PaiGu

Sen5es Bakery & Restaurant is located on the ground floor of the SoHo Metropolitan Hotel in downtown Toronto. I’ve only ever read glowing reviews of this fine-dining establishment, so I readily accepted an invitation to go for a Summerlicious dinner this past Friday.

Three and a half hours and $60 later, I walked out with only two good things to say about the place: the servers are courteous and the washrooms are clean.

We had a reservation for 7:00 pm but were cooling our heels in the lobby until 8:00 pm. Unacceptable.

It took another 40 minutes for our first course to come. Granted, we had a party of 12, but we were all ordering off the Summerlicious menu, so they could expect the volume ahead of time (and everyone knows its pre-made anyway), so how long does it take to arrange appetizers on 12 plates?

Grilled romaine lettuce heart tasted exactly like what you would expect romaine lettuce hearts to taste like. The portobello tasted bizarre, and not in a good way.

Gazpacho is a cold Spanish tomato-based vegetable soup. Given that it was a vegetable soup, I wasn’t ready for the chill. It tasted fine, nothing to write home about. The half-cherry tomato came with goat cheese, which was not on the menu. Kind of a big deal, I’m surprised they didn’t put that on there given how they like to put every single ingredient on the menu. Lobster medallions tasted like they’d been frozen and then thawed, but what did I expect? I don’t know, maybe something fresh from such a “fine-dining” establishment. » Read the rest of this entry «

Future Bakery & Cafe is practically an Annex landmark, but I had never heard much about it, other than the occasional comment from a local. Perhaps they were keeping it a secret, because many locals know about the place, but there are few reviews written about it.

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.

Rating:

483 Bloor Street West
Phone: 416.922.5875

I’m a huge ice cream lover. There is no denying it. Sometimes, I try to pretend I don’t rely on ice cream to live, but who am I kidding? I go one day without eating ice cream and I feel like I’ve had an organ removed.

The great thing about ice cream is that it doesn’t really need anything else. Great ice cream tastes amazing by itself. That’s why I never really understood the likes of Marble Slab. Sure, their ice cream is good, but what’s with all the stuff on the side? Is that really necessary?
Maybe, maybe not.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m the first one to admit that cookie dough in ice cream is so delicious it should be a sin just to think about, but sometimes adding too much “extra stuff” takes away from the ice cream itself. Because, let’s not forget who the hero in this whole scenario is. It’s the ice cream. The cookie dough or the brownie bits or the M&Ms are just accessories.

But a few days ago, the very rock upon which I stood was shaken by Symposium Cafe‘s “East Meets West” ice cream crepe extravaganza. Yes, it was an extravaganza, nothing less. It was a giant plate of vanilla ice cream on the one side and chocolate ice cream on the other, wrapped in a paper-thin crepe and drizzled with chocolate fudge and strawberry sauce. But it was more than that. There were strawberries. There were bananas. There was also whipped cream. It was so good I was afraid I might have an orgasm right there in that plastic lawn chair¹.

I had to admit that perhaps, on this particular stage, the ice cream wasn’t the main star. Nor the crepe, the strawberries, the bananas, or the whipped cream. In fact, there wasn’t a main star at all. It was only when all the ingredients were taken as one that the explosion of tastes was created, and my ears were ringing with the tune of Symphony No. 5.

My friend was also conducting her own symphony with the mixed fruit medley cheesecake, which I had a taste of and also found to be quite good (though not nearly as explosive as mine).

1. Don’t worry, of course I didn’t. Not only would that be highly inappropriate, but it would needlessly divert my focus away from my mouth [↩]