Cupcake Girls

Cupcake Girls is a Vancouver franchise run by 2 Canadian women. They have a TV show that is just based about their franchise. We tried it in Vancouver and enjoyed it quite a bit! However I remember the cupcakes being about 2$ each in Vancouver which is quite pricey in my opinion.

This franchise has many flavours and I find the icing and cake both to be quite good! The cake is fluffy, was not dry. Unlike a lot of the grocery store cupcakes that you can get. The icing is not like sugary icing either, but more of a creamy, soft, less-sugary, enjoyable icing. Icing is what makes a cupcake VERY good.

As we have tried many of the flavours before, we decided to get our favourite flavours. We got from the top left, carrot, red valvet, red valvet x2, cookies and cream, mint, lemon.

My favourites of these 6 were the carrot cake, red velvet, and the lemon! All of the icing has the same consistency however the flavours are very different! Very good icings. I am not a big fan of mint or chocolate so the other two were sub par to me.

I like all the cupcakes they have there but when we bought a 6 pac, the price was 3$ per cupcake!! That is outrageously expensive for a cupcake in my opinion. The location is also in a very strange place for Toronto, in Leaside.

Overall I would rate this place a 70% as the cupcakes are great, the prices are not. The location is in an up and coming neighbourhood but really far away from downtown which makes it inconvenient.

Would go back, but not often!

Kinton Ramen

Kinton Ramen is a ramen hut in Toronto and I believe is also in Vancouver. I have heard that the owner's of Guu are the same as the owners of Kinton. This is my 2nd attempt at a ramen hut in Toronto as my first was a disaster and not even a real japanese ramen hut.

I had much higher expectations as this actually had japanese people running the place. The area of where this restaurant is in an interesting place. There are many restaurants in and around this place, but is also within a residential area. When we got there, there was already a wait at around 12:30. We got a seat within minutes though as we were only a group of 2. The groups of 4 and above had to wait over half an hour as this little place is small and can only seat limited people. The wait soon became pretty long and there was a whole crowd waiting to get seats at this place!

We got some green tea and water to start, and the tea was in one of those make your own tea bags.

The interesting thing about this place is that all of the broths are tonkotsu. Unlike the Hokkaido tonkotsu which is the type of specific broth, they make it the base soup and add shio, shoyu, miso, spicey, and pork flavours. There is a vegetarian option but I think that is just the veggies in the soup and not the broth being veggie. You can also get double the noodles by paying an extra 2$ which I did!

There are apparently 3 levels of richness, and I got the regular. and Tatiana got the light. I decided to get the miso soup and she decided to get the shoyu soup. My miso soup was very rich and good amount of saltiness! The soup was filled with veggies and tasted fantastic. I have had better miso soup in my life time but this was still very good! The pork shoulders within the soup was very flavourful! Cooked well, also seasoned well and wasn't too fatty. You could have got the pork belly for a fattier option which we opted not to.

Tatiana got the shoyu soup! This was completely different from mine and tasted amazing! I loved both of it. The reason why hers was very good because it was less salty, had an egg, and as well had nori (seaweed). The nori gave the broth a seaweed flavour and was just great. I think this was one of the better shoyu ramens I have ever had!

When we finished we ended up paying around 28$ including tax and tip. Unlike Momofuku, I was quite happy walking out of that restaurant! Will go back again!

Overall I would rate this place an 84% as this was delicious, cheap, and the environment is very friendly.

I recommend! Try this place out, but don't go in large groups or you'll wait forever.