With no reservation, we were forced to sit outside, although we were lucky that it was a relatively cool day in Singapore. Tucked away in the courtyard behind two buildings, we were suddenly transported away from present-day Singapore to colonial Singapore. The wicker chairs, the red-painted outer wall of the cafe, the white-paneled windows and doors… the place had its charms, no doubt. But would it live up to its potential?

Artichoke’s brunch menu is relatively simple, although I could see the ingredients were high quality and a lot of thought had been put into piecing together the items on the menu. The quality menu was lost on its servers though, who were clueless as to what the menu contained, what the ingredients were, and what they themselves were doing there. Needless to say, service was slow and confusing, but it was hard to be mad at the servers who were so utterly clueless. It would be like scolding newborns!

I started off with a sangria to put me in the mood for a slow day. Instead, I was jolted awake by how absolutely awful the sangria tasted. It seemed like their idea of sangria was citrus soda with white wine. A place like this couldn’t afford to cut up some real fruits for a sangria? Sangria is such a straight-forward drink, how could they screw that up? I wasn’t feeling the love. What they gave me was barely drinkable, so I let it sit and watched the condensation slide down the glass as we waited for our food.

I opted for the scrambled eggs and bacon chop, which turned out to be a good decision. The maple-glazed bacon chop was thick and meaty, with just enough fat to be tender and fragrant. The scrambled eggs were on the runny side, purposefully so.

I also tried my friend’s hash browns, which were crisp and delicious (and oily, as hash browns go). Originally, I asked for ketchup to go with the eggs and hash browns, but they said the kitchen didn’t have any. A brunch place that does not have any ketchup? Just as I was working myself into a huff, I asked if they had maple syrup and, lo and behold, they did! The tension was quickly diffused as I embraced my Canadianism and poured a generous portion of maple syrup over everything on my plate.

While the food turned out to be good, the service was in a constant state of hopeless confusion, and the sangria was an unmistakable failure. I would probably not return unless a friend of mine decided to host a meal here, and even then it would only be for the ambiance.

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The place was as popular as it was tiny – we weren’t the only ones who ventured out on a rainy New Years morning – but it was well worth the wait. We could tell the place had character the moment we stepped in, with exposed brick walls, broad wooden floor planks, and a faux vintage metallic ceiling.

The suckling eggs benedict (eggs benedict with pulled pork) was the best I ever had. And surprisingly, it wasn’t the eggs or the pork that made me think so, it was the biscuit.

The eggs were done perfectly so the yolk ran and was soaked up by a scrumptious biscuit, the likes of which I’ve never had before. It was surprising to find that a place that boasted meat could make such delicious carbs, and it really showed their meticulous attention to detail.

Who could say no to dessert for breakfast? But seriously, best waffles ever. The caramelized bananas were a nice touch, but the real treat was the dark chocolate in the waffles. The mixture of sweet and bitter made my taste buds beg for more.

All of it went down very well with some quality french press coffee and friendly service. Vegetarians, don’t be fooled by the meat-centric menu, a lot of it can be done without the meat². I can’t wait to return to Toronto and try something else on their menu.

Rating:

1. I am so glad Toronto Yelp finally has enough critical mass to be useful!
2. The waffles were originally supposed to come with bacon.

Lunch at a tiny but busy Japanese joint near Causeway Bay MTR. They are known for their fatty tuna sashimi.

Lunch at an apartment-turned-restaurant near Sham Shui Po, Western-style cuisine, prix-fixe menu that included appetizer and entree. The dessert (every single dessert on their menu) was compliments of the owner, who seemed to know my friend’s aunt.

Brunch at 霞飛點心拉麵 (Xia Fei Shanghainese Restaurant). Each dim sum item was better than the last!

Brunch at a traditional Cantonese dim sum place, 蓮香樓, Lin Heung Tea House. This was actually the most disappointing meal, I don’t know why this place has such great reviews (is considered the best Guangdong dim sum place in Hong Kong). It was extremely chaotic and dirty, the food was also terrible.

Dinner at a cafe/diner in Lan Kwai Fong. The food was average.

Breakfast at The Brunch Club.

