The soy chicken drumsticks are what King's Cafe is all about!

If you’d have asked me about 8 years ago whether I thought it would be difficult to become a vegetarian, I would’ve promptly answered “yes!”  Thankfully I have Helen, a sworn vegetarian who hasn’t consumed any meat or animal products in ages (aside from the odd egg or milk product here and there… hey, sometimes it’s hard to make yummy cupcakes without either one!), and she has shown me how easy and simple it is to cut out meat from your diet and still get to eat plenty of yummy food.  One of her favorite places to go eat happens to be King’s Cafe, a vegetarian Asian food and tea shop in the heart of Kensington Market.  It also happens to now be one of my favorite places because of one particular item on the menu – the soy chicken drumstick!  Though Helen would argue that the soy nuggets are much better than soy on a stick.

Since it’s my good friend Katie’s birthday, I offered to take her out to a belated birthday dinner at King’s Cafe (yes, it also happens to be one of Katie’s favorite places so it’s usually an easy choice when we decide on where to eat.)

For dinner, Katie and I ordered the kung pao chicken combination which comes with purple “bird seed” rice, a spring roll, some salad, and two nuggets.  It also rings in at about $13 each which is a bit pricey but well worth it.  I also ordered the chicken drumsticks for sharing… but they’re sometimes so hard to share because they’re so yummy.  Antony ordered one of their winter specials, which is a dish of turnip cakes in sauce with some veggies.  Finally, Helen went with a dish of soy nuggets and I believe it was a crystal roll she ordered with them.  It’s a cold roll wrapped in rice paper with chopped veggies inside with a hint of mint.

The soup of the day

Each of the combination meals came with a soup as well which I believe changes daily as it’s called the soup of the day.  Our soup had a hint of seaweed flavor with chopped green onions.  It was nice as it wasn’t too strong of a soup and wasn’t salty at all.  I usually expect these soups to be salty because I’m accustomed to getting salty miso soup, but it was a nice change to have something refreshing.

Kung pao chicken combo platter

The combo plates came in a bento box arrangement which I only think they started doing about a year ago to make it easier.  If I remember, they used to bring everything out on it’s own plate before.  The kung pao chicken was an excellent choice.  Sometimes, I can’t even tell the difference between the soy chicken they serve here, and the real chicken they serve around the corner in Chinatown.  In fact, I’d have to say I’d take King’s soy chicken any day over the other stuff.  The purple rice was interesting and had a nice texture but it does sort of resemble bird seed.  The side salad had a welcomed surprise inside of it – fruit!  You get a slice of orange, a bit of strawberry and a few other surprised tucked into those leaves of lettuce.

The turnip cake winter special was actually a bit of a disappointment to me.  I’m sure though if you love dim sum turnip, then you’d probably rave about this dish.  I don’t really like the turnips they serve at dim sum so I wasn’t particularly into this dish.  I did like the taste but I’m just not a fat of the sticky, clumpy turnip cake texture.

And here comes the soy drumsticks.  Really, this is what we all come to King’s for.  I’m sure some people will complain about them as soy chicken does have a slightly different texture than real chicken, but the fact is these things are awesome.  Since they’re still fried like regular chicken nuggets, I’m sure they’re probably still bad for you in some way, but it’s probably slightly redeeming that they’re made from soy and not chicken guts.

The winter special turnip dish

The best part about King’s is that they have their own little grocery store near the back of the store.  So all those soy nuggets and drumsticks that you just ate, well you can bring a bag of frozen ones home and eat some more later.  They are a bit pricey though coming in at $18 for a bag of soy chicken nuggets (where as a comparable amount of standard chicken nuggets at the grocery store would cost you around $6-$8).

Yes, I love King’s Cafe, and I highly recommend it to anyone who hasn’t tried it before, especially if you’re a vegetarian.

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.

Classic Breakfast

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.

Triple Decker Grilled Cheese

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.