T.O.bites | Toronto Food & Restaurant Blog

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.

4.5 bites out of 5

This post is kind of bitter-sweet, being that the location where Menchie’s is now used to be where T-Cafe sat in the annex.  The once dank spot against the exposed brick wall where I used to study while eating tapas is now dressed with photos of celebrities eating their frozen yogurt concoctions.  It’s incredibly tacky, but I also happen to love tackiness.

Menchie’s is a popular chain American chain which originated from the west coast (where they love their frozen yogurt) and has been spreading throughout the states like wildfire.  Much like a few other popular frozen dessert chains from the states, Menchie’s has now hit Canada, opening up in the Annex neighbourhood, which is already saturated by excellent dessert places such as Greg’s and Future’s.

The unique thing about Menchie’s is that you get to concoct your own yogurt creation and can do whatever you like with it.  First, you start off by grabbing a cup (or a waffle cone in a cup which is $1.00 extra) and you head right over to the yogurt machines.  There’s a huge variety of flavors.  Some of which I never knew existed in frozen yogurt form.  For example, there’s banana bread yogurt, and cookie batter too.  Plus they have the usual choices, strawberry, vanilla and chocolate.  For my own experiment, I decided to try regular tart and tart apple flavors as my yogurt base.   After you’re done filling your cup, you can shift on over to the toppings base, and feel free to go wild.  There’s all the staples of toppings such as chocolate chips, peanuts, and a variety of fruit, plus there’s some unique ones too such as klodhoppers.  Next to the fruit, there’s a few choices of syrup, but seeing as how my creation was already filled with a bunch of random toppings, I thought none of the sauces would go too well with the mix.

My cup, which was about half filled, came to $4.00.  Your creation is weighted upon completion and you’re charged 49cents an ounce, plus taxes.  Apparently the cups can hold 16 ounces of yogurt, and since the yogurt appeared to be the most heaviest ingredient, just be careful how much you fill up.  I can easily see someone going crazy and end up spending $20 on one cup.

Thanks to the huge variety of yogurt flavours and toppings, I definitely see myself returning to Menchie’s in the future.  I can’t wait to try a pina colada frozen yogurt mixed with oreos and mangoes.