Food sampling in Midtown Toronto

The area around midtown Toronto where we live is abundant with opportunities to be offered free food samples from various food stores and supermarkets. If you know the lay of the land, you can score a nice selection of samplings and get a good walk out of it too. Bring your wallet though, because if the samplings do the job that they are meant to, you might be tempted into making more purchases than you originally intended to. Some good opportunities exist at the following locations:

• Bruno's Fine Foods at 1560 Yonge St. often put out grapes, bagette slices with olive oil occasionally with balsamic vinegar or dips, and slices of banana or even chocolate-banana loaf cake. Sometimes there are cheese squares or meat samplings from the deli section
  
• The Flagship LCBO at 10 Scrivener Square has regular liquor and food tastings, especially on the weekends between 1-4pm. Two main food stands at either end of the store often have small samplings of wines, scotch, beers, coolers, etc. usually with a tray of cheese, fruit or small hors d'oeuvres. Even better is when the Event Kitchen features chefs who prepare food right on the premise in order to promote their restaurants, usually paired with some sort of liquor sampling. Or for a nominal fee from 50 cents to several dollars, on any day you can purchase a sample from hundreds of different wines and spirits in the Clock Tower Tasting room.
• All The Best Fine Foods at 1101 Yonge St. always has some fine cheeses featured for sampling at their cheese counter. If you wander around the store, you'll occasionally find some cake or pastry offerings, as well as their store brand cheese sticks and featured dips including my favourites - Garlic/Dill, Edamame/Miso or Crab/Cheese
  
• William Sonoma at 100 Bloor St. often offer apple cider or hot chocolate in the winter. Throughout the year, if you time it right, there might be some cooking demonstrations in their kitchen which result in samplings of baked goods, soups, or whatever happens to be on the stove. The best sampling I ever got was from this store, when the chef of Splendido was passing out small portions of beef tenderloin with mash potato and aspargus. I have yet to top that one!
• EPI Breads at 1526 Bayview is my favourite bakery in Toronto and sells an excellent selection of freshly baked breads, some of which are always offered for sampling. EPI also sells great hummus and pestos, soups and pastries including a delicious chocolate almond croissant
  

The larger Loblaws stores like the one on 396 St.Clair often offer samples of their new products, especially the new President's Choice items when they put out the Insiders' Report. In the past, we've sampled their Bison burger, Lamb burger, Old Fashioned lemonade, Ice Tea, etc.

Holidays, especially Christmas are a great time to find tasting opportunities as stores put out samplings of chocolates, pastries, Christmas fruit cakes and prepared foods to lure shoppers already in the buying mood. The usual places will put out extra offerings while even unusual places could get into the act. I tried some free chocolate at Shoppers Drug Mart just the other day.

Be careful to make sure what looks like a sample is really a sample though. Once we were merrily tasting mini sausage rolls in a basket when suddenly we saw the price sign which had tipped over. We shamefully slunk away without being noticed and arbitrarily bought something out of guilt. Since we usually spend so much money at this shop, I think in the long run they've come out ahead, but I've been extra careful ever since.

Chinese Dining Experiences

A few things have changed since my first blog article called "Eating Dim Sum with my White Guy Husband" written back in 2005. Rich now considers himself a pro amongst his coworkers in terms of Chinese dining knowledge and leads them fearlessly to Dim Sum in Mississauga. He can order common dishes by their Cantonese names, abet still mangling the intonations even when he nails the sounds. He even has his favourite restaurants where he is considered a regular, almost to the point of the proprietors calling him by name like in Cheers and pre-cooking his usual dishes as he walks through the door.

One of our regular haunts is D&R Wing's Restaurant which makes what Rich considers the best Curry Chicken and Rice in Toronto. Large chunks of breaded chicken with green peppers, roast potato and onions are covered with a thick rich green curry that has a strong spicy kick to it, and comes with a large heaping of white steamed rice. The restaurant serves Hong Kong style fast food dishes comprised of curries, stir fries and baked dishes that can be eaten as complete individual meals that include meat/seafood, vegetable and starch (usually steamed or fried rice, or spagetti). This contrasts with Cantonese or other Chinese style dinner places where multiple dishes are ordered to share. Other choices include the Portuguese Chicken (chicken and onions baked in a coconut cream sauce, Pork Chop cutlet, Black Pepper Beef and a Baked Seafood dish in a creamy sauce with lightly fried and seasoned rice. At around $7-10 a dish, it makes for a quick cheap meal.

