T.O.bites | Toronto Food & Restaurant Blog

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

Last September, when Zelda’s closed and ran up Yonge street, people started to cry out that due to the rising cost in rent, the village was doomed to become a collection of high-end stale corporate chain shops and restaurants.  Heck, there was even a rumor that McDonald’s was going to take over the old Zelda location.  To make matters worse, Lettieri closed up shop a few months later and is now a Hero Burger.  Then Il Fornello decided to take off.  What’s going on?  Thankfully, there’s been a slight change in the doom and gloom of the neighbourhood: the Church St. Diner recently opened back up and a new comer, Chi-ko-roo, has taken up the space once formerly housed by Il Fornello.  I had the chance to sit down and have a bite to eat there just a few days after their opening. (more…)

Sara hyped up the experience we were about to have in a bad way, “If you’re late, they’ll give your table away. If you wear jeans they won’t let you in. If all people in your party aren’t yet present, they won’t seat you. These kinds of restaurants hate it if you don’t order a drink.  I bet they have the Winterlicious people all come in early so they can move them out quick and have the high paying patrons come in.” Needless to say, I wasn’t completely looking forward to the evening we were about to have.

Winterlicious is the time of the year when the city’s finest restaurants open up their menus and offer affordable prix fixe dinner options.  Is it fair to review a restaurant’s Winterlicious offerings?  I don’t see why not.  Most restaurants use it to allow people to sample their foods, so there should be no reason why it doesn’t wholly reflect on their non-Winterlicious plates.

Auberge du Pommier sits just north of North York Centre station, right against Yonge Street.  From the outside, it looks like a small single floor cottage, but looks can be deceiving.  From the inside, it’s a nicely decorated place where you’re first greeted with their huge wall of wine bottles in a gigantic fridge.  Upon arrival, only 3 of us arrived for our party of 5 (two of us were still on their way) so we had our jacket’s checked in, and were asked to wait while our table was being setup.  About ten minutes later, we were brought to our table which was seated on one of the side rooms by the windows with a roaring fireplace on the end.

We ordered a few drinks, a cocktail for Sara and a iced tea concoction for myself.  They were offered on the Winterlicious menu we were given but at an additional cost.  I believe my ice tea was $6 but I can’t remember how much Saras was.

Now, you’ll have to excuse the lack of food photos as the iPhone doesn’t work so great in low light.  We arrived around 5pm, but didn’t actually order our meal until around 6pm.  So our light source was limited to a single candle on the table.

There’s a picture of the menu here, so I won’t go over each item offered as part of the prix fixe, but I ordered the foie gras, seared pork loin, and the warm apple fraiche cake as my dessert.

I’ve never tried foie gras before so I have nothing to compare this to.  There’s a bit of a controversy behind foie gras.  Essentially, it’s duck liver pâté, but what makes it controversial is the fact that they force feed the duck corn to make it really fat.  It sort of has the consistency of dry tuna, but is incredibly fattening and leaves a film in your mouth after eating.  It was too rich for me to handle eating the whole portion so I had to pass it off.

The pork loin came next and it was amazing.  It melted in your mouth with every delicious bite and had a nice hint of honey mustard.  It sat atop a serving of pomme pureé, which I could only describe as mashed potatoes.  It was good to the last bite.

When the dessert came, we all had something different.  The apple fraiche cake came with a small scoop of ice cream on the top.  It was nice but a bit underwhelming as it tasted like a muffin you’d buy at Tim Horton’s.  I tried some of the Pot de Creme that Antony ordered with his meal which was a bit better than what I had, but it had a very strong dark chocolate flavor.  I’m not really a fan of dark chocolate unless it comes with mint.

The service at Auberge du Pommier was top notch and spot on.  Our server was very attentive to ours needs, and there was no pressure while we were waiting for our other two guests to arrive.  Even though we were being served the Winterlicious menu (which meant a cheaper meal resulting in a smaller percentage based tip), we were treated with the same respect as everyone else there.  Surprisingly, our bill for 5 people came to almost $350.  This is including all the drinks and such we ordered, so for a high end restaurant, it still worked out to be quite a deal.

I would definitely return to Auberge du Pommier again if the opportunity ever presented itself.  Although we had our doubts about going out for Winterlicious at the beginning, I would chalk this one up as a great experience.

*It was not Sara’s birthday!  It was Jenn’s birthday but she had other plans and we used her reservation instead.  Being the only female at the table, Sara had to pretend she was the birthday girl.