T.O.bites | Toronto Food & Restaurant Blog

Bread, bread, and more bread.  Bread means carbs.  Too many carbs are bad. Incase you haven’t noticed, I’m sort of going on a bit of a health kick lately so I was actually a little reluctant to go to a place known as “the daily bread”.  Fortunately, as noted a few times by Antony, there aren’t too many unhealthy selections at Le Pain Quotidien.  Infact over 90% of the menu, not counting the desserts, are actually healthy choices full of grains, fruits, and many other organic ingredients.  I’ve been told that they use local ingredients too though I don’t see anything on their website which confirms it.

For our mid autumn brunch, Sara, Antony, and myself decided to head to LPQ (now I’ll say LPQ because an acronym looks better than Le Pain) up in the Yorkville area which is located a hop, skip, and jump from the subway Bloor subway entrance.  The place was bustling with patrons and staff, eagerly serving the Sunday brunch crowd.  It had a very nice rustic and cozy feel to the place, with wooden tables, and a wood-colour stained cement walls.  The restaurant also sported a bunch of chalk boards listing the specials up on a couple of walls, giving it a very french cafe feel.  They also had this one wall in the back area of the restaurant that had these giant metal items hanging on it which I could only describe as.. bicycle seats?

For starters, Antony ordered a tea and Sara ordered a coffee, while I just stuck with coffee.  Antony noted that the tea setup was wonderfully done and came with traditional style french teacups.  Yes, he’s pompous about his tea and even what type of pot the hot water comes in.  On the other side of the table, Sara’s issue was that her coffee came in a pot which cools down too quickly, and would’ve preferred to have had the diner system, where waitresses come by every 10 minutes to refill your cup with hot coffee.  She also said her coffee was overly roasted.  We can thank Starbucks for this trend as they’ve trained everyone’s taste buds to prefer overly roasted coffee.

For our entrees, I went with the Rustic Tuna Sandwich which comes with bacon bits, cheese, and green onions.  Probably not the healthiest choice, but definitely sounded tasty.  Their soup of the day was butternut squash so, knowing my love for that soup, I had to order a small cup of it.  Sara went with an almond croissant to start, and a quiche lorraine as her entree.  Antony with a bowl of handcut oatmeal and berries served with non fat milk, and a fruit salad bowl on the side.

First let’s start with the butternut squash soup which came with a squirt of pesto oil on the top (thanks goes to Sara for identifying it for me).  Even though it’s a cream based one colour soup, you could easily taste an array of different types of vegetables within it’s creamy yet textured goodness.  But I’ll be honest, my first initial taste was a little disappointing.  This is mainly due to the fact that the last two butternut squash soups that I’ve tried have been loaded with brown sugar and gave it an excellent sweet taste.  LPQ’s soup didn’t really contain much sugar at all.  But after a few more spoonfuls of the soup, everyone agreed that it was awesome.

As you can see in the photo, the rustic tuna sandwich is presented open faced with a few slices of tomatoes.  The collection of ingredients sitting on the nicely toasted and crunchy bread was quite good.  The tuna was nice and flaky and didn’t have much mayonnaise on it, which is a good thing.  The addition of bacon, green onions, and bit sof cheese added a nice touch and helped to dissipate the fishy taste which is usually present with tuna.  The downfall about this sandwich is that it was sort of difficult to eat.  It wasn’t exactly the easiest thing to pick up with your fork if you’re going to cut it and eat it, and it also wasn’t much fun to pick up with your fingers as the bread would absorb some of the moisture and collapse from your fingers.

Sarah’s almond croissant was a little on the hard side, but this could be due to the fact it was sitting in the dessert bar all morning before being consumed.  It did appear to contain a lot of butter, but what croissant doesn’t?  I didn’t try any of it but her and Antony both seemed to enjoy it.

The quiche lorraine came along side a slice of bread, and a mesclun salad.  I had a bite of Sara’s quiche and it was nice and fluffy in the middle with an excellent flaky crust.  The mesclun salad is a nice healthy alternative to the usual garden salad, but in my own experience, it sort of churns my stomach after eating.  Maybe it’s due to the fact that I don’t eat enough organic greens, or it could be all in my head that I feel like I’m eating a houseplant rather than a salad.

