Beast Restaurant

Beast Restaurant – 96 Tecumseth St, Toronto

I heard such great things about Beast’s brunch since Dave (@1goatroti) and Adrienne (@AdrienneDLR) went there a few weeks ago. So of course, I had to come and try since I found out they had a dish called the Beastwich.

Above is our appetizer. Boyfriend can never say no to deep fried pickles. I loved these ones because they were sliced, not quartered like other places usually do them. The breading was beautifully seasoned and retained their crunchiness. They served this with a homemade ranch sauce. So delicious, I actually wanted a second order and we hadn’t even started eating our real meals yet.

We ended up ordering one of their specials, which was the meat omelette, made with beef tongue and sauerkraut (boyfriend’s favourites). It was served with a nice fresh salad and a buttermilk biscuit. I didn’t like the omelette too much, but the salad had a yummy balsamic dressing. The biscuit was perfectly buttery and salty, and we kept eating it even after we were extra stuffed.

I don’t know what it is with the word po’boy, but I am a sucker for them. I had a softshell crab po’boy at Porchetta and Co about a month ago, and I swear I might have died right then and there. This was a deep fried oyster po’boy with cheese, bacon, lettuce, tomato, and pickles, served with a side of homemade bbq chips. The chips were nice, light, and crispy. The po’boy was soft and cheesy, and while it was deep fried, the veggies kept it tasting fresh and light. The only thing wrong with it was that I realised I forgot that I don’t like cooked oysters. But I’m sure if you like them, then you would love this sandwich. The oysters themselves were huge and meaty, encased in a beautiful coating of fried dough.

There’s a third?? How many were you?? It was just me and boyfriend, but of course I had to have a third meal. There were too many choices to just end up with two! And how could we not have the beauty that was called the “Beastwich.” Deep fried chicken atop a buttermilk biscuit, fried egg, cheese, and topped with sausage gravy, served with homefries.

I love sausage and biscuits so much. After the first time having them in Atlanta, I was hooked. The chicken was so moist and deliciously deep fried. Everything together was soft, and moist, and savoury, and heavy in the best way possible. This is exactly what I expect from a sandwich called Beastwich.

Altogether, our bill came up to about $60 — three meals, an appetizer, and a $5 caesar — which wasn’t too horrible, but at the end of my birthday month, our bank accounts are tapped out! I would love to come back and try their dinner though; they have some really yummy looking things on the menu.

Smoque & Bones

869 Queen St. West, Toronto

Smoque ‘n’ Bones opened up last week on Queen West, just across the street from Trinity Bellwoods and the always delicious Nadège. I was invited by Dave (of the Goat Roti Chronicles), along with Chanry and Adrienne, to sample some of their wonderful barbecue (touted as Toronto’s answer to authentic Southern BBQ) and jumped at the chance. I am always down for some meat sweats. I parked on a side street and as I got out of the car, I could instantly smell the smoky barbecue luring me into the restaurant. I was already drooling. As I walked up to the restaurant at 7, I went to take a picture of the sign with my DSLR, only to be greeted with the wonderful message, “No Memory Card Inserted.” So please, enjoy the following post accompanied with photos taken with a drunk potato.

Side Dishes – Coleslaw, Potato Salad, Collard Greens, Mac & Cheese, Baked Beans, Candied Yams – $3.90 each

We started out with their range of side dishes. The two stand-out ones for me were definitely the candied yams – soft and sweet – and the mac and cheese, topped with homemade parmesan breadcrumbs. It was creamy, the noodles had a nice bite to them, and the breadcrumbs were so perfectly seasoned. The baked beans were very ketchup-y but it grew on me as it I ate it. The coleslaw grew on me as well, but there was a very strong dillweed flavour to it. The collard greens were nice and bitter. The potato salad had some pulled pork mixed into it; it was good, but I found it to be a little too dense.

