flatbread – Around the World in 196 Plates

Country 098 – Montenegro (Somun Superstar)

Published on December 15, 2019 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 998 Kingston Road, Toronto
Website: http://www.somunsuperstar.com/

Hey, look at that — country 98. I’m halfway through this thing! And it only took a scant four years. At this rate, I’ll be done sometime around 2023. Slow and steady wins the race.

And as it turns out, I picked a good restaurant for a landmark post, because Somun Superstar is absolutely fantastic. Easily one of the best places that I’ve tried for the blog so far.

As you’d guess from the name, Somun Superstar specializes in somun, a Bosnian flatbread that they bake fresh throughout the day in a wood-burning oven.

And in case you’re wondering why I’m writing about this for Montenegro instead of Bosnia — I’ve already written about Bosnia, where I ate a similar but infinitely inferior meal at Sarajevo Grill & Meat. However, Montenegro is Bosnia’s neighbour; they share much of the same cuisine, including somun.

I’m so glad I decided to check this place out, because that somun? Magical. They serve it still slightly warm from the oven, and it has an amazing flavour and a delightful fluffy chewiness.

You could put anything in that bread and it would be delicious. You could eat that bread alone and it would be delicious (and in fact I did exactly that — it was so good that I bought some to bring home).

But of course, they’re not going to put that level of care and skill into the bread and then whiff it on the filling. I got the Loaded Cevapcici, which comes stuffed with cevapcici (an Eastern European sausage), kajmak (a slightly tart, ricotta-esque dairy product), avjar (a spread made from roasted red peppers), onion, pickles, and hot peppers.

It’s incredibly delicious. Even aside from the bread, which, as mentioned, is magical, everything works so well together. It’s creamy, vibrant, crunchy, and meaty. It’s everything you want in a sandwich. The cevapcici, in particular, is way above average, with a nice amount of seasoning and a great meaty flavour. My only real complaint are the onions, which are abundant and somewhat overwhelming. But then I’m a weirdo who hates raw onion, so that’s on me, not the sandwich.

I also tried the somun bread pudding. I wasn’t planning on having dessert, but everything was so good that I figured it had to be done. And yeah: it was just as good as the sandwich, with a silky, substantial creaminess and a thoroughly irresistible custardy flavour. It was honestly one of the best slices of bread pudding I’ve ever had.

Country 077 – Bosnia and Herzegovina (Sarajevo Grill & Meat)

Published on September 9, 2018September 9, 2018 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 225 The East Mall, Etobicoke
Website: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Sarajevo-Grill-and-Meat/1088266461319632

Sarajevo Grill & Meat is a bit odd; they have a few tables, but mainly, it’s a take-out joint and a little supermarket of sorts. They have several shelves worth of Eastern European groceries, a butcher counter, some cakes and cookies, and a hot table with savoury pastries.

They also have a few meaty goodies you can eat in the restaurant, with their specialty being cevapi, an Eastern European sausage.

I ordered the large cevapi plate, which comes with a whole pile of little sausages on a plate-sized piece of flatbread called lepinja.

It’s not bad, but the cevapi at Royal Meats (which is about a five minute drive away) is better on pretty much every level.

The main issue here is that the sausages are over-salted and under-spiced, with a one-note salty flavour that gets a bit monotonous after a few mouthfuls.

They’re also extremely greasy. This normally wouldn’t be an issue; there’s nothing sadder than a dried-out sausage. But these go a little bit too far in the other direction. It’s the type of dish where your mouth and lips immediately become slick with grease — a feeling that persists long after the meal is done.

It didn’t help that the lepinja (which was soft, fluffy, and a little bit chewy) was suffused with oil; some parts were downright mushy.

The dish came with a small container of a white substance that I’m pretty sure was just straight-up margarine or lard, just in case you want more grease to dip your greasy bread and your greasy sausages in. It’s basically a heart attack waiting to happen.

Country 073 – Armenia (Mamajoun)

Published on July 15, 2018 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 209 Ellesmere Road, Toronto
Website: https://mamajoun.com/

Mamajoun is an Armenian pizzeria that specializes in lahmajoun, a tasty flatbread that’s traditionally topped with a mixture of ground beef and minced veggies. It’s mostly a take-out place, though they do have a few small tables and a counter where you can sit.

