Chew Chew's train mural

The giant mural of a train on the side of the restaurant is sure to get a few groans along with the ironic name of the diner, but if you actually step inside the front door, you’ll quickly see that this bustling little diner’s train theme actually works quite well for itself without getting too tacky.

The scene of some Canadian mountains is displayed right next to the booths lined up against the wall, acting as a faux outside window of the mock train you’re sitting in.  It’s a bit tacky, but it works.

I was told the best thing to order at Chew’s would be the Conductor’s special, but I wasn’t feeling like breakfast today so I went with the standard diner fare of cheese burger and fries.  We also ordered a hot hamburger chicken plate also with fries.

Chew's cheeseburger

The burger was quite good and came piled with lettuce, tomatoes, and onions.  The bun was nice and grilled too (I hate floppy untoasted burger buns as they got soggy right away).  The side of coleslaw was really good with shredded veggies in it, and it wasn’t too tangy, just right.  The fries were quite excellent and still had the potato skins on which is exactly how fries should be.

Hot Hamburger Chicken

The hot hamburger chicken was smothered in some nice beef gravy and sat atop a piece of texas toast bread.  It also came with some fries and some nice steamed vegetables which included broccoli and carrots.  I don’t think I’ve ever had a “hot hamburger” reviewed or mentioned on this site before, so if you’re not familiar with it and are wondering why it doesn’t look like my cheeseburger, that’s because hot hamburgers are just meat on a piece of a bread with gravy on top.  I was slightly confused the first time I ordered one years ago at Dangerous Dan’s diner and wondered where my hamburger bun was.  The waiter explained to me that hot hamburger plates is an idea that comes from the southern US and incorporates a hamburger patty placed on a piece of bread and covered in gravy.  Wikipedia tells me that it’s “occasionally compared to the poutine” if that helps at all… that statement actually allows me to revel in my state of food confusion, but hey, it’s still great food.

Chew’s is a great addition to the Cabbagetown restaurants and I do plan on going back some day and trying the conductor’s special.  One of the great things about this diner is it’s open concept kitchen area.  I know there’s a great deal of older restaurants that have their cooking area right out in the front, but I just think it’s great that you can see your food being cooked while you wait.  Thank goodness they didn’t make their staff wear conductor uniforms.

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.

Just Thai is just ok.  I don’t eat Thai food that often and haven’t actually consumed any of it in months, but I’m pretty sure when you order something that says in the menu that it’s supposed to taste like peanuts, it should taste like peanuts, not pineapples.

Maybe I’m starting this review on a bad note because the food wasn’t overall that bad albeit a little pricey. We started by ordering the appetizer sampler which is a mix of some of the appetizers offered on the menu.  Satay shrimp (which I asked to replace with chicken due to my allergy), cold rolls, mango salad, crispy beef rolls, and fried calamari.  The mango salad was excellent with a sprinkling of crushed peanuts all over it.  The fried calamari, chicken, and the beef rolls were okay too but were made even better with the dipping sauces you get with it.  Unfortunately, I felt the cold rolls contained a bit too much lettuce.  As you can see in the photo, nearly 85% of the roll was lettuce.  I’d rather them remove half of the lettuce and give a smaller roll.

The appetizer sampler

We ordered the Island Chicken (with Mango Chicken being our first choice but we felt since the appetizer sampler came with mango salad that we’d be all mangoed out) and were looking forward to it’s “peanut flavour”.  Unfortunately, it came tasting more like pineapples than peanuts.  In fact there were no peanuts on it at all.  Mind you, it wasn’t awful tasting, it just wasn’t what we were expecting.

The Island Chicken... which tasted more like pineapple than peanuts

It seems like if you’re interested in trying Thai food then I’d say your best bet would be to head over to Yonge street and check out the Friendly Thai.  But if you’re looking for good service (the waiters were quick and quite friendly) and decent food that could be Thai with a few alterations, then go ahead and check out Just Thai.  The food isn’t bad, but it just isn’t what I was expecting.

Ed's Real Scoop

The Beach and ice cream go hand in hand like gentrification and a Starbucks. For years, I used to head to Baskin Robbins or Lick’s to get my ice cream fix in the beaches even if it meant eating rock hard freezer burnt stuff.  But ever since I’ve discovered Ed’s Real Scoop with it’s excellent hand made ice cream, I haven’t looked back and now realize it’s worth the walk all the way to the other end of Queen street east just to get one of Ed’s really good scoops.

Ed’s is a taste of nostalgia from the old time ice cream parlours right down to the smell of waffle cones being made in the corner by Ed himself. The great thing about Ed’s is if you go everyday, besides having me become envious, you would never find the exact same selection of flavours.  Infact on most days you’ll almost always find a new flavour there, and they’re also open to new flavour suggestions.

Roasted Marshmellow

On this warm summer afternoon, after spending a whole 8 minutes trying to decide on which flavour I wanted (I did narrow it down to 5), I ended up going with the roasted marshmellow flavour for the purposes of writing on site.  Why?  Because if you’ve ever read my post over at Urban Pill, you’d know that I am in absolute love with the roasted marshmellow flavor from Greg’s Ice Cream in the annex.  This gave me a bit of something to draw a bit of a comparison.  Though Greg’s marshmellow ice cream will always be my favorite, Ed’s version was pretty darn good on it’s own.  Though it did indeed taste like melted marshmellows, it lacked the smokiness of Greg’s version.  But what it did have that Greg’s doesn’t is a nice swirl of caramel mixed in.