1. Curry fish balls, lobster meatballs, sausages, roasted octupus, and deep-fried calamari. With a side of Hong Kong milk tea.
2. Deep-fried seafood platter, soooo good. Pumpkin risotto was also delicious.
3. I got two pictures from it, but the rest of the meal went unrecorded. I can’t remember what else we ordered, other than xiao long bao and shrimp dumplings, but I know there was an order we added at the end that was delicious.

Low-back pale-green couches line the edge of the window, wrapping around on either side like fallopian tubes. A large painting of jungle animals hang on one wall. The rest of the space is dominated by a bar, high tables and chairs, and distractingly large post-modern chandeliers. The place is as hip as its West Queen West locale, although the clientele varies from tourists to Queen West hipsters to old couples.

Service was attentive, although the food took a little longer to arrive than you would expect for brunch.

The Drake breakfast was a rather boring choice, I’ll admit, but the menu description made it sound more varied than it was. “Hash browns” turned out to be chunks of potato stir-fried with onions and a slice of red pepper. “Fruit” turned out to be a single slice of grapefruit. The whole wheat toast turned out to be a five-grain, with a variety of seeds and had a subtle bitter aftertaste. These little details made me feel very mislead by the menu description. It didn’t help that the scrambled egg-white was under-scrambled, and the fried bacon was over-fried.

The breakfast burrito was a bigger hit with my companion, although the cilantro salsa (again, in the menu, it just said “salsa”) made me immediately grimace – I hate cilantro.

After we’d paid our bill, we saw this lovely little plate delivered to a neighbouring table. We inquired with our server, and my suspicions were confirmed, blueberry scones. In the menu, this was simply the “scone plate – perfect for sharing.” It made me wonder, for the third time, why the menu was so under-descriptive. Did they think these details wouldn’t matter to the average customer? I may not be exactly average, but it makes a big difference to me whether they are blueberry scones or plain butter scones or cranberry scones (the latter two I would not find appetizing at all).

The blueberry scone plate, it turned out, was fantastic, and considerably improved my opinion of the place. It made me almost forgive forget their lack of skill in menu-writing. The scones were light, flaky on the outside, crumbly on the inside, slightly sweet – the best I’ve ever had. The sides – raspberry jam, heavy whipped cream (home-made), and melted butter – were equally delicious. I usually skip whipped cream because 1) I’m lactose intolerant, and 2) stuff that comes in a pressurized container never seems appetizing to me, but home-made whipped cream is a whole other story.

Of course, how could I leave without checking out their sex-on-the-wall bathrooms? The bathroom walls within the stalls are plastered with vintage pornography, which kind of surprised me given this is still within a hotel. But it is West Queen West, after all.

Rating:

This is the sort of place where you can sit for hours with a friend or a book and no one will kick you out. It is the sort of place where you can have homemade dessert or hearty Eastern European fare. It is the sort of place where re-fill coffees are free and there are always more than six types of cake. It is my kind of place.

The scrambled eggs were over-scrambled, and the eggs benedict were nothing special (packaged ham? Really?). The crepes were awful – a little too thick, and absolutely drowning in strawberry jam. Each bite required half a glass of water.

One thing I can say for sure though, they have great home fries. Seriously, best fries I have ever had. They’re not too oily, crispy on the outside, and very well seasoned.
They also have great orange juice, although their coffee is hit and miss. When I went, they had macadamia nut coffee – definitely a hit!

Futures is also known for having great cheesecakes, although the crepes drenched in strawberry jam were more than enough sweets for us.

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483 Bloor Street West
Phone: 416.922.5875

A server immediately came to the door to seat us and give us the menus. The place was painted a yellow-cream colour, and decorated with a lot of roosters. The front portion has many booths, which allow for some privacy, although the back portion is open and more cramped with rickety tables and chairs.

My companion settled on the corned beef hash and I ordered the Western omelet. A bread basket came soon after, although half the toasts were badly burnt. I was appalled that they could serve such badly burnt toast. Even at home, I would have thrown them out.

The corned beef hash was the first to arrive. The beef was tender enough, although the mish-mash was thrown together with such carelessness that it tasted like leftovers. The poached eggs were appallingly rubber-like, even though the yoke was not cooked through.

