Went with Judy and Alice to Nick & Nat’s Uptown 21 in Uptown Waterloo on Thursday before I headed back home for the weekend. It’s one of the last few places that’s left on my list of places to try in Waterloo.

Open Kitchen

It was a fairly windy day, so the walk though Waterloo park wasn’t as nice as we were expecting. According to Judy and Alice this one year old restaurant sits in the space of where Salute used to be. The decor and atmosphere of the restaurant was modern and clean, and an open kitchen is always a nice thing to have.

Tables

I ordered two drinks, the Jalapeño Martini made with gold tequila, lime and jalapeno sweet syrup. It was garnished with some cheddary cheese and a slice of jalapeno. The drink was certainly interesting, exactly what you would expect it to taste like: spicy, sweet and boozy at the same time. The drink itself was too sweet for me, and not tasty anyways. It was worth a try, not something I’d ever order again though.

The bar also had a bunch of infused vodkas, including a cherry infused vodka. The bartender suggested making an Uptown 2.1 with the cherry infused vodka, so I gave it a shot and it turned really pretty good, just the right balance of fruitiness and alcohol.

Steamed Mussels

Alice ordered the Steamed Mussels and Judy ordered the Cod Cakes. Alice wasn’t too impressed by the mussels, and was kind of frustrated having to “fish” for the mussels in the broth. Judy on the other hand finished her cod cakes quickly pleased with her choice.

Brazillian Cod Cakes

The menu consists of local food, and they also have a daily prix fixe menu (that you can order a la carte from as well). Alice and I ordered from the prix fixe menu, “pillows” filled with chevre and some sort of chilli with ramps. Judy ordered the Potato and Old Cheddar Tortellini served with pecans, shallots in a truffle brown buttle finished with maple/malt gastrique (quite a mouthful there). Both the dishes tasted fairly Asian, partially because their fresh pasta tasted more like wonton than pasta dough and the fact that the flavours of the dishes also tasted Asian. Both dishes were good, although slightly oversalted. I really enjoyed eating the pecans and sauce that were in Judy’s dish.

We finished off with desserts, Judy ordering Cheese and Doughnuts, and Alice and I ordering the Clafouti a type of souffle apparently. Judy loved her doughnuts but found the cheese far too strong for her tastes. (Even I found the cheese too strong, and I’m ok with eating Stilton.) I believe the type of cheese that was served was Taleggio. The clafouti was alright, served with cream and baked with apples. The portion size surprised me, considering the menu said souffle, but the clafouti was actually the size of a small plate.

All of the things at this place were hit or miss, but I’m really tempted to try this place again. I really like the strong focus on local and fresh food, as well as the atmosphere and the attitude of the staff working there.

1 exam tomorrow and 5 more days until I’m done in Waterloo. Wow.

It’s nearly impossible to find a nice place in Yorkville for lunch on a Sunday. After walking around for what felt like eternity, Jamie and I ended up in the Village at Cafe California next to where Zelda’s used to be. Definitely a lunch place, browsing through the brunch menu I ordered the pappardelle and shared some bruschetta. The food was mediocre and average — nothing spectacular, but it did the job of filling us up since we were so starved from looking for a spot to eat.

Finally, Saturday means that I get to sleep in and catch up on some rest. It also means that I get to spend plenty of time preparing some delicious food!

For brunch, I followed this recipe for some crepes, I prepared the batter with Baileys instead of Frangelico. After a few failed attempts of creating proper looking crepes, I figured out the trick was to take the pan off the element for a few seconds to let it cool off, then scoop the batter in the centre as quickly as possible and then  rotate the pan to spread the batter around. Lifting the pan off heat lets the pan cool off a little to prevent too much batter getting cooked in the centre, making it too thick in the centre.

Asparagus Crepe

Once I finished preparing all the crepes, I prepared them in two ways and two other ways the day after:

Asparagus & hollandaise sauce – Boiled white asparagus and hollandaise sauce
Dessert crepe – spreading some chocolate sauce in the crepe, filled with berries, dusted with icing sugar and drizzled with Bailey’s
Mushroom & mozzarella – Sauteed some mushrooms and poured it right on top of the mozzarella cheese
Crepe salad – Baking the crepe in a bowl so that it keeps it’s shape. It adds a sweet little chip-like bowl to the salad

Berry Crepe

After a trip to Pacific Mall, my friend Mike and I were up for some Korean food for dinner. After some recommendations, we went to Ga Bin Korean Restaurant at 633 Silver Star Boulevard. The service was amazing, extremely polite and friendly. The portions were extremely generous and the number of side dishes was amazing. As you can see I ordered Bibimbap as usual as well as an appetizer of agedashi tofu. The meal also came with side dishes: noodle soup, soup, kimchi (surprisingly spicy), natto beans, kimchi, seaweed, fish cake, pickled cucumber, candied potatoes and bean sprouts. All the food was delicious and extremely good value as well.

Ga Bin Korean: Before

It was a huge meal, but we definitely finished it all.

