T.O.bites | Toronto Food & Restaurant Blog

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.

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!

The Counter is a relatively new 24-hour diner located just outside of the entertainment district downtown, right at the base of the Thompson Hotel.  I’m fairly ambivalent towards 24-hour diners in Toronto thanks to having a few bad experiences at Fran’s over the past few years, but how does The Counter stack up against its competition?  Well if having to pay $5 more per entree than any other diner doesn’t scare you away, then you may be surprised by how good the food is.  On the other hand, the decor gives off a pretentious vibe, and the menu is a little lacking in options.  Also, who has ever paid $12 for a slice of pie?!  Maybe $12 for a whole pie but just a slice?  Ouch!

We ordered a Reuben sandwich with onion rings, a chicken club sandwich with poutine, and fried chicken wings with mashed potatoes.  And for an appetizer, we all shared a spinach and artichoke dip.  One thing to note that by default, the side options are fries, onion rings, or salad.  The poutine cost an extra $2, while we originally were offered a side of mac & cheese, but unfortunately it cost an extra $4.  A steep price difference to replace a side.

The spinach and artichoke dip was enjoyed by all and came with some crispy lavish for dipping.  It was nice and cheesy but our only gripe about it was that it was a little bit too runny which made it hard to keep on the lavish while dipping.

The pastrami reuben was done really well, it was nice and moist and each bite filled your mouth with the excellent spices contained within the meat.  Unfortunately, it didn’t come with pickles on the side, but when we asked, were given a few.  I was told to make note specifically that we were not given just one single pickle, but were given a few on a plate, and this made us happy.

The onion rings that came with the reuben were nice and crispy, done in their own special buttermilk batter.

The chicken club sandwich was stacked with tomatoes, lettuce, three pieces of bread, two pieces of grilled chicken breast, and bacon.  It was probably one of the best clubs I’ve had in ages.  The poutine, on the other hand, was a little lackluster.  They didn’t use cheese curds in it (just a random sprinkling of mozzarella here and there), and the gravy wasn’t as plentiful.

The fried chicken wings use the same buttermilk batter as the onion rings which is nice and crispy.  On the other hand, the batter slides off the chicken too easily, making it feel like it’s a completely separate component of the chicken — almost like there was no skin to begin with.  Another down side is that the batter, although nice and crispy, is a little bland and lacks any sort of seasoning.  This works great for the onion rings which already come with the strong flavour of fried onions already, but not so great for the chicken, which could use a healthy dose of herb and spices.

The mashed potatoes that came with the chicken was most excellent though it contained tons of butter.  But the sprinkling of cheddar on the top is what really made it special.

Even though The Counter lacked decent dessert options, we were all pleased with our meals, but were saddened that it doesn’t have a more central downtown location, especially for a 24-hour place.  I understand that a lot of people will wander out of the clubs (and the Thompson Hotel) and seek late night comfort food at The Counter, but it would be nice if they opened up another location closer to Yonge St.  The service was great though and our waiter was incredibly attentive to our needs, constantly keeping our glasses of water full.  I would definitely choose The Counter over Fran’s any day for a 4AM meal, but I can’t say I’d recommend it otherwise.