Tim Hortons - Airport Style

I always mention that my favorite thing about Canada is Tim Hortons. This fact hasn't changed. I even found a little spot in the Toronto Airport. I grabbed a turkey sandwich to go while waiting for my darn delayed flight. It was a whole wheat baguette with some turkey and lettuce and tomatoes inside. This bread was delicious and super crunchy! And I'm not normally into wheat bread at all. It was a great little sandwich. So simple yet so perfect. Tim Hortons, I still love thee.

Eating At Living Arts

So my work in Mississauga was taking place at the Living Arts Centre, which is their performing arts center. On my second day there, we ended up eating the lunch buffet at the restaurant there, LIVE Cuisine Restaurant. It's actually quite a nice buffet.

They have cold items... a plethora of salads, pasta salads, beets, noodles, veggies.

The hot selections included penne, fish, chicken stir fry, and veggies. Everything was quite good. I particularly liked the chicken stir fry.The desserts included cake, pie, tarts, cinnamon rolls, fruit, and blueberry strudel. I only had room for the strudel. Damn, it was good strudel. I love buffets because I like trying a little bit of everything, instead of lots of one or two things. All in all, this is quite the decent buffet, and well worth it.

Seafood in Toronto

The next night I entrusted yelp again, and found that Rodney's Oyster House had consistently good review. So I headed into the big city! After the GPS taking me through some of Toronto's most sketchiest neighborhoods (thanks GPS!) I finally ended up at Rodney's. It's actually in the basement, so you have to go downstairs. Once you're downstairs, it's completely unpretentious. It's just a comfortable place where they take their food seriously, not their decor. Come on, they have corrugated steel as design elements! This was the lone shucker they had. And man, did he shuck a lot. Behind him are the day's oyster offerings. I know nothing about oysters. And even though I went to an oyster house, I did not get any. Even though I do like oysters. I don't know, I just wasn't feeling it that night. The menu is fairly small. They obviously have oysters, and the oyster selections change daily. They also have a few daily specials. They have a few soups and apps, a few cold dishes, a few hot dishes, a few smoked fish dishes, and a few desserts. It's very simple. They give you complimentary bread, which was good, and it comes with a giant bowl of whipped butter. Yum. I'm a clam chowder fiend, so I had to try the one here. For a cup, it is actually quite pricey, but the cup itself is pretty decently sized. The chowder itself was ok. Nothing great, but perfectly acceptable. It had many tiny pieces of celery which really bugged me. I can't stand celery, and they're hard to avoid when they're that small. But the flavor was good and it had lots of clam in it, even though they were in teeny little pieces too. I really wanted scallops but their scallop offerings were slim. So instead, I got a half order of their pasta special which was scallops, shrimp, skate, and green beans served with fettuccini in a cream sauce. This half portion was actually quite big, and they did not skimp on the seafood. The scallops were perfectly seared, the shrimp was perfectly cooked, and the fish was delicious. It was a pretty plain cream sauce, but still an excellent dish. After a couple of twists with the pepper grinder, I hosed it.

The service here is excellent. Most of the servers were men, and they were super friendly, attentive, and definitely knew their stuff. I really wanted to end up trying some oysters at the end, but I was beyond stuffed. Even with my half portion of pasta, I was done. If you're into seafood and especially if you are a fan of oysters, head down to Rodney's. Oh, and ladies, and some of you men too, these servers were quite pleasing to the eye. So if you're in the mood for some seafood serving man candy in Toronto, check this place out.

Lunching in Mississauga

My customer was in Mississauga, and the location was literally across the street from Square One Shopping Centre, one of the largest malls in the entire country of Canada. It was overwhelming, even for someone like myself who grew up with King of Prussia. In any case, I got to dine at the food court there. P recommended Cafe Madina, which was lebanese food. I got a chicken shawarma, which was filled with lettuce, cabbage, chicken, garlic and hot sauce, and these crazy pink pickled turnips. It was all rolled up and grilled/pressed. It was so damn good! I could eat these all the time. The chicken was well cooked and all the fixins and flavors worked well together. And because it was rolled up, it was actually easy to eat. I also got a side of half potatoes and half salad. The salad I got had apple, mango, carrot, and cucumber, along with a bunch of herbs. Loved it. And the potatoes too. Really, this was an excellent meal, especially for a mall food court meal! But really, it would have been good anywhere.

Momiji Sushi, Eh

On a recent trip to Toronto, I was staying in some outlying suburbs. Whenever I'm somewhere new, I like to consult my trusty friend, yelp. It has treated me very well when travelling to new places. I wanted some japanese food, so that led me to Momiji, in Etobicoke. Try saying that 5 times.
It's located in a cute little downtown strip type of area. The place is rather unassuming and dark and dank looking from the outside, but the inside is lovely. It's modern, yet comfortable. Swanky, but not snooty. I really liked the decor. They even had some odd christmas lights hanging down from the ceiling. Rather out of place, but I liked it. And amongst the swank, an oddly placed flatscreen tv, where they played football, soccer, and cage fighting. It was amusing.
I started off with some agedashi tofu. I love me some agedashi tofu. This portion was ginormous. It was practically an entree. There was a giant heap of nori and bonito shavings on top. And a teeny tiny bowl of dipping sauce. Most times when I get agedashi tofu, it gets served within the sauce. So a separate dipping bowl was a first for me. It was ok. My favorite agedashi tofu still remains at Sagami. But this dish was ginormous and quite a bargain. The server even offered to bring me another tiny bowl of the dipping sauce. I appreciated that, as there clearly wasn't enough.
It is a sushi joint, so I had to at least try something. So I got a spicy california handroll. Man, was this good. I couldn't quite figure out what made it spicy. I was thinking it was the sauce, but it also seemed like that perhaps there were super thin slices of jalapeno or something else spicy in there too. Whatever it was though, it was good eatin.
I was super hungry, so I got a bowl of the nabe yaki udon. It came in this lovely earthenware bowl with a bunch of seafood and chicken breast and a bunch of veggies and egg. The broth itself was a little bland, but I still enjoyed it. The chicken breast was suprisingly good and grilled. Aside from some dark mushrooms, there wasn't even anything else offensive in this. It was a nice bowl of udon.

This was a great meal. I would highly recommend it to anyone in the western Toronto burbs looking for some good japanese food. And it was also affordable. It was reasonably priced, even in canadian dollars, so you know it's even better in US dollars.

The service was also good. It took awhile for my server to come over initially, but after that, it was smooth sailing from there. This place is also run by koreans. You remember me saying this before. There's probably a 50/50 chance that a sushi place is run by koreans. I think what gave it away was the k-pop playing on the stereo along with bulgogi and "spicy seafood noodle soup" being on the menu.

Oh, and the other thing that gave it away. The majority of the servers were male, all dressed in black, and tall, slim, and attractive, and all looked like they were part of a k-pop boy band. Seriously. They all had extremely trendy and stylish hair (for korean hair) and were extremely well groomed and polite. The styling gel use ratio of these boys was 100%, that's for damn sure. Later in the evening, when most of the guests had left, the servers all started gathering around. And in my head, they busted into a well-choreographed dance routine and started lip-synching to some good bubblegum k-pop. Like this.

Seriously folks, it was uncanny. Can you imagine getting served sushi by these guys? Maybe they ARE part of the next up and coming k-pop act, and they all happen to work at a sushi restaurant as their day jobs. Because really, I can't imagine every day regular folk looking like this on a regular basis.

But yes, back to my point... the food and service here are good! Give these boys some love and help them pay for their guyliner!