You can get your lahmajoun on its own, or you can choose from various fillings; they wrap the whole thing up and stick it in a panini press to give it a nice crispiness on its exterior.

I’ve been eating the Middle Eastern version of these (called lahm bi ajin — basically the exact same thing, but with a different name) for pretty much my entire life, but for some reason it’s never occurred to me to cram more stuff in there and eat it like a wrap. And I have no idea why; it’s kind of ingenious.

I chose to have mine filled with soujouk, which is a really tasty sausage that basically combines the intense flavour of a cured sausage with the texture of a fresh one. You can also fill it with the usual assortment of olives, pickled goodies, and hot peppers that you’d expect from a Mediterranean wrap.

It was quite tasty. The lahmajoun itself had a nicely spiced meaty flavour, with a good contrast of fluffiness and crispiness on the flatbread. The soujouk and the other fillings worked really well; between the vibrant sausage and the various vinegary pickles, it’s an absolute face-punch of flavour. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Country 069 – Iran (Takht-e Tavoos)

Published on May 20, 2018May 20, 2018 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 1120 College Street, Toronto
Website: http://pomegranaterestaurant.ca/tavoos/

I think I’ve mentioned before that I love lamb. Beef is great, obviously, but there’s something about the intense flavour of a good piece of lamb that I find irresistible.

Takht-e Tavoos’s version of kalleh pacheh — an Iranian soup made with chunks of lamb hoof, tongue, and cheek — is almost certainly the lambiest dish that I’ve ever had. The flavour was intense. I loved it.

The broth is thick and rich, with a really pronounced meaty flavour. There’s a Middle Eastern dish that consists of rice and lamb (I had a version of this at Reyan in Mississauga), and this was almost like a soup version of that; there’s no rice here, but the spices are very similar. It’s almost too rich, but a spritz of lime adds some brightness and helps to round things out.

And the chunks of lamb (which were generous) were so good. Certainly, with its hodge-podge of face and feet, it might be a bit of a tough sell. But, for the most part, the meat here was amazingly well prepared.

The cheek, which was unctuous and luxurious, was the best of the bunch. It was melt-in-your-mouth tender, with a face-punch of amazingly lamby flavour.

The tongue was almost as good. It certainly looks a bit off-putting (it’s a full tongue, so there’s no mistaking what it is), but the meat was amazing. It doesn’t have the intense fattiness of the cheek, so if you’re fat-averse, this might be more your speed.

The hoof was easily my least favourite of the three. This is a harder cut of meat to get right — it’s mostly just a lot of really thick skin and collagen, without a whole lot of actual meat. The skin here was a bit too rubbery, and the meat almost non-existent.

Still, given how good the other two cuts of meat were, it’s hard to complain too much. Plus, the dish comes with some fresh, tasty flatbread on the side. It tastes just as good on its own as it does dipped into the soup.

Honestly, my biggest complaint about this dish? It’s an absurd amount of food. Between the heaping bowl of rich soup, the substantial pile of meat, and the two sizable slices of flatbread, it feels more like something that The Rock should be eating during a training regimen than a meal for a normal person. I (mostly) finished it, and I felt obscenely full for the rest of the day.

Country 068 – Azerbaijan (Kavkaz)

Published on May 6, 2018 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 1881 Steeles Avenue West, North York
Website: None

My dining companion and I visited Kavkaz at lunch, and like a lot of the obscure restaurants I’ve been visiting for this blog, the place was almost entirely deserted (a couple of people eventually showed up, but it was mostly a big, empty restaurant).

I’m glad places like this can survive, even if I’m not sure how. And I’m especially glad in the case of Kavkaz, because the food was great.

Almost immediately after sitting down, we were brought a bread basket with warm flatbread, and a bowl with sauerkraut and sliced pickles. I’m not sure how these three things were meant to be combined (if at all), but they were tasty.