Shoestring Fries, Onion Rings, Sweet Potato Waffle Fries – $3.90 each

These three fry baskets were served with a side of chipotle mayo. I can’t tell you which of them I liked more because I honestly loved all of them. They were all so crispy and delicious. The shoestring fries were delightfully crispy, though still with a potatoey mouth-feel to them despite being so thin. The onion rings were crunchy, without scratching the roof of your mouth, and not over-salted. So delicious. And then the sweet potato waffles, which I’m sure would turn my sweet potato hating boyfriend into a lover. All three of these were done oh-so-right.

Pickle Jar – $3.90

The pickle jar is a mix of chow chow, watermelon rinds, okra spears, jalapeño, and green beans. I was most excited to try the watermelon rinds, but I found them unremarkable. The okra spears were great. Nice and crunchy with the right amount of sour. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to try any pickled green beans (my fave!).

Pulled Pork Sandwich – 1/2 pound – $11.90

I have always been of the school of thought that pulled pork sandwiches (and sloppy joes, and “gourmet” burgers) are meant to be messy affairs. Although I didn’t get to eat this, just the look of it promises to be a wrist-wetting adventure. I am told that it was “very good.”

Bread Basket – $3.90

This creative bread basket came with all my favourite things. Cheese straws, corn bread, a biscuit, and hush puppies! The first three because I’d had them before and they’re delicious; the last because puppies. The cheese straws were light, cheesy, and flaky. Great bite without filling up. Because they’re so light, they’re probably like zero calories. The biscuit was crumbly, buttery, soft, warm, and delicious. The hush puppies tasted like they should, like deep-fried cornmeal batter. Unfortunately, the one I was looking forward to the most, the cornbread, did not live up to my imagination. Less like a savoury cornbread, I bit into it and could have sworn I was eating a pound cake. It could have been more savoury, maybe with some cheese and jalapeño inside. Oh man, now I’m drooling.

Pork Side Ribs – 1/2 rack – $16.90 // Lemonade & Sweet Tea

Judy, you went to a barbecue place and it took forever to get to the meat!!! Yes, it did. And it was so worth it. These pork ribs are served “naked” straight from the smoker, and you’re given a tin of the barbecue sauce with a brush to paint on yourself. The sauce was great, and you can make them super saucy if that’s the way you roll. I’m usually a saucy person, but hooooly. These ribs were so good that I couldn’t even bear to stop eating to paint more sauce on them. They are good both with and without! The meat is super tender and has such a nice bite to it, I’m starting to think that “fall off the bone” ribs are overhyped. There was so much lovely flavour in the meat and the barbecue sauce was on point too. Not too tart, not too sweet, but the perfect complimentary smoky flavour. I would have liked to try any of their other meats, but unfortunately this was all we had for their barbecued meats.

Now that I’m done hailing the ribs, let’s talk about the drinks. The lemonade had been all buzz, so we simply had to try their “famous” lemonade. Only open a few days, and their lemonade was already famous, so of course we had to try it. The waitress also recommended we try their sweet tea. The lemonade is made from a smoked lemon mixed in with muddle mint. It was nice and minty, and would go well with some gin. It is a nice, light summer drink. However, let’s get at the sweet tea. It’s made with black tea, (mild) black liquorice liqueur, muddled orange, and orange bitters, and it is beyond anything I’ve ever had before. It blows my mind how delicious this drink was, and I definitely see myself walking down Queen West in the summer, having this refreshing drink, and dying happy.

Bourbon Cherry Crepe – $6.90

A vanilla crepe filled with marscapone cheese, topped with bourbon cherries and icing sugar. It might be the Montrealer in me, but the crepe was a bit rubbery, and didn’t have the delicious crispy edge. The cherries were great, but the marscapone inside was a little bit lacking. It could have had a bit more substance maybe if there was an orange or lemon or something citrusy to heighten the flavour inside. Maybe some ice cream on top, with the cherries and bourbon drizzled on. Unless something was changed, I wouldn’t order this again.

