Monday, February 25, 2013

Twin Fish

Twin Fish Thai Cuisine is a restaurant in the AMC plaza off of Hurontario in Mississauga.
Many people have recommended this Thai place so I decided to check it out for myself.

This is a very small restaurant seating around 30 people or so. The menu is quite large, so the selections were quite difficult to make. The majority of the flavours are the same but the meat choices are different.

I decided to get the basil chicken. This chicken was interesting in flavour but worked well! Many veggies good chunks of chicken and a pretty good size amount of rice. When you eat the basil leaves you can really taste the basil! As for the sauce, I have no idea what kind of sauce that is but it was quite good!

Tatiana decided to get the vegetarian pad thai. I found this pad thai to be bland in flavour comparatively to other pad thais I have had before. I wasn't a big fan mainly because it was lacking flavour. It could be for the fact that it was vegetarian so the sodium levels were a little lower for healthy eating. Next time I'll try a meat pad thai.


This is one of the starters available to eat which has 5~6 different items on the plate including 3 different dipping sauces. The dipping sauces were fish sauce, peanut sauce, and spicey fish sauce? The last one I couldn't really tell because it tasted very similar to the first sauce. This is a good dish to get as you get a small serving of each appetizer available! Overall quite good, but for this amount of food I found it a little expensive.


I also had the won ton soup, which I regret as I was at a Thai restaurant and not a Chinese one. The won ton soup was ovverrrrrly salty, too salty but the meat inside was quite good.

Overall I would rate this place a 77% As the food was good, the service was nice, the prices are good.
A very standard restaurant that isn't amazing but doesn't disappoint, I have had better Thai food but not bad for Mississauga.

Try this place out sometime!


Twin Fish on Urbanspoon

Hinote Sushi

Hinote Sushi is a small restaurant in Mississauga off of Mavis and Bristol. This is a korean run small restaurant much like Sushi One. The first time I came here for dinner I was extremely disappointed. I ordered a 40~50 piece sushi boat with my girlfriend and 70~80% of the fish was salmon. How disappointed was I to find this out when I got the boat. The assorted boat was more like a salmon boat. I remember specifically that there was only 1 roll of red tuna (which is my favourite). I would rate this place a 60% as I was so disappointed.

However!! I came back at lunch with a couple of coworkers and decided to get the 72 piece boat.


Now mind you 50% of it is salmon, but at least they had a little more variety. If you are a salmon lover you would love this place.

Now this sushi boat looked nice, the quality was quite good, the taste was also quite good. The price however was quite expensive. This meal came to about 25$ a person (100$) for lunch. Yes there are plenty of other options like combo boxes but they are all salmon anyways. I wanted variety.

After coming back to this place, I would rate this differently but I will keep in mind that the first time here was still disappointing and looking at the menu, it is heavy heavy salmon lovers delight.

I would rate this place an 80% for quality, 60% for price, 75% for service.
Overall I am happy to give this place 74% as the prices are too high for what they serve. I would come back to this place, however there is always a better sushi restaurant just around the corner. :3

Try this place out if you love salmon! If not, try another place!


Hinote Sushi on Urbanspoon

Le Petite France

For Winterlicious we decided to go to Le Petite France in Etobicoke off of Bloor.
This tiny restaurant was packed for lunch, most likely because of winterlicious and the service was extremely slow as the entrance was clogged with people.

I have taken a picture of the menu and we decided to order the crab cake, soup of the day, chicken with red wine and the steamed mussels. 


Let us start with the appetizers, we got the crab cake with spicey sauce and the soup of the day which was a spinach soup. The soup was very disappointing, I think it was supposed to be a hot soup, but it was served cold. I have had cold soup before and was very similar to this bowl. Much to my dislike of the cold soup that I have previously had (cold asparagus soup) this tasted the same. It had a very bland taste, couldn't really tell it was spinach except by the colour and there was nothing to it. It seemed like blended spinach with water. The crab cake however was quite good! The better of the two appetizers served with some mangos too for an intriguing taste.


For the main I got the chicken with red wine, this was very good. I really enjoyed this dish! The meat cleanly fell of the bones, the gravey like sauce was salty but still good and the veggies were just drenched in the same sauce which I didn't mind. Overall great chicken!


Tatiana decide to get the chips and steamed mussels. The mussels were cooked well and the sauce on top was very good too. I find the combination of chips and mussels a weird combination but I have noticed it is quite common. This dish was good, but sub par compared to the chicken up top.


The desserts were the exciting part of the meal! I had the creme caramel and Tatiana had the lemon pie! The lemon pie was zesty and refreshing, while the creme caramel was sweet and soft. These desserts were good!


Now this was winterlicious and the set menu for lunch was 15$. This was amazing for 15$. I will be rating this as a winterlicious rating rather then a regular visit rating.

I would rate this a 78% as the price is phenomenal the quantity of food is good the combination of foods is also good. The food quality ranged from poor to high but overall liked by me.

I am not sure how I would rate this place if the prices were much higher and not during winterlicious!
I'll just have to try another time.


