Food

Ruby Watchco

/ Greg / Leave a comment

Trying to pick a restaurant in Toronto for each visit is overwhelming.  Which cuisine?  What neighbourhood?  Something new or something loved from a previous trip?  About three weeks before my last visit and I hadn’t picked anything despite reminders from my sister that time was running out to get a reservation for a Saturday night at anywhere popular.  A reminder text popped in from her as I was watching “Pitchin’ In” on Food Network and somewhere in the back of my head I remembered Chef Lynn Crawford had a newish place.  A quick look online and Ruby Watchco was my choice for this trip.

It was superb.  The grapefruit and blood orange tequila cocktail was so good I didn’t get to snap a picture of it.  I could have eaten a bucket of the clili roasted eggplant salad .  The ribeye melted in my mouth.  The sherry vinegar roasted mushrooms (a side with the steak) would make an incredible football day snack (I’m picturing them in a funnel cone with a spear to poke them with, but I digress).  The blueberry and lemon curd parfait was the perfect blend of tart and sweet.

Course 1: Chili roasted eggplant salad with honey mustard goat cheese dressing
Course 2: Slow roasted ribeye with onion jam and horseradish cream
Course 3: Artisinal cheese w/ cherries and almonds
Course 4: Maple blueberry parfait with lemon curd
Me with a glass of Chianti

The restaurant itself was beautiful inside.  Homey with a modern feel.  The staff was super friendly.  For an evening, I wished I lived in Riverside so this could be my neighbourhood place.  I think the picture of me above speaks for itself in that regard.

Toronto’s Signature Sandwich

/ Greg / 3 Comments

I’ve written about delicious sandwiches before (Philadephia’s cheesesteak, the Primanti Bros sandwich from Pittsburgh, the glorious hotdogs in Reykjavik) so I know what I’m talking about when it comes to a meal served on bread. Toronto’s peameal sandwich is right up there with the tastiest sandwiches I’ve tried.

Whenever I’m in Toronto on a Saturday morning, I’m making a beeline to the St. Lawrence Market.  Before the main course, there’s plenty of sights and tastes to take in.  For the carnivore, there are cases upon cases of cuts of meat like this:

Mmmmm.... meat Continue reading →

Revisiting familiar places

/ Greg / Leave a comment

My next two trips are return visits in many ways.  Next week I’m heading to Toronto to visit my sister.  It’s a place I’ve visited almost an uncountable number of times; a place I’ve lived and worked in.  Next month, I’m heading to Quebec City.  Although not recently, it’s another place I’ve spent some time in owing to family friends, a relatively manageable 11 hour drive and my earlier-life passion for my beloved, but now extinct, Nordiques.

What to do when heading back to places this familiar?  For both it’ll be a mix of revisiting old favourites and finding a couple of new experiences.  In Toronto, I’m excited by the new: dinner reservations at Ruby Watchco, in what seems like a city with no end to dining choices.  I’ll also be tempted back to some old favourites – peameal sandwiches at the St Lawrence Market, a beer or two at the Rebel House, and perhaps some El Salvadorian food at Tacos El Asador.   In Quebec City, wandering around the old town and sitting down to a heart stopping poutine at Chez Ashton will bring back memories from many years ago.  For the new?  A host of restaurants and bars that my palette didn’t appreciate all those years ago.

My lists are made (but, as always, somewhat fluid) and my walking shoes are ready.  Here’s to the familiar and to a taste of the new.

Denver, delicious

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The last word on my recent trip to Denver will be all about the food.  I spent remarkably little money for some truly delicious eats.  Here are a few of the highlights…

Euclid Hall – On a recommendation from a colleague, I headed here for dinner the first night and had what was probably the most unique of the dishes I sampled on my trip – a green chile and pork cheek poutine.  It was a perfect blend of sweet, hot and salty:

Euclid Hall Continue reading →

The price of eating in Norway

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I’ve been to a few expensive places in which to travel over the past couple of years (Zurich, I’m looking at you), but nothing really prepared me for the cost of eating in Norway.  In other costly cities – Paris, New York, Milan, I’ve had no trouble finding great economical places to eat where I felt I got a taste of the location.  Not so in Norway.  Seth Kugel, the New York Times “Frugal Traveler” put it best when he recently wrote:

Norway is the extreme Scandinavian case, though — the only country I’ve ever been in where I suffered from constant, low-grade budget anxiety. On the opposite end is Sweden, which, if you come directly from Norway, feels like you’ve entered a 173,300-square-mile Costco.

Traveling is about the memories – being a couple of accountants, we budget for trips so we’re not thinking about money while away.  With that planning we saved our travel dollars for the cuisine of Iceland laying ahead in our travels and quickly labeled Norway as a place where we’d live off of grocery store food for a few days.  This was our first supper in Bergen, and still clocked in at around $20:

Supper Continue reading →

A taste of reindeer

/ Greg / 1 Comment

This trip to Scandinavia wasn’t really a foodie trip for me.  That had nothing to do with the  cuisines of Denmark, Sweden and Norway, all wonderful and worth exploring, but more the economics of eating out repeatedly over a 14 day trip in some very expensive countries.   In prioritizing what I wanted to try in Sweden, reindeer was at the top of my list.   I managed two tastes on the same day.  The first came at Skansen when I stepped up to order a #4:

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Gluten-free eating in Sweden

/ Greg / 2 Comments

Before writing more about our time spent in Sweden, I feel compelled to write about the wonderful options for gluten-free eating in this great country.  My fiancée was diagnosed with Celiac a number of years ago.  On our travels in non-English speaking countries, this has made for a few difficulties while eating out.  Sometimes we have to simply leave a restaurant, sometimes my love is on the receiving end of a dirty look or an uninspiring meal while I go to town on a delicious dish she can’t have.  Not so in Sweden.  At every eating establishment we visited, there was an immediate understanding of Celiac Disease and the requirement for strict gluten-free food.  Everyone was good enough to warn us about possible cross-contamination if any items were fried in oil used for other non-gluten-free items.  You come to expect that level of service at nicer restaurants, but on this trip, a true sense of the ease of gluten-free eating came from visits to a couple of fast food places and cafes.

Not the kind of place we’d normally visit while traveling, but when your partner hasn’t had a fast food hamburger in more than three years, McDonald’s becomes a bit of a novelty.   So much of a novelty, that on our arrival we dropped our bags at the hotel and made a beeline to the first set of golden arches we saw.  Here are the gluten-free versions of their double cheeseburger and Big Mac.  Taste-wise, they’re authentic to the regular burgers.  The buns are actually pretty good:

GF double cheeseburgerGF Big Mac

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A picnic in Copenhagen

/ Greg / 5 Comments

When we started planning our Scandinavian trip we knew we were going to be taking it easy on restaurants given the general expense of eating out in Copenhagen.  Luckily, we had a pretty comprehensive grocery store close to the hotel and a wonderful organic bakery with a selection of gluten free items made fresh every day (Naturbageriet).  We also came to discover the very new market-based food hall, Torvehallerne, that was immediately between our main train station and our hotel (how lucky!):

Torvehallerne Continue reading →

Toronto eating with Dad

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Through a combination of my sister living there for close to 15 years, an extended work stint in 2007 and numerous business related travels to the city, Toronto doesn’t feel like a vacation destination  – and that’s not a bad thing.   With Dad and I both having some favourite haunts in the city, we hit a couple of them over our three day vacation.

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