Upside Down Pineapple Spice Cake – $6.90

Looking like a witch’s hat, this pumpkin spice cake has pineapples at the bottom, and is drizzled with syrup. The cake was nice, but it went beyond when you finally get a forkful of cake, pineapple, and syrup. The sticky sweet of the syrup makes for a moist cake, and the sweet pineapples gave a wonderfully fruity fresh flavour to it all. A perfect ending to a heavy barbecue meal.

I really would have liked to try the Bourbon Banana Foster ($6.90) as well. It sounded so delicious, with coconut custard and puff pastry.

All in all, Smoque N Bones is a wonderful addition to the vibrant Queen West neighbourhood, and already so busy (be prepared to wait if you’re visiting), they’re sure to have a successful opening summer and beyond. I will definitely be back.

Southern Delight

Of course one of the only reasons I travel is to try out new and wonderful foods that excite every sense I have. Atlanta did not disappoint. I tried the go-to southern foods, that which I will not list here because I want you to continue reading. Although I STILL haven’t had a deep-fried mars bar/twinkie/anything else crazy even though they’re now available everywhere, I do plan to… eventually. Without further ado, Judy’s Southern Cuisine Adventure!!

Mama Ninfa’s 231 Peachtree Center Avenue

Now,  I know I promised southern but this was the first meal we had in Atlanta (actually my first meal was a bag of jalapeno chips and a fruit punch; others’ was some McDonald’s at 5 Points station, which we completely did not know was super sketchy). Our food adventure did not get off to a good start. This was the worst tex-mex food I’d ever had the disgust of trying. I could have made this meal way better using packaged Ol Del Paso mix, at least the ground beef would have been food grade instead of this gravel mixture that they tried to pass off as food. The beans were uninspired, felt old and the rice was bland with old veggies. The corn tortillas were hard and chewy and tasteless.

I only even mention this restaurant as a warning to not be sucked in by their $10 pitchers of beers as we were. The fact that the place was empty on a Friday afternoon during happy hour should have been a clue. Don’t eat here.

Atlanta Grill 181 Peachtree Street Northeast

Later that night, we were on the hunt for a restaurant around 9PM but were very surprised to see that almost everything was closing/already closed so early on a Friday night. We found the Atlanta Grill which is on the second floor of the Ritz-Carlton and although it was a bit pricey, the food was fantastic. The atmosphere was a nod to old southern culture with beautiful booths, wooden details, and large rustic paintings. We were served some lovely cornbread mini-muffins with pats of butter on the side. These little things were so deliciously moist and just the perfect amount of sweet. Dinner, as opposed to lunch, was getting off to a distinctly delicious start.

Because we were both not too hungry, boyfriend and I shared two appetizers (of my choosing of course!), so on the left we had the Shrimp & Grits, which I just had to try, and on the right was a She-Crab Soup with a drizzle of lemon oil on top. I don’t know what they do with the He-Crabs but apparently, they are not good enough for this soup.

The shrimp and grits were everything I could ask for. The shrimps were big, plump, and juicy. They were perfectly cooked and each bite was meaty and satisfying. Served on top of grits (which are like corn-y mashed potatoes) which are smothered in a light seafood-y gravy. This dish was surprisingly filling. And this is the point of the blog where I start salivating for all this food again.

The crab soup was nice and thick with chunks of crab in it. Lovely and peppery without being overpowering. The lemon oil was light and gave it a nice citrus-y touch. This dish also filled us up quite nicely without being too heavy. ACK. The quality of all this food was just outstanding.

So for dessert, we split a sweet caramel bread pudding of sorts with a rum and raspberry sorbet on the side. On the right was my banana pudding. Everyone knows I loooooooove banana pudding. It had real chunks of banana, surrounded by a banana cream, with little sugar cookies (that maintained their crunch!), a stick of chocolate, and get this, toasted marshmallows. TOASTED MARSHMALLOWS. In case you missed it the first time. Divine. Absolutely wonderful.

