Chatime

So after going to Chatime I've learned a couple of new things:

1) Matcha means finely milled green tea powder.

2) There's no such thing as being too full for bubble tea.

3) There's more to life than drinking taro bubble tea all the time. (In case anyone was wondering, I'm Taro and Johnny's Mango.)

My friends and I dropped by Chatime, which is just right off of Bay and Dundas, since dinner didn't seem to suffice our hungry appetites (first world problems). Chatime had a continuous flow of customers that night, although people mostly went in and out as soon as they had their drinks, but that's probably because they're a small establishment and only had a handful of tables and chairs (most of which was taken up by large chatty groups).

Chatime: Good Tea Good Time

The design of the place is modern, with white walls and purple accents, and is brightly lit. My only concern, if this counts as a concern, was that the bathroom didn't have a door that closed on it's own, and if left open, you have a full view of the toilets. Not very appetizing. The lock in the women's washroom was broken as well.

They also had random quotes about tea on the walls, which I didn't get a chance to read since I was distracted.

I ordered the Matcha Red Bean Smoothie (around $5), since the green picture on the menu caught my eye. I did wonder why it wasn't red though, since it had red beans in it, but this was before I found out what matcha was. Anyway, the cool thing about Chatime is that you can choose how much sugar you want in your bubble tea, and trying to be health conscious, I said I wanted 50%.

If you read the side of the cup it has a very amusing Engrish quote: 'We pick sweetness of dawn in order to offer you the best tea everyday.'

Sounds deep.

The picture of the Matcha Red Bean Smoothie must have been very appealing, because three of us ordered the same thing coincidentally. If you look closely we chose different sugar levels in our cups: from less-sugar to half-sugar to slight-sugar. I don't really know what the difference between less sugar and slight sugar is, it sounds the same to me. My friend who ordered less-sugar definitely had more sugar than my friend who ordered slight-sugar.

You don't have to worry too much about the vocabulary though, since the person at the counter will just ask you what percentage of sugar you want.

Overall, Chatime is probably the healthiest place you can go for bubble tea. The Matcha Red Bean Smoothie wasn't overly sweet and definitely did not taste like they used powder (too much of it anyway), and the red bean was just enough to make it sweet on its own without needing too much sugar. In fact, it felt like I was chugging down a vegetable smoothie if anything.

And although three of us got the same flavour, they definitely have a large amount of flavours to choose from.

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I mentioned in the beginning that there's no such thing as being too full for bubble tea. That's because right before, we went to the Pickle Barrel at Yonge and Dundas. Originally we were going to go to Spring Rolls, which is right above the Pickle Barrel, but the hostess was snobby and told me that she didn't room for us (there were about 15 people with us). Pickle Barrel was nice and seated us within 15 minutes.

Anyway, I'm not going to write a review for the Pickle Barrel because it's one of those restaurants that's franchised and have a step by step process for the way their food is prepared. Their food is just ok and satisfying enough. I appreciate how they have a large selection though.

I don't remember what these dishes are called. I'll make up names.

The Cheesy Pickle Burger

Mini Pickled Delights

The Big Pickle Breakfast

The Tastes Just Like Meat Vegetarian Pickle Burger

Pho Train

Toronto's downtown Chinatown has many, many Vietnamese cuisine restaurants. Among them is one of my favorites: Pho Train (or Pho Xe Lua). It's called Pho Train for the obvious reason of a train being their logo, and that many people don't know how to pronounce "Xe Lua".

The restaurant is located on the second floor on Spadina, just a bit south of Dundas. Just an FYI, the restaurant used to be located on the main floor downstairs, but it moved up about 4 years ago. It's improved for the better, customers walk up to burn calories before they consume a whole lot of calories. Brilliant!

The interior of the restaurant is built to seat as many customers as they can to make more money, hence lack of decor inside (which also means less cost for the owner). Pretty smart if you ask me.

This is their menu. A new menu actually. They only changed it from the old laminated ones a few weeks ago.

Part of their drink menu.

Their pho selection.

Self-filled order sheet. If you look closely and squint a little, you can see what my group ordered.

These bottles contain the best dipping sauce for the pieces of meat from pho. Seafood sauce and hot sauce (aka Srirachar rooster sauce). Not all Vietnamese restaurants have the same ones but Pho Train chose right.

This is what I ordered: Pho 101, aka the house special. I always order the house special because it usually has everything. Fresh raw/cooked beef, beef briskets, tendon, tripe, seasoned with a bit of green onions. The only thing that's missing are the beef balls, but it's still amazing.