Up next was bughlama, a stew with fork-tender pieces of lamb, a very pronounced lemony zing, and fresh pops of herbiness from the abundant cilantro (or maybe not cilantro? It tasted like cilantro, but had a heartier texture and appearance. I don’t know; I’m pretty terrible at identifying herbs). The quality of the lamb was great, and the tartness from the lemon really made it stand out.

Our last dish was the lulya kabab, which I liked even better. Featuring a mix of ground lamb and beef, this tasted very similar to the kababs you can get from Afghan joints all around the city. It was tender and perfectly cooked, and was nicely complimented by the sweet and spicy sauce that came on the side.

It came with a side of potatoes that almost looked like thickly-cut chips. The slices were creamy and perfectly cooked, with a nice hit of flavour from garlic and dill. I wish they had been a little bit crispy, but they were otherwise pretty great.

Country 054 – Bangladesh (Premium Sweets)

Published on March 26, 2017March 26, 2017 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 7025 Tomken Road, Mississauga
Website: http://www.premiumsweets.ca/

One of the few nice things about being in Mississauga is that it makes doing this blog pretty easy. Ethnic food from all over the globe is readily available — including, of course, Bangladeshi cuisine.

I wanted to try the sorshe ilish — it’s one of Bangladesh’s national dishes, according to Wikipedia — but apparently Premium Sweets only have a small assortment of what’s on their menu available at any given time. So I went with the mutton bhuna, which came with rice, naan bread, and a small cucumber salad.

Everything was tasty, but not much more; it was one of those inoffensively enjoyable meals that’s good, but not memorable in any particular way.

The mutton bhuna featured chunks of reasonably tender meat in a thick, mildly spicy curry base. The mutton may or may not have actually been mutton, though; there was absolutely none of that mildly gamy, distinctive flavour that you get from lamb (a flavour that should only be intensified with mutton). I suspect that they’re using beef instead.

The sauce was tasty; it’s nothing too mindblowing, but it’s a solid curry.

The naan came tightly wrapped in foil; I really wish they hadn’t done that. The lightly crispy exterior that you get from freshly-baked naan had been completely steamed away inside the foil. It was fine, but it had none of the textural contrast that distinguishes great naan from the merely good; it was just uniformly soft and chewy.

The cucumber salad was a really good compliment to the main meal, with its vinegary crunch providing a nice contrast to the rich curry.

And of course, you can’t go to a place called Premium Sweets without trying the dessert, so I got a selection of six of their Bangladeshi sweets. I have no idea what any of them were or what they were called (quality food writing, right?), but they all had a similarly crumbly, fudgy texture and a nutty, vaguely exotic flavour. A couple were more crumbly and a couple were creamier, but they all tasted about the same. I enjoyed them, but a bit more variety would have been nice.

Country 044 – Lebanon (Acacia Fine Foods)

Published on October 30, 2016 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 1170 Burnhamthorpe Road West, Mississauga
Website: http://www.acaciafinefoodsmississauga.com/

Thanks, Twitter — or more specifically, thanks, Suresh Doss (for the unaware, Doss has become the GTA’s go-to guy for recommendations on ethnic joints like this one). I visited this place entirely thanks to this tweet, and I’m really glad that I did.

It’s a big place, and was almost completely empty when I showed up at around 12:30 on a Sunday (which, as will soon become clear, I think is a travesty). I ordered the arayess, which I had never even heard of before, let alone tried.

It was amazing. It’s ridiculously simple — it’s essentially just a fairly thin layer of spiced ground beef sandwiched inside a piece of pita bread. It’s grilled over charcoal, which gives it a nice exterior char without making the bread overly crispy or crackly.

Whatever they’ve spiced the beef with tastes so good, and the juices soak into the bread so that the whole thing becomes an irresistible medley of beefy, perfectly spiced flavour. It comes with two sauces for dipping — tahini and garlic — and while they’re both quite tasty, it was the garlic sauce that really got me all hot and bothered. It was pretty much the standard thick white sauce that you get at most shawarma joints, but something about it made me want to grab a spoon and eat it straight-up from the container like pudding.