Another favourite restaurant of ours is Chui Chow Boy, which serves cuisine from the south-eastern region of China called Chui Chow or ChaoShan (or many other spellings) within the Guangdong province. The food is slightly spicier than Cantonese cooking, but not as much as Szechuan, so it strikes a nice delicate balance with just enough flavour to keep it interesting. We've been here multiple times now, both because we really like it and also since it is close to where my parents live so we can get them there easily. Rich's favourite dish is the pan-fried turnips and crunchy bean sprouts with XO sauce, which consists of dried shrimps and scallops, chili oil, onion, garlic and dry cured ham. My favourites are the perfectly cooked breaded squid, or any of the dishes made with Chinjew sauce. This could be chicken, beef or shrimp stir-fried in a peppery sauce that comes with crispy fried spinach that provides an interesting texture and is reminiscent of the seaweed snacks that you can get at the Chinese grocery stores. This restaurant was recommended by Globe and Mail food critic Joanne Kates as one of her top 5 "under $50" picks.

Recently we went out as a group of 8 friends to a restaurant called Lee Garden. While in the heart of downtown Chinatown and serving authentic Cantonese style food, this restaurant catered to Caucasian clientele in terms of atmosphere as well as price point. It was brightly lit, clean, with English on the menus (also posted on the web) and English speaking waiters. The night we went, it was populated with as many non Chinese patrons as Chinese ones, which is usually a harbinger of North Americanized food - but not in this case. The prices are higher than other Chinese restaurants ($14-22 for meat/seafood, $11-15 for noodles), which is still relatively inexpensive compared to Continental dining but more than many Chinese deem worth spending.

However the food was delicious, well portioned and included many unique choices that are different than the usual fare. Two highlights of the meal stood out for us. The first was the seared beef tenderloin with avocado, sweet red peppers and cashew nuts which delightfully mixed a variety of tastes and textures.

The second was a described as crispy deep-fried shrimp and tofu balls in a garlic mushroom sauce that were crunchy on the outside with delicious steaming hot minced shrimp and tofu on the inside. The savoury sauce was served on the side so that you could help yourself to as much or as little as your wanted. I personally love sauce on all my food, but these balls were just as good without it.

The best way to experience this type of Chinese communal dining is in a large group of 6 or more, so that you can try a bit of many different types of dishes. Even better is if your group includes seasoned Chinese speaking and reading companions who can steer you towards the chef's specialities. This is especially important in some restaurants where the "good stuff" is only shown on the Chinese version of the menu. In this case, all the choices seemed to be represented in English so that Rich and I can go back and order them ourselves. Just in case though, I took a photo of all the food so that in the worse case, I could have showed my photo and said "I want this again!".

D&R Wing's Restaurant
325 Bamburgh Circle - (416)502-0862

Chui Chow Boy
3261 Kennedy Road - (416)355-0336

Lee Garden
331 Spadina Road - (416) 593-9524

Monk's Table - Beer Tasting Mondays

If you would like to try an assortment of exotic beers from around Europe, the Monk's Table is the place to go. Located on Yonge St just north of the Summerhill subway station, it is a pub on the first floor and restaurant on the second floor. You can order from an extremely wide selection of beers and have them described to you in detail by waiters who seem to double as beer sommeliers.

On many Monday evenings, they offer a 5 course beer tasting and food pairing menu for about $50-60. Each course comes with a tasting size of food and a generous amount of beer, considering you would eventually get 5 of them. With each course, the beer sommelier described the nature of the food and the beer, and the reason behind the pairing. Non-beer drinkers like myself could just partake in the food for a discounted price.

Our tasting began with savory blue cheese, pecan and apricot tarts paired with a Twisted Thistle from Scotland. The beer was described as an India Pale Ale which was orange amber colour, with hops prominent in its aroma and flavour. The blue cheese pairing was supposed to bring out the flavour in both the beer and the cheese. Since I was not drinking the beer, I took his word for this and soon stopped paying attention the descriptions after this. In retrospect, I guess Rich should really be writing this article so he could attest first hand whether these descriptions were accurate.

This was followed by a spicy piece of chicken pierced by a cinnamon stick on top of a fig sauce. This came with a glass of Saint Martin Blond from Belgium, which the Internet describes as a hazy gold beer with a creamy white head with a yeasty, slightly spicy and fruity flavour.

The next course was my favourite both from a taste and presentation perspective. It was a called "smoke salmon lollipops" with tuna carpaccio where the lollipops were rolled up balls of smoked salmon and cream cheese and the "stick" of the lollipop consisted of enoki mushrooms. This came with a glass of Hacker-Pschorr Dunkel Weisse from Germany which is a mild hazy brown beer with a malty, nutty aroma. I found it interesting that each beer came with its own shaped glass and coaster that was designed specifically for it. Also each beer so far has varied in taste, colour, and country of origin.

