T.O.bites | Toronto Food & Restaurant Blog

Sunday nights are awful if you want to do some late night dining in downtown Toronto.  After 8pm, your options are pretty much limited to diners and Japanese restaurants.  Both of which I am starting to grow tired of having eaten out at them so often these days.  So with a Sunday daypass in my hand, and the clock rolling onto 10pm, I decided to hop onto the Subway and take the line down to King station.

In the heart of the financial district, right inside of the architecturally stunning Brookfield place, lies a bustling restaurant with a market like atmosphere.  When you first enter Richtree, you’re given your own swipe card.  How it works here is that you can ’shop’ for your food at each station which caters to a type (ie, seafood, pizza, sandwiches, desserts, etc).  When you decide what you want, your card gets swiped by the chefs, and your food is made right in front of you.  It’s sort of a self serve method, taking away the need to rely on waiters.  It’s the overall market place theme of the place that makes it so great though.  The theme is present right down to the seating areas which are roomed in areas that also contain their own theme such as a Parisian and Italian.

Presentation aside, I’m here for the food, and food is exactly what this place is known for.  I’ll start with the most popular dish, the Rösti.  Rösti is typically shredded potatoes that are pan fried served with a side of sour cream or apple sauce although Richtree only offers the former.  It costs about $4 for just the rösti but for an additional $4 you can get it served with the sausage of the day.  I’m mentioning the price here (which I don’t normally do) as I felt an additional $4 for just the sausage was a bit ludicrous.  I didn’t have the sausage this time but I’ve had it in the past and it’s really nothing special.  As for the rösti itself, it’s usually pretty good.  But not this time.  The first rösti I was given was burnt black to a hard crisp at the bottom of it.  The chef at the counter had no problem replacing it for me, but unfortunately not only was the one she replaced it with about a third smaller than the burnt one, but it was also slightly undercooked in the middle.

Antony went and had a drink made at the coffee bar, a rooibos tea latte with cinnamon and nutmeg.  Say that three times fast!  I’ve never had a rooibos tea before so I had try it out.  It has a sort of familiar taste, like that of a combination of mint tea and chai tea.  But the chai taste could have been coming from the added cinnamon.

Their special that day was paste with salad and a selection of vegetables, so I tried to order that, but unfortunately they were out of it.  Well I guess it was just after 10pm and the place closes in a mere 2 hours.  So the chef instead offered me the pasta with ground beef instead.  The dish was prepared right in front of me and fresh vegetables were taken from the bowls in front of him and used in his concoction.  Overall, the dish was pretty good.  The paste was nice and al dente, and the tomato sauce they used was nice and rich.  You can also sprinkle as little or as much Parmesan cheese onto it as you like from the giant cheese cut bowl next to the counter.

Antony decided he wanted sea food that night so he went and ordered the talapia fillet with a serving of market rice.  The talapia was way too fishy for my tastes.  I thought I was finally starting to get used to the fishy taste of fish these days, but the talapia tasted a lot stronger than seaweed wrap.  Antony thoroughly enjoyed his fish though.  The rice wasn’t too bad either, a nice medley of vegetables and spices, but it did seem a bit on the salty side.

For dessert we had, which can only be explained as, sponge cake with fruit on top of it.  it was unlabeled at the dessert counter so I just sort of pointed at it as it was the dessert that had the most abundance of fruit on top of it.  It wasn’t too bad but it was also nothing special.  It was served with a side dropping of vanilla cream sauce in case you wanted to dip your fork into it.

Overall, I feel Richtree is a tad on the expensive side, and you really have to be careful of what you order as there are a few common restaurant dishes which cost a bit more there than you would expect.  Also, the fact that you’re given a card system and have to jump from station to station to get your food, you can easily lose track of the rising cost of your order.  I would recommend Richtree for late night eating, and I have been back there a few times myself, but personally, I think we all go there more for the experience than the food.  Not that the food is bad, but the unique market like confined experience trumps the food in most cases.

Average Price: $8 – $16 per entree
Hours: Sun-Thur 7:00am – Midnight, Fri-Sat 7:00am – 2:00am
Address: 42 Yonge St.
Phone: 416-366-8986
TTC Directions: Get off at King station, walk to Yonge street.  Walk south on Yonge on the west side for about half a block and enter into Brookfield Place.

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.

I come here writing tonight to update you about a Food Injustice that happened last week.  Normally, I don’t feel too compelled to write a whole new post about the situation as I could just easily append the update to the bottom of the previous post.  But this situation is more personal to me than most as this affects a sweet 4 year old’s birthday.  Also, this takes place in the neighbourhood I grew up in, Leslieville, where I’m usually 100% supportive of local businesses and I love the gentrification and changes that have been going on.  The residents actually went and started a huge petition just to try and prevent the proposed WalMart from being built to protect their local businesses.  And if my website stats are correct, this is the most linked and followed story on my website for the week, so it deserves its own posted update.