Ga Bin Korean: After

Creamy Tomato soup and Mediterranean Veggie sandwich

Panera Bread is an American bakery/cafe that opened up a location next to Square One. Wanting a quick dinner, I dropped by and ordered the Creamy Tomato soup and half a Mediterranean Veggie sandwich.

The supposedly creamy soup was watery and not very flavourful in any way. The sandwich was decent and full of flavour including peppers, feta cheese, hummus and tomatoes, although the bread used in the sandwich did not feel fresh, as it was cold and slightly dry.

One interesting thing about the place was that after order your meal, they give you a pager which starts vibrating when your order is ready, similar to the reservation buzzers that have started showing up at some places. Personally, I think that this is overkill for a cafe, especially since it makes quite a bit of noise in a place that’s supposed to be calm and quiet. I think Williams does it best, with the little signs that correlate to your order that you place at your table and when your order is ready, the servers bring your order to your table.

My dad wanted to go out for dinner, he told me that he was craving Indian food, so I checked out Chowhound and RedFlagDeals to look for a nice Indian place that we haven’t been to. Normally when I eat out with my parents, we eat Chinese or Indian because they have the best vegetarian options for my mother and I, so we have had our fair share of Indian places.

I read about Avani at Mavis and Eglinton and figured this would be a nice place to try. The decor nice and simple, everything clean and new. The lighting on the other hand was unfortunately poor. We were seated in a spot that had blindingly bright light compared to the rest of the seating area, which made us feel that we were under a spotlight. The staff was friendly but our waiter was unknowledgeable about the menu and just simply insisted that I order one dish in particular.

Methi Malai Mutter Curry

I did end up ordering that one dish though, the Methi Malai Mutter Curry. The dish consists of fenugreek, peas and paneer. The dish itself was really good, and I ordered it primarily due to the fact that it was the only curry that I haven’t tried before. It was the perfect amount of spicy and tasted excellent with the garlic naan. The prices at Avani are slightly more expensive than most other Indian places at about 15-25 per dish.

Bzz. Bzz. Bzz.

That’s the sound of an alarm clock.
It’s also the sound that I didn’t hear on Friday morning, causing me to wake up 15 minutes before my last train. And it takes me 15 minutes to get to the train station.
Rushing out the door, I take a quick glance at the kitchen and think about the breakfast and lunch I didn’t get to make today.

Lunch coops!

That’s the sound of the full-timers calling me and my fellow co-ops to go out and grab some lunch. By some random selection process, we agreed on going to Craft Burger. I’ve always wanted to try out one of their veggie burgers, so this finally gave me an oppritunity to try them out. When we arrived, the tiny little shop was packed from wall to wall with hungry people waiting to get their hands on a burger. I ordered the Veggie Burger with the standard toppings (minus onions and mayo) on a whole wheat bun. I also added avocado as a substitute for mayo.

Veggie Burger

The burger was the typical wheat/soy style burgers which tend to be cooked too dry, but this one was nice and juicy. The bun was also light and fluffy, compared to most whole wheat buns. The avocado topping on the other hand was rather disappointing, tasting somewhat bland. All in all, I felt that Craft Burger’s Veggie Burger is pretty good (albeit somewhat costly) and much better than the Vegetable “Burger” I had at Mr. Greenjeans.

After a hard day of work, I headed off to the Eaton Centre to meet up with a friend. After browsing through some stores and checking out some clothes, I decided we should head to Mr. Greenjeans since it was really close by. I’ve been to this restaurant before at the bar, but can’t seem to remember what I ordered, I think it was the roasted vegetable pizza. This time around I ordered the vegetable “burger” with fries.

Vegetable "Burger"

The moment the dish arrived I started attacking it since I was so hungry, almost forgetting to take a picture! The dish consisted of a patty with black beans and some other ingredients that I didn’t really notice, topped with alfalfa sprouts, tomato (a single slice) and feta cheese. On the side, was a huge pile of fries and a garlic/herb (I believe it was rosemary) dressing on the side. After taking my first bite, I realised there was a problem. There was just WAY TOO MUCH alfalfa! This caused the burger to be bitter and just difficult to eat in general. After taking off two thirds of the alfalfa from the burger, I noticed a small undistributed mound of feta in the middle of the burger and promptly spread it evently over the patty. After these changes, the patty itself wasn’t too bad, slightly dry but still not bad for a vegetarian burger.

The service at the restaurant was decent, with no problems with our orders and extremely prompt service. My only complaint is that all the waitstaff had walkie-talkies that kept going off while they were walking around, which really destroyed the atmosphere. I didn’t remember this problem last time I visited, so maybe they just started using them.

Woke up rather late today, and went out for a little bit, came back for lunch at around two and prepared the gnocchi that I made last night. I wanted to make the gnocchi with a butter sage sauce, since most recipes that I found used that but after visiting 3 different supermarkets (No Frills, Food Basics and Loblaws), none of them had sage. I wonder if it’s a seasonal thing? So instead, I made a butter garlic sauce and here’s how it turned out:

Garlic Butter Gnocchi

It didn’t turn out too great, due to the fact that the pieces were too big, and that there wasn’t enough squash/cauliflower flavour in the gnocchi :(. I’m going to cut the rest in half and try to prepare them asian style next time.