Although Ed’s beaches shop is a bit further away from the hustle and bustle of the Woodbine section of Queen street, it is definitely worth the 5 minute streetcar ride down to the end of the tracks to get a lick or two.  There is another one right in the heart of Leslieville also on Queen street between Carlaw and Logan so if the other one is a wee bit out of the way, then hopefully the Leslieville one will be easier to get to.

The Tulip: Since 1929

I first went to the Tulip back in 1996 and it was great back then.  Thankfully, not much has changed aside from moving two doors down about a decade ago.  The Tulip Steakhouse sits on the edge of Leslieville bordering the Beach area (also known as “the Beaches” if you’ve lived there before the name change years ago).  I do have to confess though that even though the Tulip is known for it’s excellent yet low cost steaks, I have never tried one before even though I used to go there almost weekly when I was younger.  Even to this day, I would still much prefer a cheeseburger over their renown steaks.

Their burger patties are hand made and have bits of onion and other lovely things inside of it that give it such great flavour.  The buns they use are always nice and big but are never bigger than the patty.  The best part about the buns is that they grill them a bit giving the insides a bit of a crunch factor.  It comes with a slice of tomato and a thick slice of onion.  Always and always will.  The coleslaw that comes with the burger is great too.  It’s none of that frozen kind that most other greasy spoons serve, it’s actually quite nice and usually pretty fresh.  Now the home fries… mmm home fries.  I always get random cravings for Tulip’s homefries because they are some of the best around town.  They’re nice and soft in the middle and always crunchy on the outside.  Plus, I love all the crunchy small bits that come with it too.  Their homefries have changed a bit since I first went there, as they used to be grilled with onion bits but they’ve since removed them.

Their breakfast is also a great plate of awesomeness.  For just under $5 (yep you heard me, $5 smackeroos!) you get all that in the photo.  Home fries, toast, sausage (or peameal bacon or regular bacon), and eggs.  The breakfast is great because it’s cheap for a lot of food and served all day except for the pancakes which are only served until 4:00pm.

The Tulip is one of my personal top favorite restaurants in the city and it’s always nice to have a place that I can go to which has all the comfort food I’ve grown to love.  Though the service has somewhat gone downhill over the years, the food is still excellent and they always give you a huge amount for a low price.  And if you’re not too full from the main course, you need to try some of their famous chocolate cake or coconut cream pie.  Make sure if you do go that you choose the homefries over the french fries.  I can’t stress enough how good they are.

I’ve been wanting to check out Lola’s Commissary for a while now, especially after reading about the “sexy potatoes” at Foodhogger.  Their weekend brunch menu was quite enticing: Cheesecake Stuffed French Toast, Egg White Frittata, Eggsmopolitan… all really excellent sounding.

Lola’s sits just south of Bloor on Church street in an old Victorian house.  A sign just before the staircase on the first floor points out that the steps are a little crooked and you should be careful when ascending them, but hey, that’s what gives the house great character along with the paintings strung up around the front dining area.

Peach Iced Tea sweetened with Maple Syrup

There was such an awesome selection of iced teas (some sweetened with maple syrup) ranging from peach to chai.  If I could remember them all, I’d list them here, but all I can remember is the peach iced tea since it’s the one I ordered.  The maple syrup really brings out the flavour of the peach in the tea and I highly recommend trying out one of the iced teas offered that are sweetened by it.

I craved the cheesecake french toast.  Alas, I refrained, because it’s a huge plate of carbs, but we did ask to find out what it was exactly.  It’s a puree’d slice of cheese cake that’s put in between two pieces of bread and done up like french toast.  Instead, I ended up going with the second most interesting sounding item on the menu – the kitchen sink.

The kitchen sink (and someone wanting to try their sexy potatoes)

The kitchen sink is described as “lots of lovely bits, scrambled eggs, cheese, toast” mind you the toast is on the side, not in the eggs.  As for those “lovely bits”, they turned out to be spinach, tomato, and possibly bacon and a few other things I couldn’t really make out.  That’s why pictures speak a thousand words.  It was quite wonderful tasting, like an amazing mash up of everything brunch.  It was a little bit runny though so those with food texture issues may want to pass on this one.

The Eggs Lola

We also ordered the Eggs Lola which was poached eggs and pulled ancho chicken on a tortilla with a side of avocado.  The ancho chicken tastes quite nice with the added flavourings on it.  One small complaint was the tortilla underneath was a bit hard, possibly from overcooking but since they’re so thin, I imagine they get hard quite fast.

Ancho Chicken Wrap

We also grabbed an ancho chicken wrap which is the same chicken from the Eggs Lola but inside of a wrap.  Each of our brunch orders came with a choice of a side of frites, sexy potatoes, or a salad.  All three of us decided on sexy potatoes (we couldn’t pass up trying them out thanks in part to the name).  The sexy potatoes are a mix of sweet potato bits with regular home style fries.  It’s great to have a mix of those two potatoes together as I love ordering sweet potato fries but often get sick of them after a few fries, so have both together was quite nice.  One small complaint was that although they were cooked and were quite browned on the outside, they were still a little soft and didn’t really have much of a crunch or crisp to them.  They were still quite good though.

I’m looking forward to returning to Lola’s again soon and will be bringing a few friends along who want to share a Cheesecake Stuffed French Toast with me.  I’ll feel a little less guilty if I’m sharing it.