La Petite France on Urbanspoon

Friday, February 15, 2013

Milagro

Milagro Cantina Mexicana was suggested by Tatiana's sister. We were in the Roy Thomson Hall area and looked up some good restaurants and decided to check this place out!

We looked at the menu and some food blogs about this restaurant and knew what we wanted to try once we got there. We were both quite full already so we decided to eat light. I also took a picture of their menu!


As the guacamole was suggested by Tatiana's sister we had to try it out! Man oh man, this was the best guacamole I had in the GTA. The avocado was so creamy, so soft, but this guacamole wasn't very citricy and was just perfect. The nachos were a little on the salty side but pfffff the guacamole was so good!! Sorry for the dark picture as I didn't have the brightness turned up on my camera.


Tatiana tried the margarita and it wasn't bad, tasted like any alcoholic beverage in my opinion.


Now I saw a picture of the seared tuna already and I LOOOOOOOVE red tuna. I had to try this dish out! It is definitely pricey but it is red tuna! This was perfect as I had a one pound steak for lunch and was still feeling full for dinner! The tuna is lightly seared and was on a bed of cucumbers with a side of avocado. The sauce was a limey soy sauce and went pretty well with the tuna! At first it was extremely good but eventually the sauce started to get a little too salty as it was sitting in the sauce. Still very very good!


 Tatiana got the fish tacos! I have no idea what was inside this fish taco but wowwwww.... such such such such good flavours here! So hard to describe, the bite tasted amazing! It was creamy, crunchy, soft, just a jumble of flavours that worked so well! The fish was red snapper and was deep fried like a fish stick. So good! I would come back just for this taco, but I would like to try their octopus+fish taco next time!


 This dessert was a goat milk creme brulee. It was extremely sweet and had a hint of stinkiness and I think that was the goat milk. Not bad, but I would probably not recommend it. I also had their coffee with this dessert and ohhh man was that ever strong coffee! It was like an espresso in the size of a coffee cup!


Overall I would rate this place an 85%! The prices are average, the food was great and the service was not bad! I would definitely come back again!

Try it out if you are in the area!


Milagro Restaurante Mexicano Y Cantina on Urbanspoon

Saigon Star

Saigon star is a restaurant off Highway 7 in Richmond Hill, close to Commerce Gate. This is in the asian part of town and is a gem in my opinion!

I'm not entirely sure why they have a rating of 64% on Urbanspoon but I'd like to change that!

Lets start off with their famous curry crab that everyone goes there for. The curry crab is hit or miss in my opinion. I have had their curry many many times and some days the curry is absolutely fantastic and sometimes it is very okay in my opinion. The picture I have posted below is a picture of the curry chicken and not the crab. The time I had the curry crab it was fantastic! The curry flavour was great and the crab juices made the curry even richer with flavour. This time the curry chicken was a miss in my opinion as sometimes the chicken is cooked to perfection and just falls right off the bone and tastes phenomenal but not this time!


There are a few dishes that I totally recommend when coming to Saigon Star. Two that I would for surely recommend is the lamb and the pork neck! The lamb has always been great here! And the price for the lamb is quite affordable too! The dipping sauce for this lamb is this clear green sauce and I'm not entirely sure what it is (not minty, as lamb usually comes with mint) but it was closer to the fish sauce that you get in regular Vietnamese vermicelli dishes. The pork neck just is just so tasty and soft that this should never be passed up! The one complaint about the pork neck is it is expensive!



One of the best fish that you can buy in my opinion is black cod. Black cod is expensive, oily, soft, almost creamy and VERY tasty! I would highly recommend getting the black cod here as it is exactly as how I described it. However this is the first time I had the black cod and was not impressed. We seemed to get a piece that is probably the tail end of the fish. It was very rubbery (not soft) and didn't taste as good as I have previously had it here.


 The rest of the items are as follows, garlic and gai lan, spicy garlic mussels, sweet and sour soup, spring rolls, and pineapple rice. The gai lan is usually cooked well and is very garlicy. The mussels are pretty good as well because its covered in oyster sauce and garlic (not at all spicy). The sweet and sour soup was pretty sweet (as you would not expect this even though it is called sweet and sour) and is pretty sour as well! Not bad as it is a pretty new sweet and sour flavour to me. Sorry for the half eaten spring rolls! I totally forgot to take the picture before eating them. The spring rolls are surprisingly very good here! I would say it tastes the same as any other Vietnamese pho restaurants that serve spring rolls as they are very similar and have a side of fish sauce to dunk in. The pineapple rice is also pretty good and the presentation is very nice!



 So overall I would rate this place an 84%. The reason why it is a little low in my opinion is that this place is pretty expensive ($$$). With a group of 5 people the bill was easily over 200$ with tax and tip came to around 240$. But this is probably my favourite Vietnamese restaurant I have tried in the GTA. However I have only tried Vietnamese Pho restaurants, and this is the one and only high end Vietnamese restaurant I have been to.

I would take recommendations on other Vietnamese non pho restaurants!

I highly suggest this place at least once! See what other people are ordering around you as they are usually the best items!

Saigon Star on Urbanspoon