One row of Le Select's Wine Cellar

For dinner, I went to Charisse‘s Going Away Party at Le Select Bistro a nice French place at Wellington and Spadina. The restaurant had a huge wine list and you can see into their huge wine cellar as well as their kitchen. I ordered a Vesper martini, those of you who have seen Casino Royale may remember James Bond ordering this drink, a combination of Gin, Vodka and Kina Lillet (although Lillet Blanc is a common replacement since Kina Lillet is no longer available). I liked the drink, you taste the smooth gin with a little bite from the vodka and a dash of clean orange flavour.

The service at the restaurant was really quick and unintrusive (most of the time empty drinks cleared or glasses of water refilled without us even noticing) and they did not hover around like some waitstaff tend to do. My only complaint was that our waitress tended to stand at the head of our large table and take orders, only moving towards us when she couldn’t hear what we were saying.

Ragoût de Cèpes et de Seitan

To eat, I ordered the Ragoût de Cèpes et de Seitan, one of the two vegetarian entrees on the menu. The dish consisted of two halves, one side being the seitan and cepe mushrooms, and the other side being seared polenta and eggplant. The dish was one of the best non-pasta vegetarian dishes I’ve had at a western restaurant. The vegetables were perfectly prepared the seitan wasn’t rubbery (as it tends to be most of the time), and it was sauced just right so that all the flavours and components could be tasted.

To finish it off, I was still in the mood for another drink, so I decided to try a dessert wine. I’ve only had our local Ontario ice wines, so I asked my friend and the waitress to suggest a wine for me. I don’t remember the exact name of the wine, but according to the bill it was a Domaine des Coyeux Muscat ’02. Just like an ice wine, this wine was sweet and extremely delicious. It tasted like an ice wine mixed with regular wine, so that it isn’t too sweet. I wonder if they have this stuff at the LCBO?

Interior shot of the Restaurant

Went to Mangia and Bevi Resto-Bar last Saturday, the restaurant is hidden on Ontario St., east of King and Sherbourne, which is actually just a couple blocks away from where I work at Autodesk.  Two thirds of the menu was made up of pizzas and a few appetizers and pasta.  The liquors available at the “bar” were quite limited, so I didn’t order anything to drink.  The restaurant seemed more or less like a family run business, with little kids running around ruining whatever bar atmosphere they had left.

Although the menu was filled with pizzas, only two people in our group ordered them which was kind of surprising.  I’m not sure about how authentic the place is supposed to be.  Heck, I don’t even know what authentic pizza is supposed to be like, so I won’t comment about that.  I ordered the Atene pizza, which had tomato sauce, mozzarella, red onions, anchovies, black olives, egg, oregano.  The waiter was happy to make adjustments to the toppings on the pizza, which was great because I wanted to see what the egg on the pizza was all about.  I replaced the anchovies with smoked provolone.

Atene Pizza

It was at least pretty interesting to see an egg on my pizza, I was expecting something like scrambled eggs, not a whole sunny side up egg baked right in the middle of the pizza. I wasn’t too sure of how to eat it so I just broke it and spread the yolk around a little. The pizza was good, although the problem with eating thin crust pizzas or flat bread is that it tends to gets pretty cold easily, so the pizza got cold and a little soggy from the egg.  Overall the food was alright, although the rest of my group found the pasta to be mediocre.

(Again, apologies for the cellphone camera)

Went to EAST! yesterday, a spin off of Spring Rolls because Fressen was full, filled with reservations from the day before, so we walked down Queen street scouring for another place to eat. After skipping a bunch of really dead spots, we ended up at EAST!, it felt very much like Spring Rolls, even the menu seemed identical, I actually didn’t realise they were the same place until I saw Spring Rolls website on their menu. Now, I’m quite biased against Spring Rolls restaurants since their food is usually rather bland and not authentic at all, but I felt my dish felt the same here as well.

Vegetable & Tofu Green Curry

I ordered the vegetable and tofu green curry, and was asked by the waiter if I could handle the spiciness. The dish came with a little pyramid of rice. The curry was barely spicy, and tasted rather starchy, the texture of the curry reflected this by being thick and gooey. The tofu tasted rather old and did not appear appealing at all. It definitely left a large hole for something else…

After our meal, I dropped by David’s Tea a newly opened tea shop next to Le Chateau on Queen St W. and picked up some tea to add to my infusions, which I will write about in another post.

Nutella & Banana Crepe

We then headed back to where EAST! was and stopped at Cafe Crepe to fill the void we had. Although I wanted a savoury crepe I decided to go with a sweet one due to peer pressure and price. I ordered a Nutella and banana crepe. Although delicious, barely halfway through the Nutella got to me. The crepe was very sweet and heavy where it got to the point that it felt like I was eating peanut butter. Regretting the fact that I did not order the savoury crepe. The crepe was indeed delicious, just not something I would be able to eat so much of.

(sorry for the cellphone photos, the batteries on my camera were dead)