Corner Bakery Cafe 270 Peachtree St NW #100

I’ve been after a whoopee pie since I first saw them about two years ago on Bobby Flay’s showdown that I happened to be watching one day. So what I now know is: A whoopee pie is a sandwich where two small cakes are the breads and a sweet cream is the filling. I had a whoopee pies two days in a row. The one on the left being a vanilla filling and the right a peanut butter based filling. Both very sweet and I probably shouldn’t have had them for breakfast but so worth it.

The other foods we had at this place were great! I had a veggie sandwich filled with all sorts of warm soft veggies between some lovely nutty multigrain bread that was crispy to a fault! Everyone else’s sandwiches looked tasty as well. They were a little pricey but it is some high end bistro food that comes out of their kitchen.

Pitty Pat’s Porch 25 Andrew Young International Boulevard Northeast

This is where we had dinner on Saturday night. The atmosphere was really cute, walking into the restaurant was just like walking into someone’s living room, with a couch and paintings and photographs on the wall. The dining area is down a set of stairs where famous people stare at you on the way down (their faces line the walls). There is a live piano player and the wait staff was really nice, helpful, and friendly. The waiter even laughed very hard (and convincingly) at my lame jokes.

They have a really great fully stocked salad bar. Macaroni salad, chicken salad, cucumber & tomato salad, all of them super yummy.

Of course I couldn’t leave Georgia without having some o dem fried chickens. These things were huge! What do y’all feed your chickens in America?? I got chicken and ribs with a side of buttered veggies and mashed potatoes, and could barely finish it all! I actually didn’t. I had the ribs and a small piece of chicken. That huge honkin’ thing got doggy-bagged. And now I’m going to admit to you that I also stocked up salad bar stuff to take home. I ain’t embarrassed.

Boyfriend needed a chunk of meat so he had a steak which came with some amazingly cheesy creamy gouda mac and cheese. GOUDA mac and cheese. It had a nice gratiné on top, and lordy do I love that crispy cheese. The pasta was of the large ring variety which house all of that gooey sauce. Too delicious. The sideboard provided for the table was black eyed peas and collard greens which boyfriend destroyed. With his mouth.

Waffle House 96 Lower Alabama Street

Just Around The Corner 76 Spring Street Northwest

I went to the Waffle House by myself one day because everyone else had gone the day before when I was dealing with some airport stuff. I just had to try a waffle house waffle to see what the hype was all about. I went to the location just outside of 5 Points MARTA centre which, like I said above, was very ghetto. There were a lot of beggars around, but I persevered. I walked in and didn’t quite know what to do with myself. Do I just seat myself? Am I allowed to sit in a booth or was that rude because I was by myself? And I know for damn sure that I stook out like a sore thumb because I’m a little asian girl lookin’ around the place like she’s lost and the only person who wasn’t black. That was fun. But I ended up sitting at the counter in front of the kitchen area, which I think is where people sit for a quick breakfast by themselves. Step one, done!

I picked up a menu and clearly looked like I’ve never seen a menu anymore debating over every little thing. However, the food experience was nice. Everything was super cheap. I ordered one waffle, a plate of bacon, and of course, biscuits and gravy. The waffle was really big, and was like a shallow eggo. It really wasn’t all that great, and I’m on the waffle side of the waffle vs pancakes argument. The bacon was paper thin, too crispy (probably because of its width), and fell apart with a gust of wind. However, the biscuits and gravy was amazing! The sausage gravy was completely savoury, with bits of, I guess, sausage, though it had the consistency of ground beef. If I were to go back, I’d probably go to a different location (I didn’t feel safe by myself), and I would definitely get the biscuits and gravy.