Food complaints happen every day.  I’m sure right now somewhere in our city, someone is at a McDonald’s complaining to the poor underpaid cashier that his fries are too salty.  In most cases if the food’s not eaten (yes, yes, I’ve read your e-mails about that), then most places will gladly replace it or take it back and off the bill.  But even in a few extreme cases where the food was completely eaten but the patron was left unsatisfied, they will either be offered a discount or given “free dessert”.  This usually works in two ways as the patron feels much better about their experience, and the restaurant has just saved themselves from poor word of mouth, and possibly has a returning customer too.  I can name a few places where I’ve had a generally poor food experience, but the manager has tried to make it better, and I usually do go back knowing that they care about what it is their customers take home to share with their family and friends.  A great example of this is Caplansky’s Deli and how, when present, Caplansky will go around and ask for feedback and if someone tells him truthfully that they disliked their meal and why, they’d be compensated.

When it comes to It’s the Icing on the Cake, sadly, it appears they don’t worry too much once the cash is in the register.  But here’s where the situation gets a bit sticky.  Jenn (Amber’s mother) did willingly take the cake when she was shown it, and I know this is causing a bit of a debate about who’s right or wrong in this situation.  The way the pickup was scheduled, right before the party was to start, so there was already a pouring in of children into her household while she was heading down the street to grab her cake.  So she had little choice and time, and took the cake.  She did express her concern when she picked it up but was told that there wasn’t anything they could do, and that the owners were away.  Taking the cake and not demanding her money back may have been a mistake but I feel this is besides the point.

My point is, and always has been, that the cake pictured above cost $90.  Ninety freekin bucks!  No one would order a cake for $90 if they knew it was going to be the above.  Literally a pound of cake mix, some icing, and a Hannah Montana’s logo with a giant star.  A normal Loblaws bakery decorator could have that design frosted on in less than 5 minutes.  That was not the cake Jenn was originally told and shown photos of what she was getting.  The cake was supposed to be two-tiered, with the bottom tier being like the picture above, and a second tier being a star shaped cake.  This would make more sense at costing $90 then what she actually got.

As you may have guessed, Jenn did finally speak to the owner of It’s the Icing on the Cake, and was told “well it’s too bad because you took the cake”.  There was no offer to help try and fix the situation.  Heck, not even a few free cupcakes!  So I end this Food Injustice on a sad and cliché note: buyer beware, as some things you pay for will not always be what you expect.

Sometimes people will have great experiences at one place, while others will have a horrible time.  Four times out of five, if the managers hear about your experience, they’ll usually do something to help you out and make your experience better.  At most food places, they’ll do this by offering to remove the item off of your bill, exchange it for something else, or give you your next meal free of charge.  Hopefully this story will have such an ending.

My niece recently celebrated her 4th birthday and earlier today happened to be her party.  It’s been a long time in the planning and her mother decided to keep it local and order the cake from It’s the Icing on the Cake located near Queen and Leslie.  As you can see, this place generally has positive reviews aside from the odd bad apple experience.  When they ordered her cake, they were shown an example of a two-tiered Hannah Montana themed cake, complete with stars, guitars, and all things that would make any 4 year old fan beam a huge smile (thanks to the Walt Disney Co. marketing department).  The bottom tier to be a giant slab of white cake with a icing star on it, the top tier to be star shaped with the Hannah Montana logo on it next to the usual “Happy Birthday Amber”.  They were quoted $90 for the whole thing, which was pretty reasonable for two-tiered cake.

As you can see above, there was no second-tier to this cake.  And the designs which were supposed to be on the second-tier seemed to have dropped down to the bottom single-tier cake.  Oh, mind the clutter on the cake.  The necklace, slapbands, figures and buttons were added last minute to help salvage the cake and put a bit of a smile on Amber’s face, even at the expense of making it look like Hannah Montana threw up on it.  Still, it looked better than what it originally did even with all the excess paraphernalia.

Maybe they were in a bit of a hurry and decided to not add the second-tier.  No problem except for the fact that $90 was paid for this cake, which had nothing over a $25 cake made at Loblaws.  Apparently when her parents went to go pick up the cake this morning, they were told that the cook who designed the cake wasn’t in today and the owner of the bakery was off as well and couldn’t be contacted until Monday (tomorrow, which is why hopefully there will be a future update to this).

Now onto the cake itself.  How can I put this lightly?  If I was blindfolded and fed this cake, I would believe it was nothing more than a piece of the generic ‘keep in your freezer’ Sara Lee pound cake.  I haven’t seen a single layered birthday cake since my mom made her own cake courtesy of Betty Crocker.  The icing also had a very interesting after taste, that of sour milk.  Not sure how that’s possible as icing is usually powdered icing sugar and water.  Poor Amber didn’t really like the taste of her cake, and her mom was left feeling ripped off having paid $90 for this slab of baked flour, sugar, and milk.  You may ask why her mom left with the cake and didn’t refuse the purchase.  Well the fact that it was an hour before her party began left little time to hop over to the Loblaws and pick up another cake.  Tomorrow the manager will be contacted so hopefully we can find out what happened to the second-tier.