Antony’s oatmeal came with a nice assortment of blackberries and raspberries on the top.  But rather than add sugar in his oatmeal, he decided to start throwing in his fruit salad which contained the same berries but also had melon pieces and strawberries.  It was a pretty large bowl of oatmeal though, which he couldn’t completely finish.  Without the fruit added, the oatmeal tasted no different than the microwave oatmeal you’d buy at Loblaws, so I saw nothing special in calling it.  But I guess whether it’s handcut or not, it’s still going to taste the same.

Overall we had no complaints about our experience aside from the staff not coming to check on us as much as we’d like.  But this was a Sunday afternoon and the place was packed.  Not to mention that the table we were sat at was kind of in the corner and not completely accessible without playing hopscotch over the other patrons to get to us.  The price was a little up there though (just shy of $11 for my sandwich, and Sara’s quiche coming in at $12) but given the area it was pretty reasonable.  There are cheaper choices on the menu though, but we went with our stomachs, not our wallets.  I definitely look forward to returning to LPQ again in the future, and I recommend if you do go with a few friends, don’t hesitate to try the Organic Baker’s basket if it’s your first time checking the place out.  It’s well worth it and gives you a nice assortment of their different types of breads and spreads to try out.

Average Price: $6 – $12 per entree
Hours: Mon-Fri 7:30am – 7:30pm, Sat 8:00am – 7:30pm, Sun 8:00am – 6:00pm
Address: 10 Yorkville Ave (not 18 as listed on Urbanspoon)
Phone: 416-926-7555
TTC Directions: Get off at Yonge/Bloor station and exit out into Yonge street.  Walk two blocks north on the west side of Yonge until you reach Yorkville Ave.

If you’re going to insert “New York” somewhere into the name of your restaurant, then you’ve got some big shoes to fill.  Does the New Yorker Deli live up to its name?

Sitting right up near Bay and Bloor, the New Yorker Deli caters mostly to the office crowd and probably gets the odd patron heading down from some high end shopping in Yorkville looking for a cheap eat outside of the ‘ville.  The deli was pretty busy on the Sunday afternoon when Antony and I decided to go check it out for brunch.  They do have an amazing breakfast deal for under $5 but unfortunately we weren’t early enough for that.

Antony ordered the three eggs and hash special which came with toast and homefries.  I decided to order a burger with cheese.  Our food came pretty quickly, and we sat where we could see the front counter as the cooks prepared our meals.  Antony’s eggs came over easy, as asked.  The toast was nice and thick texas style toast which is the best toast for egg yolk dipping.  The meat hash wasn’t all that great, nothing too special.  No added spices or anything to give it a burst of flavor.  The home fries were you standard McCain frozen then deepfried variety, almost like the same ones you get from Frans Diner.

My burger was also the same mediocre patty you get from President’s Choice.  Actually, I think it was the same as those thick President’s Choice burgers, as they have a pretty unique gear-like shape, as did this thick burger.  Not saying using frozen supermarket burger patties are a bad thing, but they also lack imagination.  I prefer hand made burgers myself.  The bun was a great choice though, an onion bun, which you don’t see too often in Toronto.  The fries that came with my burger, shoestring, were actially a bit better than the home fries, as they weren’t nearly as potatoe’y in the middle.

A note about the staff, we had a really great waiter serving us, but when he wasn’t present, we did ask the manager (I’m assuming she was the manager as she wasn’t dressed in the usual waiter uniform) for water as she walked by.  Instead of her getting it for us, which was right behind us, she snapped her fingers and told another waiter to grab us water.  Her hands were free and honestly, there was no excuse for her not to grab the water herself.  Antony wanted to add a comment about how she seemed like the type of manager who walks around and looks for stuff that has to be done, but gets everyone else to do it for her.  This creates a stressful environment for the staff and as patrons, we can feel it too.

Overall, the food was okay although most of it seemed to be frozen supermarket food rather than made from scratch. The price of it all was pretty cheap though considering the area, and service was quite fast. I’d definitely go back if I’m in the area for a cheap eat and not feeling up to shopping at the grocery store nearby.

Average Price: $6 – $10 per entree
Hours: Open 7 days a week [I'll get back to you on the actual hours when I find out]
Address: 1140 Bay St
Phone: 416-923-3354
TTC Directions: Get off at Bay Station, at the Bay Street exit, and walk south a block towards Charles St on the west side of Bay

An egg is carefully flipped through the air, lands directly onto the side metal spatula, cracking right down the center and releasing its contents upon the hot grill.  A quick round of polite applause emanates from the peanut gallery who are eagerly awaiting their food.  The chef then passes bean sprouts around the table onto the plates, calling it “Japanese spaghetti”.  This gets a few hints of a chuckle from the patrons.