The Western omelet was very satisfying. The omelet was thick and cooked to perfection. There weren’t a lot of veggies and ham, but that meant the omelet held together nicely. The home fries, however, were a disappointment. Unexciting little potato cubes lacking in flavour and crispness.

While my omelet was good, the appalling state of the poached eggs on the corned beef hash and the incredibly burnt toasts were hard to overlook.

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We arrived at 10:25 to find the place without a line, unlike what many reviews had warned us about. The last member of our party had yet to arrive, so we walked around for another 10 minutes (they will not seat you unless your entire party has arrived). By the the time she arrived at 10:35, the place was full. We waited about 20 minutes before our server came out to get us.

The place was small and narrow, with large paintings in subdued colours on an exposed brick wall that was faded brownish red. It looked less charming than it sounds.
The food arrived about 20 minutes after we ordered. I had a Brussels’ style waffle with scrambled eggs and an apple coleslaw.

The Brussels’ style waffle was light and crispy, just like the menu promised, but it was also completely tasteless. The scrambled eggs were a little overdone, and the apple coleslaw had dill pickles in it, which was just bizarre. The peameal bacon was the only item that didn’t disappoint.

My companions’ eggs benedict fared a little better, although the hollandaise sauce was not that different from what we’ve had elsewhere.

With mediocre food, mediocre service, and a mediocre atmosphere (floorboards that creaked and only one washroom?), I couldn’t figure out why this place had gotten such great reviews.
“Maybe this place is cheaper than most brunch places,” one of my friends suggested. She often brunched at The Drake, and declared that our brunching experience was not complete until we had been to The Drake. But when I got home and checked the menu at The Drake, I found that there eggs benedict was priced at $12, while the eggs benedict at Le Petit Dejeuner was priced at $12.95.
“Maybe it’s a homelier vibe,” my other friend suggested. The place was not nearly as charming as some cafes I’d been to, which also served breakfast mind you. And if I really wanted a homely vibe, I could have made a better breakfast at home and even eaten it in bed if I wanted.

In the end, I really could not figure it out what about this place had charmed the previous reviewers. Maybe their $6 mimosas? But for a good sober breakfast, I’d go elsewhere.

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We were excited when the Neptune Salad arrived though, a heaping plateful of shrimp, scallop, and lobster. That is, until we realized the scallops again tasted funny, like the chemically-treated kind. Besides, premium scallops would never be heaped onto a $11 salad, so I guess we should have seen that coming.

The only perk? They have great coffee.
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What drew me to The Tasting Room initially was its large selection of appetizers, which came in large enough portions to constitute a small meal, or to share. Their Scallops Wrapped with Bacon are out of this world, but to be honest, so are most of their appetizers. Carribean Shrimp and Banana Curry is another unique appetizer that cannot be missed. The Calamari was a little on the bland side, but the Coconut Lobster Lollipops certainly made up for it. Prices for these appetizers are close to their entrees, but so are the sizes.

Their daily soup has also been consistently satisfactory. The daily soup is not on their menu, but I recall enjoying an excellent Black Bean Soup on two different occasions. I have not tried their entrees, as I am always full after the appetizers, but I have it on good authority that their seafood pasta is well-stocked for a $13 entree (lunch, $19 dinner).

They also have a very reasonable wine flight for anyone interested in a little wine tasting. Their servers are knowledgable, friendly, and always provide impeccable service. My only complaint is that their washroom facilities are far too small, but the rest of the restaurant is stylishly decorated.
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Pai gu may have been my favourite dish at home as a child, but xiao long bao were hands down my favourite thing to order when we were eating out. I grew up in Nanjing, which is not far from Shanghai and certainly influenced by Shanghai cuisine. We always went out to eat steamed buns (filled and unfilled) and steamed dumplings because they were cheap and extremely time-consuming to make at home (there were no such things as frozen buns and dumplings in those days so we’d have to make it from scratch). Not to mention, I spent a summer in Shanghai with my grandparents and I made sure to eat enough xiao long bao to last me until the next time I returned to China.
There is an art to eating xiao long bao, one that I don’t care to exercise unless I’m in China. What is this art and why don’t I exercise it? The proper way to eat xiao long bao is to gently lift it out of the long zi (bamboo basket), dip it in vinegar (optional – but if you are a native of the JiangSu province, you will not skip the vinegar), and eat it in one bite so that no soup leaks out. The xiao long bao wrapper is very thin and delicate, and it sticks to surfaces, so it’s easy to break if you set it down. And letting the soup leak out is a blasphemy for all Chinese, so be sure the xiao long bao goes straight from the basket to your mouth if you are eating with “real Chinese.”
The reason I tend not to follow this technique when I eat is because the soup is so hot that I’ll often burn my mouth if I eat the xiao long bao in one bite. However, I am not going to let the soup leak out either, so I’ll put the xiao long bao down in a small bowl or on a soup soon, and then I bite a small hole in the wrapper and suck out the soup before I eat the xiao long bao. Still tastes delicious!

