Location: 828 Saint Clair Avenue West, Toronto
Website: None
I was watching the Dominican Republic-centric episode of No Reservations, and a hearty soup called sancocho was highlighted as that country’s quintessential dish. After a quick consultation with my good friend Google, I found myself at Mi Tierra — though it’s technically a Colombian restaurant, they’ve got the ‘cocho on the menu (what’s that? No one calls it ‘cocho? Okay fine. Your loss).
It’s alright, I guess. It’s perfectly tasty, but I have a hard time imagining anyone getting too hot and bothered over it (but again, like with my recent experience with doubles, it’s possible that I got a mediocre version of an otherwise great dish).
The base is a pretty basic chicken stock; it’s a nice clean broth, but there isn’t a whole lot of flavour there. It’s filled with some fairly sizable chunks of potato, plantain, cassava (which is like a starchier potato), oxtail, and roast-beef-esque chunks of meat.
It’ll certainly fill you up, though I wish there was a little bit more meat in there; there was only one piece of oxtail, which was really tender and probably the best thing in the bowl. There were maybe three or four chunks of beef, which were a bit dryer than I’d like, but otherwise pretty good. The rest was all potato and cassava and plantain. It was hearty and very filling, no doubt about it, but a little bit ho-hum. The dish primarily consists of starchy vegetables that all taste like starchy vegetables; there’s not much here that elevates them.
It came with a coleslaw-esque salad on the side, which had a bright, citrusy flavour, but which was a little bit too strong on the onion for my tastes (but I’m admittedly not a huge fan of raw onion).
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