Bean Bar

Next on the list of restaurants is Bean Bar!

This place was one of our favourites in Hamilton while myself and Tatiana went to school at McMaster university. I also proposed to her this day at McMaster and we went out for our old favourite place in Hamilton.

Now back to food!
The bean bar was the first place I have ever tried yam fries! and the sauce it came with was quite delicious! Chipotle mayo and yam fries have become quite standard in all restaurant chains now but back then this was the only place that served it!

We decided to order calamari as an appetizer as I planned on upgrading to my yam fries anyways. I love it when calamari have the baby legs in the dish too! crispy crunchy deliciousness.

I got the upgrade on the fries to exchange my regular potatoes to sweet potatoes.
My main was fish and chips because the people sitting next to us ordered it and it looked fantastic.
I'm usually quite picky with my fish and chips because restaurants can really screw this simple dish!

What I like in fish in chips are the following qualities, very little batter, crispy batter, lots of fish. This satisfied all 3 qualities as I was able to tell from my neighbour eating it!

This fish and chips was really good! and there were 2 big pieces too! I don't remember if I had to doggy bag this meal home because there was just too much fish! something I won't complain about!

Tatiana wasn't very hungry today so she decided to get an appetizer as a meal. She ordered the Quiche of the day! I remember this being very cheesy, spinachy and very good. It was cooked very well with the egg's being still being soft and juicy rather then dry or runny.

The bean bar also has a big display of a but load of desserts to choose from! Usually they come with no explanation or title to the cakes so you have to get a walkthrough from a waiter/waitress to get the run down of what the options are! I personally don't even remember which one we ordered but I'm sure it was good!

This place occasionally turns into a jazzbar at night and or a live band plays in the back. It gets busy pretty quickly and understandably so! We arrived at 5:30 and got the last seat available! after that there was a wait to sit down.

I love to come to this place, always reminds me of the good days in university. Hamilton isn't known for their restaurants either but this place is a nice treat in this part of town.

The food is good, the service is great, the atmosphere is even better at night time and the price is alright.

Overall I would rate this place an 80% as it is a fun place to go to!
Check it out and support this place!

The Gabardine

Hey guys,

Its been a while since i've blogged as i've been quite lazy but i'm going to post a bunch of restaurants i have been to this past while!

First on the list is the Gabardine.
This is a very small restaurant by Bay and Richmond in downtown Toronto.

This was recommended by Tatiana and seems like a nice small restaurant.
They can probably seat only 30~40 people max and they have a very small menu for lunch.

Essentially to me, this seemed like a fancier pub food place.
Tatiana raved about the macaroni here so she got what she wanted!

I had a craving for shepherd's pie and this was also recommended by the waiter to try!
The mac and cheese was quite good! crispy top, creamy inside, cheese all over the place!

The shepherd's pie was a delight! The outside was very crisp, the inside was very hot and creamy as well! The inside though was full of richness and chicken flavour, it was delicious.

I've tried many shepherd's pie and this was one of the better ones I have had! I would definitely give it a go next time around if I'm ever around this area again.

I would rate this place an 80% for food taste, 70% for price.

Overall I would rate this place a 75%, mainly because yes the food was great, however these lunch items were expensiiiiive! 17$  for macaroni, 18$ for shepherd's pie with 2 coffee's and a dessert almost came close to 50$ for lunch!

Now I do know that this is downtown toronto and is more expensive then most, but I don't think this place tastes good enough to charge that much for pub food.

I would go again but would most likely try new places out!

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.

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!