  Why?  Because, everyone seems to use ketchup in it!  Sara is actually on an ongoing hunt to find a place that doesn’t use ketchup in their pad thai.

Caramel Chicken-Mango

Much like at Ginger, you’re given a numbered card stand to place on your table and wait for your food to be delivered.  first came Antony’s caramel chicken-mango.  First off, you may notice, it doesn’t really contain much “caramel” sauce on it.  It didn’t really have much of a taste to it at all, oddly enough.

Second up was my butter chicken.  The butter chicken uses the same pieces of chicken breast from every other meal on there, just that they’re smothered in butter chicken sauce.  The sauce also doesn’t really taste that much like butter chicken sauce, but more like a thai curry.  It was somewhat spicy.  But hey, where’s my mango chutney?!  I asked the cashier (as the flyer said “with mango chutney” while on the board up top, it made no mention of it) and she said that they removed it because of people not liking it that much.  I can see why since I can only remember eating mango chutney with crunchy papadum which this meal doesn’t have.  But the nice cashier brought me a side.  Oddly enough, it also lacked rice.  So you were just getting butter chicken with naan.  The problem is there’s way too much soupy sauce to not have this with some rice, so you have to spent an extra $1.50 for some rice with the meal.  Also, the butter chicken costs a staggering $9.50 while the other meals ranged from $6.50 to $7.50.  I think $8.50 or even $7.95 would be more reasonable for the cost of it, but I guess I’m just a bit of a penny pincher.

Butter Chicken and Naan

Tona’s pad thai was ketchup-ey, as expected.  I can’t say much more about it other than she wasn’t really a fan of it and found it to be a bit too greasy.  I’ve had pad thai a few times at Ginger and I think if they just took out the ketchup, it would make it a heck of a lot better.

So if you’re looking for a fast and cheap place for lunch near the Yonge and Bloor area, then go ahead and give Hue’s Kitchen a try.  I feel like they’re trying to go with more of a Spring Rolls type eat-in restaurant with the decor and design of the place but unfortunately the quality of the food just isn’t as high.

Average Price: $6 – $9 per entree
Hours: Opens at 7:30am for Breakfast (yes, breakfast)
Address: 774 Yonge St.
Phone: 416-967-0404
TTC Directions: Get off at Yonge/Bloor station, walk south half a block on the west side of Yonge

I know, I know.. it’s an Irish pub and really isn’t a restaurant place and is more catered to the drinking crowd.  But they have a menu, and on a recommendation of a co-worker, Ashley and I decided to head over there for lunch.

We usually walk by it every day seeing as how we work right around the corner.  During the summer, Fionn’s is packed on the front patio.  I think we tried to check it out in the summer but were always told we’d have to wait 15 minutes for a seat.  Well it’s November now and the patio is put away, so we decided to check it out for lunch.

You’ll notice with this review, the photos look really well done.  I know I tout that I use the iPhone to take my “incognito” food photos but this time we had Ashley’s gigantic SLR with us and decided we’d take some nicer photos.  The waitress did comment on how nice Ashley’s huge camera was, so yes, they do realize you’re taking photos of their food.  Whether or not they think you’re going to review it is up for debate.

With the waitress’ recommendation, I ordered the Prime Rib burger with cheese, while Ashley went with a chicken caesar salad (without the chicken) and a side order of french fries.  There are a few vegetarian options on their menu such as a veggie burger but a lot of them contained mushrooms which Ashley is allergic to.

Tall glass of coke

As for our drinks, I stuck with water while Ashley had a coke.  One good thing about the drinks is that they are pretty tall.  One thing I hate about restaurants is when they give you tiny glasses of water.  When I drink water, I usually do it in huge quantities and down it pretty quick.  So if I get a tiny glass and I have to call someone to refill it every 5 minutes, it’s a bit of an annoyance.  Any how, the glasses here are big!

Prime rib burger

Our food took about 20 minutes or so to arrive.  My burger looked tiny at first glance but was actually quite filling.  The crispy onions on the top added a nice bit of flavor, but be prepared to buy some gum after unless you don’t mind having your coworkers endure your dragon onion breath.  The meat of the burger had a nice smokey flavor, much like if it were done on an outdoor charcoal barbeque.  It was also a  pretty thick burger and you could tell the patties were hand made.  I grow tired of the standard flat frozen burgers so having a thick hand made patty was most excellent.

Fries sprinkled with sea salt

The fries were pretty good and had a light sprinkle of sea salt on top of them.  They were nice and crisp on the outside while fluffy on the inside.  Probably one of the better thick cut fries I’ve had in a while.

Caesar salad

Ashley said her caesar salad was huge (well it was $9!) and was okay but was a little bit on the dry side.  The croutons appeared to be pieces of sliced texas toast which were toasted then placed in the salad.  They weren’t like the regular croutons you usually get but I guess it’s nice that a place is taking it upon themselves to make their own ingredients (if that is the case).  But because of that, they lacked the taste of seasoning that croutons usually have.