Maybe I’m over glorifying the display of having a chef prepare teppanyaki right in front of you, but eating at Yamato easily ranks as one of my top 3 food experiences, and I was glad to enjoy it with the good company of my good friends, Zam and Antony.

Right in the heart of Yorkville, near the corner of Cumberland and Bellair, Yamato may be easy to overlook, not so much due to it being halfway underground, but because it sits within an area of high end trendy restaurants, many of them Japanese.  What makes Yamato so unique is that it is one of the few Japanese steak houses in Toronto.  This helps it stand out above the hundreds of sushi restaurants already scattered throughout the city.

It was my first time having a chef prepare your meal from scratch right in front of you, at your own table.  I’ve seen it done in TV many times (who hasn’t?) but to actually have them do it right in front of you was amazing.  They’re very well trained at both being quick with their hands, and at being charismatic, or at least ours was with his jokes and sly puns he tossed at us through the night.  From flipping uncracked eggs, to setting an onion boat aflame, this guy did it all.

But enough about the chef, let’s talk about the food!  For drinks, you’re offered the usual serving of tea and given a wine list, but Zam and I decided to each order a mix of a juice and a soda.  I chose a combination of pineapple and soda water, while Zam went with cranberry soda.

For starters, we ordered a set of shrimp tempura, some sushi, and a plate of gyoza.  I can’t really tell you too much about the quality of the shrimp tempura since shellfish does happen to be one of my allergies, but I can tell you that I only looked away for a minute, and the plate was empty.  The gyoza was amazing, and thoroughly fried all around.  Whenever I order gyoza at a sushi restaurant, I notice that it usually has a plastic-like after taste to it, but this was not the case with the ones I had tonight.

We each ordered our own teppanyaki combination dinner, which is slightly more costly then the standard teppanyaki dinners.  I ordered the Teriyaki special set which not very adventerous of me though as it comes with a U.S. choice cut sirloin, and teriyaki chicken.  Zam went with the Imperial set, which comes with filet mignon, shrimps, and some teriyaki chicken.  Antony settled on the Daimyo set, which comes prime ribeye steak, scallops, and a lobster tail.  It was also the most expensive of the choices, nearly double the cost of my set.

Each set came with a salad and some Japanese clear onion soup.  The soup was a welcomed change from the miso soup I’m so used to getting when I go to other Japanese restaurants.

So how was the meal after all the preparation?  Excellent.  The sirloin was delicious and melted right in my mouth.  There’s this debate amongst a few of us where steak doesn’t usually melt in your mouth when it’s well-done, only if you get it rare to medium-rare.  But I can tell you this well-done steak one did.  The boneless teriyaki chicken was also excellent, but there was some fat on the chicken pieces I was given.  In case you haven’t been to a Japanese steakhouse before, that they cut up your meat right on the grill into bite size pieces, so it’s easier to eat with your chopsticks.

Antony said his lobster tail was excellent, which just the right amount of flavoring on.  He noted the taste was super fishy even for lobster (but he likes fishy so I guess this is a good thing) and was bursting with flavor from each bite.  Zam’s filet mignon was excellent, and he finished it before I could even grab a photo.

We all left, very impressed by our meal, but not so impressed with the behavior of the gentleman who was seated at the other end of the same table of us, trying to convince his date to come home with him though his displays of hypermasculinity, thankfully failing miserably.  But that’s a tale for another day, or perhaps another website.

Average Price: $20 – $40 per teppanyaki dinner per person, $15 – $25 per entree
Hours: Lunch: Mon-Fri 11:30am – 3pm,  Weekends noon – 3:30pm
Dinner: Mon-Thur 5pm – 11pm, Fri-Sat 4pm – midnight, Sun 4pm-10pm
TTC Directions: Get off at Bay subway station, exit out of the Cumberland exit, follow Cumberland easy to Bellair, and make a left.

Nestled in the heart of the Bloor and Yonge area, amdist a backdrop of a rising village of new condominium developments, sits a quaint little brunch place by the name of Maggie’s.