A few things to caution the readers: The stock they use has a bit of MSG added for "flavoring", but it's not too much to ruin the taste. I think it's just right. Their noodles are a bit thicker/wider than most pho places, but I personally like it better this way.

This is the side platter of stuff to add into the pho for taste and texture: basal leaves, fresh bean sprouts, and lime slices.

A little lesson on how I normally eat pho for the lesser trained or the curious ones:

1) Push down the raw beef to cook

2) Squeeze in one slice of lime, add 5 basal leaves, and some bean sprouts. Stir the bowl to mix and make sure the raw beef gets cooked.

3) Prepare 2 spoons: one for dipping sauce and the other for soup

4) Dip meat, eat noodles, drink soup and repeat step 4 until finished

Ann ordered 103 which has rare beef and tripe.

This is an advocado milk shake that we got. I guess they ran out of glass cups and gave it to us for take out. Regardless, it was great. It tastes just the way I make it and I am a professional advocado milkshake maker since this was all I drank everyday for the past summer.

Overall, I'd say that Pho Train is simply superbly sublime and I'd recommend it to anyone any day for pho. Pho tastes great, the price is reasonable, and the portions are more than enough. It's hard to find a place that satisfies all three things that I look for in a restaurant. So if you aren't looking for good atmosphere or good service and just want to sit down with a nice and tasty, cheap hot bowl of pho, then Pho Train is your best bet!

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Here's my ranking for the pho places in Toronto Chinatown in case you are curious. This list is soley based on taste (note where Pho Train is on the list)

Pho Pasteur - best
Pho Hung (Spadina)
Pho Train
Pho Hung (Bloor)
An Dao
Pho Ai
Hanoi Bistro
Sai Gon Palace Restaurant
Ginger (Queen)
Pho 88 (Spadina) - worst

Feed the Streets: Chili Recipe

If you're ever looking to feed a large amount of people with a small amount of time, chili is usually the go to dish. There are a lot of different chili recipes out there that vary in boldness, taste, spice and flavour - so you can adjust the recipe according to who you're feeding. In this case, I participated in an outreach event to feed the homeless of Toronto, so spice was out of the question since I didn't expect the homeless to care much for spice.

I found a really simple chili recipe online that required no vegetables - gasp! - which in the long run saved us a lot of time since chopping up the vegetables would have made the recipe twice as long to prepare. We bought most of the ingredients in cans, so all we had to do was open it up and dump it in the pot, the only thing we had to do was cut the onions (thankfully we had a recruit of manly mans who volunteered to shed the tears).

Here's the recipe:

1 pound ground beef

1 onion

1 can stewed tomatoes

1 can tomato sauce

1 can kidney beans

2 cans mushroom

Chili powder

Garlic powder

Salt and Pepper to taste

Water as needed

Directions:

1) Saute beef and onions in a pan

2) Dump everything in a pot, add spices to taste. Bring to a boil then let simmer.

Overall preparation and cooking time:

1 hour

Multiply the recipe as needed, depending on how many people you're planning to feed. In our case, we multiplied it by 4.

There's really not much to this recipe, but I just wanted to blog about this so I could share some thoughts to those who may be thinking of doing something similar. I hesitated for a long time in making this event because there seemed to be a lot of cautionary preparations that needed to be done, and if there are other people who are hesitating as well, here are some of what we did that might help you out:

1) You can get styrofoam containers from random chinese restaurants. We had to ask around in a couple of places, but eventually we found some that were willing to sell us containers with lids. This time around, we managed to get $0.20 per container at Lucky Moose in downtown Toronto.

2) Don't stack the containers on top of each other! Especially if the chili is hot because it will break. Place a cardboard box between each layer of chili.

3) Since it was winter when we did this, the chili will get cold if you don't use heat insulating bags.

4) We also added a dinner roll with the chili. Some people will ask for water though, so it would be a good idea to give water as well.

So that's it, a simple ingredient that brought a smile to those who needed one :)

Big Sushi

As part of its name entails, Big Sushi is a restaurant that serves sushi and some other Japanese dishes. It doesn't look like much from the outside, but it's actually quite spacious inside and can seat more people in the "back area." There is possibly room to seat 60 people (of course I am guesstimating). Maybe that's why it's "Big"?

Its carrying capacity is good for big groups, such as my fellowship on Friday nights since we like to dine out together and can be a group as big as 20 people.