On the right hand side is a sandwich from Just Around The Corner. We passed this place on the cab ride back to the hotel from the CNN Centre. None of us were really paying attention to the roads so when we went back to find it, the only the only thing we could as was “Uhh… it said best burgers in the city, had a red tarp, and maybe advertised Coca Cola.” Ya, it’s Atlanta, everyone advertises Coca Cola. We even stopped some nice cops to ask but we had no idea what we were talking about. We did find one of the Atlanta tourism people who hang out on the corners and luckily he knew exactly what we were talking about.

The place itself is a hole in the wall that reminds me of Decarie Hotdog or La Belle Province in Montreal. The burgers were great, and I had a Philly Cheesesteak (my weakness!). They have a place outside on the sidewalk to eat and watch the streets. Yummy yummy!

Ray’s In The City 240 Peachtree Street Northwest

For our last night, we ate at Ray’s which is a high-end seafood restaurant right smack in the middle of downtown. It was very expensive but you have to live every once in a while and the food was so goddang good. In the lower part of the photo you’ll see some crab cakes. But they aren’t JUST crab cakes, they are the best crab cakes in the whole world. THE WHOLE WORLD. Flakey, and pure crab and crack. Fresh crab and crack. That’s all is needed to make this, I’m sure. And the shrimp, oh lawdy the shrimp. Ray’s BBQ shrimp. Big and juicy, pleasantly spicy. The sauce was so good that we ended up just dunking our bread in it when all the shrimp was gone. This seafood platter also came with calamari (yum!) and some rockefeller oysters (which I wasn’t a big fan of) for $55. I seriously cannot get over how good the shrimp and crack cakes were. Sorry, crab cakes. My bad.

For my entree, I had parmasen-crusted scallops on top of a bed of lobster risotto, with seafood gumbo on the side. I’d had a side of gumbo at Pitty Pat’s as well, and have just come to accept that I don’t particularly like gumbo. Both times they were really salty, and the flavour wasn’t to my liking. Maybe I’ll have to barge into a southerner’s house to try it in order to like it. Both my scallops and my other cousin’s scallops weren’t that great as well. Both just very bland and the parmasen crust was burnt and tasted burnt as well. However, the lobster risotto was amazing. A distinct lobster taste, soft without being mushy, a nice cheesy taste, and thankfully very filling as well because I couldn’t bear the eat more than one scallop.

With all these beautiful meals, I do believe that our trip down south was a success. My trip to eat was fully satisfactory and I do believe another trip down there is definitely in my future! Enjoy the food, and remember that the photos do get bigger, but no matter how much you magnify, it probably won’t magically appear on your keyboard. Sorry!

A-T-L baby!

Yes! We took a trip down to Atlanta, Georgia and it was ah~mazing. I was going to put everything into one huge long post, but that looked like it was going to become a post way too long for anyone’s attention span, so if you’re looking for food pictures, that will be up in a couple days. So make sure to refresh my page every hour on the hour.

In this post, I recap every tourist-y think we did. We bought a 69$ CityPass that allowed us entrance to 5 of 7 of Atlanta’s tourist attractions.

Numba 1! The entire reason I started planning a trip down to Georgia since last year. The world’s biggest aquarium (though Toronto is saying they are currently building the new world’s biggest aquarium) located downtown Atlanta. I love aquariums. For my 19th birthday, we roadtripped to Quebec City and l’Aquarium du Quebec and I fell in love with the tanks and the fish and the jelly fish and the entire atmosphere of aquarium life. As an aside, I also love zoos, safaris, biodomes, and pet stores. After my first aquarium experience, I just knew that I had to go big or go home, and thus was born this trip to the Georgia Aquarium. Our citypass even allowed us free tickets to the 30-minute dolphin show that showcased dolphin flips, skips, and divers surfing on dolphin noses.