But I digress. My friend and I arrived at 11pm and Ding Tai Fung was already quite busy. When we were seated, we realized with horror that the entire menu was Chinese. My friend could not read any Chinese, and I can only read some. Luckily, my knowledge of Chinese was enough for us to navigate through most of the dim sum items.
Either we were lucky or everything at Ding Tai Fung tastes delicious because everything that came to our table tasted amazing. I’ve never tasted such simple yet perfect Chinese dim sum before, especially because many Chinese restaurants don’t think dim sum is important¹. It’s like how lunch entrees are often not as good as dinner entrees except that dim sum is a completely different menu (and world) of its own.

Ding Tai Fung obviously did not subscribe to this philosophy, and quite rightly, its dim sum is what made it famous.

The first item was a leng cai (literally, cold dish, i.e. appetizer) of spicy beef tripe. It was cold and spicy and a little bit sweet – simply delicious.

The second item was the basket of xiao long bao. The authenticity of xiao long bao is easily determinable. If the wrapper is thick, it is not authentic. If there is no soup or very little soup, it is not authentic. Shanghai xiao long bao is also always a pork filling with pork soup, so any other ingredients in the filling would make it not authentic. This was authentic in every way. As I bit into the thin wrap, hot, savoury soup spilled out and burned my tongue, but I ate it all in one bite. My mouth came alive with the sensation of rich pork juices, and my mind sent me back to my summer in Shanghai, where I spent many hot afternoons on the air-conditioned second floor of a tea house, eating basket after basket of xiao long bao.

The third item to arrive was the vegetable spring rolls. They were crisp and golden, and quite perfect. I’ve never had spring rolls in a restaurant before in China, so I don’t know if these were authentic, but they tasted pretty good. The filling was vegetarian, I think bok choy or Chinese cabbage.

The fourth item was by far the most delicious. It was a beef roll wrapped in aluminum foil that I’ve seen other people order many times, but I’ve never seen it in China or had it myself. It may be a Cantonese dim sum item. Either way, it was delicious. It was a pan-fried crispy roll, with sliced beef and scallions wrapped inside with Hoi Sin sauce.

On subsequent trips to Ding Tai Fung, I have tried their vegetable jiao zi, which are filled with Chinese greens and shredded Chinese vermicelli and steamed in a paper-thin translucent dumpling wrap. Dan dan noodles are not their forte, nor are luo bo si su bing (pan-fried shredded turnip pancake), although it is slightly less soggy than what I’ve had at other places. Mini (bite-size) xiao long bao are not nearly as good as the standard xiao long bao, and pork and glutinous rice shao mai leave something to be desired. Crispy spring onion pancakes are a good standby, as are stir-fried rice cakes (Shanghai nian gao).

For dessert, their sugar egg puff tastes like nothing with confectioner’s sugar sprinkled on top. I don’t have a picture, but here is what a sugar egg puff looks like. The most interesting dessert they offer is the steamed red bean rice cake. It is not too sweet or decadent, but fragrant and beautiful.

The servers speak Mandarin, Cantonese, and English, and the food arrives quite quickly considering everything is made fresh. Service can be slower on weekends, but while you wait, you can watch the cute dumpling makers behind the glass pleat dumplings with practiced confidence. The washrooms are a little cramped but fairly clean. Prices were standard for dim sum, between $5 to $9 dollars a dish.

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1. They won’t have the head chef prepare those items, and some places will even buy pre-made or frozen dim sum and just heat it up