T.O.bites | Toronto Food & Restaurant Blog

The King is finally back, risen from the dust and rubble of it’s former location across the street.  But does it still deserve the crown of tastiest, fastest, and cheapest thai food in Toronto?

Salad King has always been a fast yet deliciously good and cheap stop for Thai food in Toronto.  It’s a favourite among Ryerson students, alumni and pretty much any Torontonian who frequents downtown.  Unfortunately, last April 2010, a wall of bricks came showering down onto the street just mere steps from Salad King’s doors.  Salad King had to shut it’s doors, but in the meantime, the owner decided rather that instead of waiting to see if the building could be repaired, he would take the spot above Foot Locker just a few steps away.  Reaffirming that he made a good choice in moving the restaurant, the former building also happened to be burnt down by arsonists last December.

It’s been a long year, and after millions of dollars in renovations and a few months of delays, the King is finally back.  Despite it’s new location, not much had changed which is a good thing.  The long cafeteria style steel tables and benches are still there, but added are a few booth type seating areas which I personally absolutely love (sorry folks, I just wasn’t big on rubbing elbows at the long tables with people I didn’t know). When you first walk in you’ll notice that the decor has taken on this sort of web 2.5 twitter-ific bright over-the-top graphic-ey design element to it.  I guess the thought going into it is that it would appeal to the 20-somethings, which are the main clientele of this place.  But being a 20-something, I’m not really a big fan of the printed artwork up everywhere, but I do love the overall aesthetic of the new place with it’s dark hardwood and steel meshed together.  Though the new place is on the second floor above the Foot Locker, there is an elevator you can take up to it if you have difficulty climbing stairs.

So on to the food.  We ordered our three favourite dishes from the past to see if they still stood up to what we had remembered.  Those three dishes are the chicken panang curry, vegetable pad thai, and spicy fish.  Right away we noticed something different – the prices have all gone up by about a dollar.  Okay, that’s easily forgiven.  Prices do go up frequently and they did just spend tons of money on building the new place.  Plus, $8 to $9 for a good thai dish still isn’t too pricey.

Thankfully, much like in the past, service at the King is still top notch.  Your glass of water is always always nearly kept topped off, the servers are usually asking you how everything is every 5-10 minutes, and the food comes relatively quick.  Another favourite feature about Salad King is that you have to choose how many chilis you want in your meal.  I believe the number is between 0 to 20 but people rarely ever go above 5 in my party.  I usually settle with 2 as it that gives the meal enough bite, but without leaving too much of that lingering chemical burn feel on your tongue and throat after each mouthful.

If you love the panang chicken, like myself, then you’ll notice that the above photo looks a tad different from the old panang chicken you used to get.  Instead of getting the dish in a giant plate with rice mushed on one side and the curry chicken everywhere, they instead put it separately in a bowl.  On the upside, this does give the meal a cleaner presentation.  However, on the downside, there’s less curry.  In fact, there wasn’t as much chicken pieces in it as there was before.  The good thing is though it’s still incredibly yummy

The pad thai is still an excellent choice at the King, especially the vegetarian one.  I do love the soy pieces they put in it.  However, much like above, there’s less pad thai than there was in the past.  Perhaps also, by raising the prices, they’ve lowered the portion amounts to help get back the money they’ve lost? Who knows…

Finally, the spicy fish.  The sauce that they use is sort of a sweet but savory type of watery sauce that every kernel of rice absorbs.  That’s actually what makes this dish so great is the sauce they use.  The fish pieces were also pretty good, as they were in the past, but once again, there were only 6 tiny pieces of fish in the whole dish.  The amount of fish used to be a lot more plentiful in the past.

Without a doubt, I’m glad that Salad King is back.  The food is still great, the service is top notch, and the place is always bustling.  However, I’m a bit saddened by the portion control that’s going on with the dishes.  It could just be opening pains (since today, the 22nd, is the first official day of the reopening), possibly cutting the amount of meat to save costs, or even just holding back the amount to make sure they don’t run out today.  No one really knows and they could definitely up the amounts in a few weeks once they figure out what their daily stock requirements are.  Regardless, I still love Salad King and highly do recommend you go back again!

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.

The Counter is a relatively new 24-hour diner located just outside of the entertainment district downtown, right at the base of the Thompson Hotel.  I’m fairly ambivalent towards 24-hour diners in Toronto thanks to having a few bad experiences at Fran’s over the past few years, but how does The Counter stack up against its competition?  Well if having to pay $5 more per entree than any other diner doesn’t scare you away, then you may be surprised by how good the food is.  On the other hand, the decor gives off a pretentious vibe, and the menu is a little lacking in options.  Also, who has ever paid $12 for a slice of pie?!  Maybe $12 for a whole pie but just a slice?  Ouch!

We ordered a Reuben sandwich with onion rings, a chicken club sandwich with poutine, and fried chicken wings with mashed potatoes.  And for an appetizer, we all shared a spinach and artichoke dip.  One thing to note that by default, the side options are fries, onion rings, or salad.  The poutine cost an extra $2, while we originally were offered a side of mac & cheese, but unfortunately it cost an extra $4.  A steep price difference to replace a side.

The spinach and artichoke dip was enjoyed by all and came with some crispy lavish for dipping.  It was nice and cheesy but our only gripe about it was that it was a little bit too runny which made it hard to keep on the lavish while dipping.

The pastrami reuben was done really well, it was nice and moist and each bite filled your mouth with the excellent spices contained within the meat.  Unfortunately, it didn’t come with pickles on the side, but when we asked, were given a few.  I was told to make note specifically that we were not given just one single pickle, but were given a few on a plate, and this made us happy.

The onion rings that came with the reuben were nice and crispy, done in their own special buttermilk batter.

The chicken club sandwich was stacked with tomatoes, lettuce, three pieces of bread, two pieces of grilled chicken breast, and bacon.  It was probably one of the best clubs I’ve had in ages.  The poutine, on the other hand, was a little lackluster.  They didn’t use cheese curds in it (just a random sprinkling of mozzarella here and there), and the gravy wasn’t as plentiful.

The fried chicken wings use the same buttermilk batter as the onion rings which is nice and crispy.  On the other hand, the batter slides off the chicken too easily, making it feel like it’s a completely separate component of the chicken — almost like there was no skin to begin with.  Another down side is that the batter, although nice and crispy, is a little bland and lacks any sort of seasoning.  This works great for the onion rings which already come with the strong flavour of fried onions already, but not so great for the chicken, which could use a healthy dose of herb and spices.

The mashed potatoes that came with the chicken was most excellent though it contained tons of butter.  But the sprinkling of cheddar on the top is what really made it special.

Even though The Counter lacked decent dessert options, we were all pleased with our meals, but were saddened that it doesn’t have a more central downtown location, especially for a 24-hour place.  I understand that a lot of people will wander out of the clubs (and the Thompson Hotel) and seek late night comfort food at The Counter, but it would be nice if they opened up another location closer to Yonge St.  The service was great though and our waiter was incredibly attentive to our needs, constantly keeping our glasses of water full.  I would definitely choose The Counter over Fran’s any day for a 4AM meal, but I can’t say I’d recommend it otherwise.

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.