This water tunnel was amazing. The tank itself is a 6.3 million gallon habitat exhibit, wholly earning the title of world’s biggest. This tunnel is 100 feet long and allows you to walk underneath the tank while the fish swim above you. There is this huge whale shark that passes by every so often and reminds me to not get lost in the ocean ever because, damn nature is scary SON. On the left side of the tunnel, there’s a moving sidewalk that moves quite slowly. We did want to go through the tunnel at our own pace so we stayed on the right. However, the place was fully crowded, we were there on a Saturday after all. As much as I would like to say that it was calm and peaceful, it was not the case. It was loud with lots of excited children (myself included) and lots of oohs and aahs, which I fully enjoyed! I could stay in this place forever. I’m going to turn my house into a giant fish tank save for one small tunnel in the basement where I’ll spend all my time eating, sleeping, and watching fish.

The quiet area for watching the same fish is at the picture above where you see all the people standing in front of the rectangular viewing area. There, it was calm and quiet, with places to sit and just watch the aquarium life swim by.

Here’s a video I took while walking through the tunnel, there’s the huge whale shark seen briefly at the beginning, and then a giant fish, and then a super cool sawface shark (which the internet tells me is called a Sawshark. Should have seen that coming.)!

The aquarium building itself was gigantic, with so many different tunnels and areas with different exhibits. We were there for probably about 3 hours (not including the dolphin show) and we didn’t even get to see all the exhibits, missing two of them. Piranhas are damn creepy. They don’t swim. They just kind of stay floating, very stationary in the water, kind of like how a hummingbird hovers in one place. The piranha tank looked like a bunch of plastic fish tied in place. Too eerie!

Sea dragons (top right) are an animal that I didn’t even know existed. They are like mutant sea horses. Or sea horses that made babies with fairies. They swam very majestically.

At the bottom left, there are some giant deep sea crabs (Japanese Spider Crabs) who’s leg span can reach up to 12 ft! That’s almost two Shaquille O’Neals. They’re the largest living anthropod, and can live to 100 years. I LOVE ANIMALS.

And on the bottom right is a penguin. There were a few that were very intent on trying to capture a girl’s shiny necklace and kept chasing her around. They were very difficult to capture with the camera. It is very fitting that they are boyfriend’s favourite animal because they’re both quite awkward on land and easily amused.

Continuing with the animal theme, we also trekked out to the Atlanta Zoo! It is like any other zoo I’ve been too, but I always love seeing the animals. This was the first time I’d ever seen a panda though and they were beyond adorable, just like how the media makes them out to be. Two of them were snoozing awkwardly in the tree branches, and then there was the one that was just sitting on the ground with a bunch of leaves in his face and was just munch-munch-munching away.

Another funny sight were the two bush dogs in their exhibit. There was this pit in the middle of it with some large logs and branches at the bottom, so these two take it upon themselves to open their jaws terrifyingly wide and using very impressive teamwork to get those longs out of the pit! And then throw them back in. And then dragging them back out again. They were too adorable.

The zoo has a train that takes you around the kid’s animals area that had a petting zoo AND kangaroos. What else could you ask for. There’s even a rock-climbing wall, but I didn’t do it because, girl, I had just gotten ma nails did.

The World of Coca Cola was so much fun! Although the whole thing felt a little propaganda-y, I had fun anyway, because I grew up preferring Coke over Pepsi and I fully accept our Coke overlords when they rise to power. They have a lot of Coke memorabilia a really fun 4D movie. They then played this really cool video that made me enjoy being brainwashed.

We even found our lovers from Coca Cola’s past!

In addition to these three places we also went to the “Inside CNN” tour which was pretty boring and I would have much preferred to go to the Fernbank Museum of Natural History, but perhaps that can happen next time we get down there because I would love to go back. I loved the city (aside from walking up and down the hills between our hotel and the main downtown area), I love the southern hospitality, everyone’s accents, hell, even the beggars were really nice. And the food. Oh my, stay tuned for the food.

Also, all the pictures above get bigger if you click on them. So click on them if you want a face full of POW WOAH WOAH WOAH.