They gave us a couple of pieces of puffy, fresh-from-the-oven pita bread, and by the end of the meal I was tearing pieces off and dipping them straight into that amazing garlic sauce.

You can choose between fries, rice, or salad — since the tweet that brought me here specifically mentioned the rice, that’s what I got.

The rice, like everything else, was not kidding around. Great flavour, and it complimented everything else perfectly.

I should also mention that my dining companion got the chicken and beef shawarma plate, and based only on the couple of mouthfuls I had, it seemed like some seriously top-shelf shawarma (I actually enjoyed it so much that I returned a few days later to try a chicken shawarma sandwich — it was quite good, though it was missing the crispy bits that made the shawarma on the first day so amazing).

I’m really not sure why the place was so empty — I’ve been doing this blog for almost a couple of years now, and this was easily one of the best meals I’ve had so far. It was so good.

Country 039 – Turkey (Kabab 49)

Published on August 7, 2016 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 5308 Dundas Street West, Etobicoke
Website: http://kebab49.com/

So, here’s a fun fact (an actual fun fact, not E!’s version of a fun fact): Turkish doner was actually the first version of that particular type of vertically-rotisseried meat, preceding the similar shawarma and gyro by at least a few decades. I always assumed that shawarma was the O.G. vertical rotating meat-stack, but nope, apparently it’s doner.

And the version they serve at Kabab 49? It’s superb. I ordered the mixed doner plate, which comes with a salad, a big pile of sliced onions, a generous portion of delightfully greasy rice, a few slices of freshly-baked bread, and of course, enough shaved meat to feed a small family.

Everything on the plate is quite good (well, except for the onions — raw onions are the worst thing in the world, and no one is ever going to convince me otherwise), but the highlight is that amazing doner. The mixed plate features chicken and a mix of veal and lamb, and both were fantastic. The veal and lamb was a bit better than the chicken, but both were moist, had plenty of the crispy bits you’re looking for in this type of thing, and were really well seasoned.

The meat works just as well with the rice as with the fluffy, fresh bread. Eventually, you eat enough of the doner and discover a couple of bonus slices of bread at the bottom of the plate, suffused with tasty meat grease. And then you walk out of the restaurant clutching your stomach and wondering how and why you finished the whole thing, because seriously: that plate is enormous. But you kept eating it well past the point that common sense would dictate that you stop. That’s how you know it’s something special.

Country 024 – Ethiopia (Ethiopian House)

Published on January 10, 2016 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 4 Irwin Avenue, Toronto
Website: http://www.ethiopianhouse.com/

See, this is one of the big reasons I started this blog: I have zero experience with Ethiopian cuisine. And who knows when I would have tried it otherwise — the inspiration for this particular excursion was entirely blog-related.

The moral of this story? If you want to try new things, start a blog. (and ignore the fact that you could easily try new things without the hassle and work of maintaining a food blog — where’s the fun in that??)

My dining companion and I shared both the meat and vegetarian Bayaaynatu, which the menu translates as “of each kind,” and is essentially a sampler plate. It all came on one enormous platter bearing a kaleidoscopic assortment of tastes and textures. I’m not even going to try to describe them all, but I will say that there wasn’t a weak selection in the bunch. I was particularly impressed by the diversity of flavours here; I sort of figured that everything would taste similar, but with few exceptions, each selection in the assortment had a personality of its own.

I really enjoyed it, though the meat in the dish at the top of the header photo was a bit tough, and the whole spread felt like it could have used more spice (hot sauce was provided, however).

There’s no classy way to eat this. There’s no cutlery to be seen; you just tear off a piece of injera — a wheaty Ethiopian flatbread that’s kind of like a thin, spongy pancake — and start scooping. The whole thing is served on a piece of that same bread, so eventually you’ll start tearing pieces off and eating that too. Only one napkin was provided (though I’m sure I could have — and should have — asked for more), and without getting into too much detail, I’ll say that by the end of the meal that napkin had seen better days.

It’s also an intimidating amount of food. My dining companion and I were defeated by the enormous spread, and neither of us are exactly dainty eaters. Still, we did our best; when the food is this good, how could you not?