The main course was an apricot stuffed meat loaf with a red-wine infused mash potato and steamed rapini (another course with apricots - must have been on sale that day!). This came with an Abbot Ale from England that has been described to have a toffee or caramel taste to it. Before a dispute amongst the owners led to a change, the original name of this bar was "Abbot on the Hill". I wonder if it was named after this beer?

The final dessert course was a grapefruit pavlova, which was a grapefruit flavoured meringue with whipping cream and an orange slice on top. The beer was La Trappe Quadruple from Amsterdam described as light and fruity with a hint of spice.

It was a good experience for Rich to try so many different types of beers and was fun for him to listen to the server describe each one of them. For me, the food was only average for this tasting - I've actually had better food here just ordering off the regular menu which includes some very traditional British/Scottish fare like the Scotch Egg. But then I guess the beer was supposed to be the highlight of the evening for this tasting menu and the food probably went much better with the beer. All in all, it was a fun night and a different experience and luckily it was only a short stroll afterwards as I guided a slightly tipsy Rich back home.

1276 Yonge Street
416 920-9074

Rio 40 Degrees - Brazilian/Portuguese Dining

I'm not sure if this is true for all Brazilian restaurants or just this one, but I learned one thing at Rio 40 Degrees on St. Clair West - the portions are huge! When Rich and I dine out, we usually like to each have an appetizer prior to our main course. Many times I find the appetizer is the most innovative and tasty part of the menu, and the course of my meal that I enjoy the most.

So for our starters, I chose Iscas de peixe - breaded fish fingers ($10) and Rich chose the Picanha com mandicoca - strips of rump steak with fried onions and cassava ($13). I thought that we could also share a small house salad as well, just to give us some vegetables - it only cost $3 so how big could it be?? Well, we soon found out that each of our "appetizers" were enough to feed a family of 4. The salad you see on both those plates are from the same "small" salad! It was an amazing salad too, with lettuce, tomato, olives, cucumber and artichoke (my new go-to vegetable). The fish fingers came as a huge plate of large chunks of white fish, lightly coated with breading and accompanied with a delicious mayo-based rose dipping sauce. And then came the equally gigantic plate of tender rump steak strips with a heaping side of fried onions and roasted cassava, which is a potato-like root vegetable with a unique flavour.

Needless to say, we were stuffed after the appetizers (which we could not finish!) and still had the mains to come. For the main, we each ordered the Moqueca de peixe - halibut cooked in palm oil, tomatoes, green peppers, onions, coconut milk, baby shrimp, coriander leaaves and spices, served with rice and cassva route flour puree ($17). Again, we didn't realize that this course came as a enormous pot of stew that could feed a small army. Luckily, the waitress had taken pity on us (or could not believe we meant what we asked for) and only wrote down one order of the main. Even so, we only took a few bites of it and then decided to pack up the table full of food to take home and eat tomorrow. The thought of dessert did not even cross our minds as we hefted our doggy-bagged load and waddled out of the restaurant.

In hindsight, as usual we enjoyed the appetizer courses more than the main, partly because we were stuffed by then and partly because we found the main a bit bland and soupy. So next time we come back, we might just eat appetizers as the whole dinner... or maybe only 1 or 2 appetizers instead of 3! Rio 40 Degrees is great value for the money and was full of Brazilian/Portuguese clientele, so I think the food is the real deal.

1256 St Clair Avenue West, Toronto, ON M6E 1B9
Telephone : 416-651-1476

Grilled Cheese - Kensington Market

Tucked away on a little side street off the main drag of Kensington Market is a little restaurant called "Grilled Cheese" that sells gourmet variations on the grilled cheese sandwich, for prices ranging from $6 to $10. Served on a choice of breads, you can try sandwiches such as Mushroom madness (Cheddar & portabello), Pizza Grill (Basil Pesto, provalone, spinach, peopperoni and bacon), The Beast (Jalepeno, Monteray Jack, Baccon, Turkey, Onion, Tomato and so forth.

When Rich and I found this place, we had actually just finished eating a light dinner around the corner and were going for a stroll to walk off the meal. With chagrin, we went in to inspect the options and told the server regretfully that we had already eaten, so maybe next time. We walked out of the restaurant and almost got to the curb before we simultaneously decided that it would not kill us to split one small little grilled cheese sandwich as "dessert". Back in we went and sheepishly ordered the "Grilled Motzy", which had mozzerella, basil pesto, sundried tomato and arugula, on rye bread. The sandwich came with a pickle and some potato chips. While the sandwich was tasty and having veggies in my grilled cheese made me feel healthier, what I love is the concept! This is something that even the amateur cook could make at home, given the proper ingredients.