For all this food, our bill came to $34.  Ouch!  Overall the food was okay.  There were no major faults but it wasn’t the best I’ve ever had.  But I guess coming from an Irish Pub chain, I can’t expect too much… I just wish the bill was about $10 cheaper.

Average Price: $9 – $15 per entree
Hours: Sun-Thur 11am to 1am, Fri-Sat 11am to 2am
Address: 235 Bloor St. East
Phone: 416-966-3006
TTC Directions: Get off at Sherbourne Subway station and walk west two blocks to Jarvis.

Cora's courtesy of Google Maps

Cora’s has become quite popular in the last decade.  Infact, I don’t know a single person living in Toronto who doesn’t know what Cora’s is… except for my mom!  To put it simply, I told her that it’s like eating from a greasy spoon but with piles of fruit on that spoon.  Yes, in my world, Cora’s has always been known as the place you want to go when you want your filling of fruit.

Whenever I go to Montreal, it’s not hard to find a Cora’s.  They’re as abundant there as Starbucks in Vancouver.  Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for Toronto, with our lone Cora’s downtown sitting way down by John and Front streets.  Thankfully, this summer, a new Cora’s opened up on Carlton St, just east of Yonge.

Sara, Antony, and myself went this past weekend for brunch around 2pm and the place was packed.  We had to wait in a 15 minute lineup and there wasn’t really much room to stand.  I can see this being a problem going there on a cold yet busy day, where the lineup easily pushes beyond the front door leaving you standing on the street.  The funny thing about this new location as well is that from the entrance, it looks quite tiny.  But once you’re actually inside, you’ll see that the place is pretty huge.  I can’t remember what ambiance music they play in the background at the Front St Cora’s but at the Carlton location, they seemed to be pumping it with the Top 10 dance/club hits that morning.  I wonder why this is.  Perhaps due to the store’s location to the village.. who knows?

Cranberry, raspberry, strawberry smoothie

Sara and I ordered the special smoothie of the day while Antony got an English breakfast tea.  The smoothie that day was a blended puree of cranberries, raspberries, and strawberries.  It was pretty good although I personally felt it could have been filtered a bit more.  Sara, on the other hand, enjoyed the fact that with each slurp, you could bite down and pop the tiny seeds in your mouth.

The tea "vase"

As for the tea, well we all agree that Cora’s tea pot isn’t the greatest.  It’s actually kind of cheap, but in an Ikea sort of way.  You see, even though there’s that black plastic grip at the top for pouring, it was still nearly impossible to hold onto without burning your fingers.  The fact is it actually looks like it’s supposed to be used as a vase for flowers.

For our main entrees, Antony and myself both went with the 1990s Harvest, a plate containing two pieces of chocolate brioche dipped in french toast batter (which is eggs with cinnamon and nutmeg), along with bacon and an egg, topped with a mountain of fruit.  Sara went with her favorite, but always good, theo’s omelet.  It comes with a variety of vegetables in the omelet and topped with melted cheese and a side of fries with toast.

1990s Harvest

Antony’s entree was ordered with bacon extra crispy and mine with sausage and the egg scrambled.  When Antony’s order came, the bacon didn’t come crispy.  Fortunately, our nice waitress noticed that and got him an additional place of bacon on the side, this time extra crispy.  The french toast like brioche was pretty good, and had just the right amount of chocolate in it to make each bite an amazing one.  One thing about this dish though is that there are way too many sweet things on this plate and not enough savory things.  I suppose having one egg scrambled on your plate doesn’t look as plentiful as having a sunny side up egg, but looking at the amount of scrambled egg on my plate, I felt a bit gypped.

Re: bacon extra crispy

Sara’s omelet came with the cheese sort of sprinkled on after it was made.  This resulted in unmelted cheese, yuck!  Our waitress quickly had them melt the cheese for Sara so in the end, it was all good.  Sara’s omelet was fantastic and as she says, “is always a safe choice”.  I didn’t try it this time so I can’t really comment on the taste of it but at least it looked pretty good.  One thing Sara did note is that she felt her fruit was a little bit on the unripened side.  For some reason, her kiwi still had its skin on too.

theo's omelet

Cora’s is a safe choice if you want a nice sit down brunch.  Almost all of their food options are great and their menu has pretty much remained the same for years.  On the downside, some things are a bit pricey compared to other brunch places (2.50 for tea?!) but the quality and quantity is what justifies it.

Average Price: $8 – $14 per entree
Hours: Mon-Sat 6:00am-3:00pm, Sun 7:00am-3:00pm
Address: 27 Carlton St.
Phone: 416-340-1350
TTC Directions: Get off at College subway station and walk half a block east on Carlton on the south side of the street.  (note: Carlton turns into College on the west side of Yonge St.).  Alternatively, if you take the College/Gerrard streetcar, you can just get off one stop east of Yonge too.