Rocco's Plum Tomato

Rocco's Plum Tomato is a franchise in Etobicoke and the one we went to was on the Queensway.

We arrived at the restaurant and was not greeted at the door for a good while. As it was our first time there we didn't know that you can just choose any seats that you like. So after a while one of the servers told us to take a seat anywhere.

We checked out the menu and decided to do the set menu. We each got an appetizer, main and dessert. For the appetizer we got mussels and calamari. The mussels were good, quite strong in the wine flavour but that is quite typical for mussels in my opinion. The calamari was deep fried and was decent. The dipping sauce was a chipotle mayo like sauce and was quite good.

We were served french like bread which was quite hard and crappy in my opinion.

 

For the main we got the gnocci and ravioli. The gnocci was more potatoey then other gnocci's and was not bad! The ravioli sauce was very tomatoey and quite good. The cheese within the ravioli was good too!

Now to the desserts... the tiramisu was amazing, coming to an italian restaurant I would expect a good tiramisu but this was superb! I would come back to this restaurant just to have it over and over again! As you can see in the photo, i didn't get much of a chance to take a photo of it until it was practically done! Tatiana decided to get the carrot cake, which was quite plain for carrot cakes.

Overall I would rate this place a 75%, the service was extremely slow, the food was okay, the tiramisu was amazing, and the price wasn't that cheap but it was still affordable. (we used coupons and the total came to about 60~70$ between the two of us after discount with the set menu.)

I would come back to this place just for the tiramisu but probably wouldn't come back for the food. There are plenty of better italian restaurants within etobicoke.

Korean Village Han Kuk Kwan

Korean Village Han Kuk Kwan in k-town of toronto is a japanese korean restaurant. This place had korean bbq but in a portable sense. The tables did not have the integrated bbq that usually exists in korean bbqs. Typical korean restaurants serve the small korean appetizers which usually consist of kimchi, radish, potatoes, beans, and many other small dishes.

We decided to order a bibimbop and korean bbq. The bibimbop was pretty good, however the kocijan sauce was not one of my favourites. I think I am used to the popular sweet and light coloured kocijan sauce. But still, the rice and food inside was crispy because of the bowl and was quite good!

Here is a picture of our portable grill, run by propane.

Here's a photo of the meat being cooked! The meat was already marinated and had tons of good flavour. The red sauce that you can see in the first picture came with the meat for dipping. However I was not a big fan of this sauce. It was sort of spicey but really salty and overwhelmed the flavours of the meat. Other people at the table really enjoyed the sauce though so I guess it is hit or miss.

Overall I would rate this place a 78%, it was pretty good, ok price, and great service. The restaurant has the call buttons that are like modern asian restaurants where service can be called whenever with a click of a button. Before coming back here I would like to try other k-town korean restaurants.

Chi's Congee & Noodle House

Chi's Congee & Noodle House is off of Central Parkway and Burnhamthorpe in Mississauga. This place is easily missed as it is tucked away in the corner of a chinese plaza.

We were craving some congee so we looked up some restaurants and this was one of the top hits. We walked in and read a sign that said cash only, so we had to go to the bank and grab some money.

When we walked in we got a seat right away and was served tea very quickly. As there were only two of us we couldn't really order much to try for variety. However we decided that we wanted congee and some other chinese dish. We ended up getting a seafood congee and a beef rice egg dish. The beef rice egg dish was sub par, in my opinion. The flavour was quite bland but had a salty flavour. The eggs were runny which made the dish slimy which I enjoyed!

Now on to the congee, the seafood congee was actually quite good! The flavours were solid, the saltiness was good and did not need any extra salt.

Both dishes plus tax and tip all came to 20$ and we got out within 30 minutes.

Overall I would rate this place a 70%, unfortunately I was not able to try a good variety of dishes but based off of the 2 dishes I ate that day, 70% is just about right. The congee was great, but the beef dish was sub par.

With the cost being very cheap I can understand why this place got such high reviews. You get great bang for your buck.

Thyme Ristorante

Thyme restaurant is an italian restaurant located on Lakeshore in Etobicoke.

I'm going to apologize in advance for the poor quality of photos as it was dark inside and I didn't have my good camera with me.

We drove by this place a couple of times and saw that the review was alright so we decided to give it a try! We first sit down to this small restaurant and are offered bread. This bread is fantastic! The bread is more like bread sticks but the balsamic vinegar and olive oil that is served for dipping the bread... was fantastic. This sauce was so addicting that I went through 2 sets of bread before even starting dinner!

Tatiana got the seafood risotto, this risotto was pretty good. Fred's not here's seafood risotto is still best in my opinion so far. However this risotto was still good! I also had the Thyme 4 Risotto which was the first item on the menu for risotti. This was even better then the seafood risotto and I completely recommend it!

As we came to an italian restaurant we had to try atleast one of their pizzas. All italian pizzas are thin crust and usually have interesting toppings! This one was smoked salmon, capers, and onions. I really enjoyed this dish however Tatiana was not the biggest fan of it. It really depends on if you like capers I guess because I love capers, the combination of smoked salmon and capers makes any dish great.

I decided to order manicotti. I have never had this before and after eating it, I would say that this was a pretty good dish. It was just one ginourmous ravioli in my opinion and the cheese inside was quite good. This dish was better then the seafood risotto but not better then the Thyme 4 Risotto risotto.

Overall I would rate this place an 85% as the food was good, the bread was phenomenal, and the service was good while the cost was affordable.

I would definitely come back again.