The restaurant is located in the Annex, at 388 Bloor St. W.

This is the back area of the restaurant.

Ann and I found it strangely funny how their menu doesn't have a cover page. We kept trying to look for one through several menus and they all start with the beverage page. It gets straight to the point.

I made a paper ninja star/shuriken when I was waiting for my food to come.

Origami: something to do while waiting for food aside from conversing or taking pictures of things.

Some of the dishes come with complimentary salad and miso soup. Pretty standard stuff for a Japanese restaurant. This salad tastes a bit better than it looks.

I ordered the Spicy Salmon/Tuna (crispy) roll. It has a bit of a kick to it as the name suggests, but if you can get pass that.. the taste is simply amazing. Maybe best spicy salmon crisp roll yet? (comment if you think otherwise). I tried my friend's the previous time we dined here and had craved it ever since. This shall be my "pork bone soup" for Japanese restaurants from here on. That or... chicken/beef bentos.

This is what Ann ordered: Vegetarian Udon. I didn't try it but I think it needs some meat or some sort of protein.

I really like Big Sushi, however, I should caution readers that their tempuras can be really greasy/oily. At least that's what I found for the tempuras in their bentos, it was enough to give everyone indigestion afterwards.

Costco Hot Dog

Not a restaurant, but I vowed to write about all things food when Johnny and I created this blog, and Costco definitely falls under that category.

Costco is just one of those magical warehouses that entices you to buy EVERYTHING since things in bulk just appeal to that little voice in our head that says, "More is better!" Too bad Costco doesn't allow photographs to be taken though, otherwise I would have gone camera crazy and taken pictures of all the happy things my greedy self wants (but not need). And the free samples they offer are enough to keep you full until your next meal.

One of the things I love about Costco is their cheap hot dogs. My friend whom I went to Costco with said, "It's funny that it's only when I'm in Costco that I ever think of buying a hot dog." This is probably because it's only 1.50 with a drink and free refills; rumor has it that the price hasn't changed since 1984. That's one hefty rumor to have to live by.

With a warm bun, a thick and juicy hotdog, bell peppers, mustard, relish - is there anything that isn't wrong with this hot dog?

My friend opted for the sausage option (same price) and haphazardly decorated his with ketchup, mustard, and onions.

We got a side of fries and gravy (about $2 something).

Costco will definitely always be my go to for a quick hot dog fix (that and the various hot dog stands on campus - more on this later!)

Bonga Buldak: Home of Hot Taste

I had dinner at Bonga Buldak, located on Yonge St., for the first time a few nights ago with a couple of friends, and I gotta say that I have mixed feelings about this place. And here's why...

I hadn't eaten all day that day and was starving so I just wanted something filling. It was either this place or some other place for pancakes. I guess Korean food sounded more filling.


The interior of this place reminds me of a Korean pub that I really like (Camto). So I had a really good first impression of the place.


I wasn't feeling too adventurous that day, just like always, so I decided to stick to my usual order for Korean places: Gam Ja Tang - aka pork bone soup. It's a Korean staple, surely it can't go wrong.


Normally Korean restaurants provide lots of complimentry side dishes, but this place only gave us a medium sized salad to be shared between 4 people. Four very hungry people at that. I'm not impressed.


This is my pork bone soup... Now, I love pork bone soup and have had it at many many different korean restaurants. So as a pork bone soup enthusiast, I can tell you that there are 2 types of pork bone soups out there. 1) the one that they make with Korean red pepper powder and Korean red pepper paste, and 2) the one that they make with black pepper.

My personal favorite is the one that they make with Korean red pepper powder and Korean red pepper paste. You can easily tell by the color of the stew. Brigher red tends to be the good kind, whereas, darker and brownish color tends to be the one with black pepper. This one was more on the brown side.


This is what my friend ordered: Spicy blazing chicken with rice. I didn't try it so I won't comment.


This is another dish that my other friend ordered: Squid pancake. It tasted amazing, I really like the fish flakes with the pancake. It was supposed to have bacon in it but my friend is no longer eating meat.

Overall, the only thing that really stood out was this pancake. I thought the other dishes were just ok.

I think the most annoying part about dining here was the bill. We had asked to pay separately, but it took the waitress more than 5 minutes to get that sorted out. Normally, at other Korean restaurants, they separate the bill by calculating each individual dish separately using a calculator, but the waitress was busy trying to figure out how to print the receipt separately for each person. It was taking a lot longer than I would have liked since I just wanted to pay and leave.