The grilled cheese sandwich seems to be quite in vogue these days and there have even been grilled cheese recipe contests. In fact, our niece Lindsay placed second with her winning recipe of gorgonzola, chevre noir, and sliced pears on german white bread with a sweetened horseradish ... yum!

66 1/2 Nassau St
(647) 347-7062

Debus Nouvelle Indian Cuisine

When you think Indian cuisine, do you imagine the standard fare of butter chicken, kormas and curries? If you are looking for something new and exciting in Indian food, Debus Nouvelle Indian Cuisine is a place to try. The menu is very small, offering only a couple of choices for appetizer and entree, and changes frequently. But what is offered is refreshingly unique compared to other standard Indian restaurants. Even traditional items are served with a special flair and presentation and taste.

We started with the best vegetable pakora I've ever had, served as a towering mound stuffed into a papadum basket. The pakoras had an extremely light panko-bread crumb-like coating and I was fighting Rich over the last ones. It was presented on a pretty tear-drop shaped dish with dabs of various sauces that were delightful both visually and to the taste buds. This was followed with a tandoori shrimp salad consisting of huge succulent grilled shrimp on a bed of greens and tomato.

The main course offered either chicken or halibut "served three ways". We opted for the halibut and got a minature fish and chip (note - not chips but one big chip), a fish cake with mint sauce and pan-seared halibut crusted with tandoori spices and curry leaves. Being able to try small amounts of different items really appeals to me. Rich ordered the same thing so that I wouldn't be able to steal of sample of his meal.. I've noticed he's used this trick quite a bit lately!

Rich ended the meal with Rice pudding which I just had a small taste of, since the Chinese-ness in me can't get used to rice being sweet. Given how often the menu changes, you can go back repeatedly to try new things. Entrees run from about $16-22 while appetizers are $10 and up. This is a great place to get a new dining experience in Indian cuisine.

552 Mount Pleasant Road
416-927-9340
http://www.debusaha.com/

Frida - Mexican Fine Dining

In general, I don't like beans - navy, lima, kidney, and definitely not refried or mushy beans found in traditional Mexican food. So generally I don't like the usual Mexican restaurants with the tacos and burritos (except for Burrito Boys, but that is a different blog entry). I got a taste of what high-end Mexican dining could be like when I went to Topolo-Bampo in Chicago. Ever since then, I've been seeking something similar in Toronto and now I've found it in the restaurant Frida, named after the painter Frida Kahlo. It was a bit disconcerting to be surrounded by photos of the bushy-browed artist, including the photo for the women's washroom (a hobby of mine is to collect photos of bathroom signs for men vs women's washrooms and this was an excellent addition).

We started the evening with the best tortilla chips and avocado dip that I've ever had. The chips were light, crispy and not oily while the avocado dip was flavourful with just enough spice to make it interesting. My main course consisted of jumbo shrimp covered in a tomato based guajillo pepper sauce, served with rice, spinach and grilled artichoke. Rich had a slow braised lamb covered in morita sauce (chiles, goat cheese) with roasted potatos and the only type of bean that I like - green beans!

We ended the meal with churros filled with caramel accompanied by a blueberry coulis. And while we were eating, we were serenaded by a guitar player and jazz singer that opened her mouth so wide while she was singing that I could not help but stare at her.

The menu was wide and varied and featured authentic Mexican ingredients and spices and dishes that were different from the "North-Americanized" versions of Mexican food. Most entrees were around $18-28. This was a very enjoyable experience that needs to be repeated soon.

999 Eglinton Avenue West
416-787-2221
www.fridarestaurant.ca/

Mezzetta Café Restaurant - Mediterranean Tapas

Having just been to Barcelona, I am quite familiar with the concept of Spanish tapas, which involves eating many small dishes of a variety of meats, seafood and vegetables. Since I love to sample and grew up on Dim Sum, this is the ideal style of eating for me. So imagine my delight to discover Mezzetta, which is a middle Eastern, Mediterreanean tapas place with very cheap but good food. Mezze means little appetizer and they certainly have a huge selection to choose from.

Dishes range from the traditional dips (hummus, baba gannous), grilled/steamed/fried vegetables (eggplant, cauliflower, green beans, mushroom, falafal, etc.), all types of meat and fish dishes including kabobs, puffs, wraps, and a limited selection of desserts.

While each dish is usually $3.50, there is so much to choose from, that the most fun and economical way to go is "Chef's Choice". The Chef will choose 10 selections for $32 for 2 people, or 20 selections for $64 for 4 people. Four people is the way to go since you all get to try so many different things. On Mondays, every second selection is $1.42, Tuesdays all selections are $2.42 and Wednesdays have live music at 9 and 10:15pm for a cover charge.

681 Saint Clair Avenue West
416-658-5687
www.mezzettarestaurant.com