Maggie’s, a sister establishment to the Maggie’s on College near Bathurst, offers a standard variety of brunch fare, from colourful omelettes to their famous triple decker grilled cheese sandwiches.

Being so close to where I work, Maggie’s has become a lunch time staple of Ashley and I.  Why do we keep going back with so many other lunch time options in the area?  For me, it would have to be due to the copious amounts of fruit that get served on the side of most entrees.  They’re usually not that busy, being just far enough down Charles st. to be out of eyesight from the Yonge street traffic.  They’re usually overlooked by the far brighter and flashier stuff located on our city’s busiest strip.

For starters today, Ashley and I each ordered a drink which we felt would suit our meals.  I’m having their classic breakfast, so I decided to order an orange juice with it.  At $2.25 for a small, the drinks carry a bit of a price tag.  For an additional 70cents, I could upgrade my orange juice to a “fresh squeezed” orange juice.  So I did just that.

Deciding on her grill favorite, grilled cheese sandwich, Ashley went with a comforting cool glass of chocolate milk.  Ashley claimed that the chocolate milk tasted just as good as the one that comes in the carton, directly from the factory, but later on we noticed that the chocolate was starting to separate from the milk at the bottom of the glass, much like powdered instant chocolate milk does.

Our entrees came pretty quickly, which is a good thing considering they are a brunch place in downtown Toronto which serves the 1 hour limited time lunch crowd.  I ordered the classic breakfast meal which came with a choice of sausage, bacon, or ham.

I chose multigrain toast and over-medium eggs so that I could dip the toast in.  Yes, I know the standard is to order over-easy eggs for toast dipping, but I’ve gone to too many restaurants where the yolk has broken prematurely during transport from the kitchen to my table, so it’s usually safe to get over-medium to ensure your yolk safety!

Unfortunately, my plan backfired this time, and the yolks on these particular eggs came out hard.  So much for toast dipping.  The other option that came with this meal was which breakfast meat you wanted, from ham, bacon, and sausage.  I was never a fan of bacon, and 9 times out of 10 when sausage is among the side options, I’ll take it over any of the others.  These sausages were done really well, not to greasy, and cooked just enough to give the edges a light crisp.  On the other hand, they were just your average sausages, no hint of them being glazed with honey garlic, or any other type of specialty flavour.  But they are better than the standard frozen breakfast sausages, which most other brunch places drop on your plate.

Ashley went with the Triple Decker Grilled Cheese.  Three layers of break stacked with double cheese in between.  The sandwich came nicely grilled, with a light brown tinge on the outside, but not overcooked so there was still a soft moist feel inside the bread itself.  And did I mention the cheese?  There’s enough cheese on this baby to make 10 Grilled Cheeses for a summer camp mess hall.

Both meals came with a side of garlic fries.  The fries themselves are sometimes a hit and a miss.  Usually crispy enough to satisfy my need for crunch, they also can contain too much chunks of minced garlic on them.  Today, though, that was not the case, and the fries were perfect.

Also note the amount of jam you get on the side.  Most places tend to be stingy and leave you clamoring for more packets of jam.  Our server left us with enough jam to satisfy our spreading needs.  Not that I had much spreading to do given the size of my pieces of toast.  Yes, they were pretty tiny compared to the size of the bread used for Ashley’s Grilled Cheese, but that could be because it was multigrain toast as opposed to the white bread of Ashley’s sandwich.

The fruit side was a nice melody of strawberries, oranges, melons, a slice of grapefruit, and a kiwi to top it off.  I always feel like if they’re going all out in their fruit side, why not add a few grapes to the mix?

As for the service, if you happen to go around 1:30pm (they close at 2:00pm), expect to be largely ignored unless you’ve mastered the fine art of waving your arms in the air like you’re on a rollercoaster just to get the servers attention.  They’re too busy cleaning up to check on you, trying to get everything done by 2pm so they can head out of the place.  Don’t most establishments clean after they’ve locked the doors?

It’s good to note that they’re very vegetarian and vegan friendly, with a nice vegan selection within their menu.  Overall, Ashley and I enjoyed our meals and left satisfied and stuffed.  Our only quip today was with the service, with 2 servers and only 4 patrons, it’s a puzzle why we were left alone completely after our food arrived.

Average Price: $8 per entree
Hours: Mon – Sun, 7am – 2pm
TTC Directions: Get off at Yonge/Bloor station, and walk south on Yonge two blocks, turn left at Charles St.