Karine's Breakfast

Karine's serves all day breakfast at affordable prices and is located in Village by the Grange, aka OCAD's cafeteria or the grange. I've known about this place for more than half a year but I just never dared to try it because of how... different it is. Every so often when I eat at the grange with my friends, I'd see them with a platter from the Karine's (or the breakfast place as we'd like to call it).



How is it different? Allow me to explain what a typical visit at the breakfast place is like:

Normally, one of the older female staff, named Maggie, takes your order and she makes the place. Unfortunately, she wasn't there at the time when I took these photos but what she does when you order is call you baby, darling, sweetie, honey, etc. So every time I go there, I'm always wondering to myself what she's gonna call me that day. And she'd ask you for your name to go along with the order so they can call you by your name when your order is ready. Quite personal really. That was one of the reasons why I didn't want to try it before but it's starting to grow on me.



They have many different kinds and combinations of breakfast but the one I usually get is the $5 one, where you get to choose how you like your egg (over easy, sunny side up, scrambled, etc.), toast or plain bread (there's vegan bread too for an extra $1.50), regular or garlic fries, choice of sausage or bacon or salad, fresh fruits, and unlimited beverage (coffee, tea, fruit water).

Look at this goodness!


My favorite combo is over easy, sausage, garlic fries, toast and half coffee half tea. Yum!



I like their mugs.

This is definitely my new to-go place for a cheap and somewhat healthy meal.

Gourmet of Malaysia

Years from now, when we're old and no longer broke students, we'll reminisce about food we once ate. We'll say to each other, "Remember that time we went to Gourmet of Malaysia that one Sunday?"

And someone will say, "Yes! But I can't remember what we ate. I just remember having a good time."

Food is about enjoying it with people you love, and the more people the merrier. It's when you eat with people you love that the food becomes memories.

Last Sunday, we went to Gourmet of Malaysia in Scarborough (near Scarborough Town Centre) which has a mix of Malaysian and Asian Cuisines. There isn't a lot of Malaysian restaurants around Toronto, and this one was recommended because it was an old time favourite of our hosts.

It's a large restaurant, and there are two small party rooms you can book in the back. It was pretty empty that afternoon though. They also had different sized and different textured hearts floating around throughout the restaurant, so many that they fell on the ground when we brushed up against it (well, it is valentines day weekend after all).

I don't know why I have a thing for menu's. Maybe it's because they're all so cheesy looking, with random back splashes and pictures of food - or maybe I just like them because they're portals to indulgence.

I think the prices are more than reasonable. We didn't order from the menu though, since our host pre-ordered for us. Good thinking since there was a lot of us that went.

Our appetizer:

Satay Chicken, naan/roti, cucumbers, sweet peanut sauce, and chicken kabobs.

Warning:

I probably got the names of some of what is on the plate wrong. I'm not good with food. I was actually confused as to whether the bread was naan or roti for a long time, until a friend said that it's most probably naan, but Johnny swears it's roti. I don't know who to trust: my Indian friend who probably knows her stuff, or Johnny, who googled it. I'm going to do the Canadian thing and compromise. In any case, my limited food expertise only means I have to eat more.

The main course:

What looks like egg on top of the rice is a pineapple, part of the seafood pineapple fried rice. The rest of the contents of this plate will be dissected with the following pictures.

Vegetable Heart or Choy Sum in Canto. I asked a handful of people what this was called in English and no one could remember the name (probably due to the food coma we were all in after the meal) so I'm just going to call it vegetable heart. That's the thing with dining in Toronto: you're bound to eat and encounter a variety of different types of food you won't know the name of. The description for this dish was 'Vegetable with Garlic' though. Seems simple enough! (When in doubt, call anything green vegetable.)

They hand wrote the name for this dish and I couldn't make it out, but this should be Char Kway Teow (the restaurant spelt it a bit differently). I felt like this complimented the spicy chicken dish.

This one made some people sweat since it had a lot of chili and chicken, but it wouldn't have been a complete Malaysian meal without a touch of something spicy. Just try and avoid biting into the chili unless you're absolutely sure you can handle spice!

And last but not least, dessert!

Buboh Cha Cha is served hot and is sweet. It has taro, sweet potato, tapioca, black eyed beans, and coconut milk. I personally really liked this, but some people didn't like how sweet it was. I think this combination is typical in Asia though, I remember my grandma making a similar type dessert (the filipino version of it).