GTA – Page 6 – Around the World in 196 Plates

Country 045 – Yemen (Almonasabah)

Published on November 13, 2016 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 2340 Council Ring Road #107, Mississauga
Website: https://www.facebook.com/Almonasabah/

I’ve been on quite a roll with Middle Eastern restaurants — so far I’ve checked out Syria, Turkey, and Lebanon, and they’ve all been seriously tasty. And now here’s Yemen to continue that streak.

Alonasabah’s menu is laser-focused — they have a handful of appetizers and desserts, but for the most part there’s only one dish on the menu. If you want something other than mandi? Go somewhere else, that’s all they’ve got here.

Mandi is a deceptively simple dish: it’s just rice and meat (with the choice between chicken and lamb). It’s topped with almonds, raisins, and fried onions.

It’s so good.

The rice is fragrant, richly spiced and deeply flavourful; it’s delicious enough that I’d happily eat a big bowl of it just on its own.

I tried both the chicken and lamb, and both types of meat were super tender and packed with flavour. They’ve obviously been cooked for a very long time at a very low temperature; the chicken was so incredibly tender that the cartilage had completely broken down, essentially turning into cartilage butter.

The rice and the meat are both super tasty, but it’s the toppings that help put this dish over the top. The almonds add some nuttiness and crunch, and even the raisins work surprisingly well. I’m generally not a fan of raisins in any context, so I was shocked by how much I enjoyed them here. Unlike qabuli palau, the somewhat similar dish I tried from Afghanistan, the raisins go really well with everything else. They add subtle pops of sweetness that compliment the dish perfectly and never overwhelm.

As for the onions, they were dark and intense, with a flavour somewhere between caramelized and fried. They were sweet, but with an edge — almost bordering on burnt but never crossing that line.

It seems kind of odd at first that this place only really serves the one dish, but if you do something this well? Why the hell should you waste your time doing anything else?

Country 040 – India (Sweet India)

Published on August 21, 2016August 21, 2016 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 7126 Airport Road, Mississauga
Website: http://www.sweetindia.com/

Remember when I was saying that a nicer-looking restaurant and a clientele that doesn’t match its ethnicity were both tell-tale signs that a place like this might not be all that great? Well, here’s a definite exception to that rule: Sweet India is both very nicely designed and, when I went at least, around halfway full of people who looked like they’d fit in comfortably with the cast of Friends.

It was also one of the best meals I’ve had since starting this blog.

The restaurant is laid out like any number of food court joints; they’ve got food in warming trays, and you can pick what you want. I went with the vegetarian thali, which comes with your choice of three different dishes, raita (a cold yogurt-based cucumber salad), rice, and a basket of naan bread.

I think it’s hard to tell from the picture what an obscene amount of food that is, but seriously: look at the fork and knife for scale. The plate is about the size of a cafeteria tray, and it was crammed with food. Not to mention the basket full of naan, and the generous serving of dessert.

Suffice it to say, after eating all that I was ready to lie down and go into a food coma. And for less than ten bucks, it’s a pretty amazing deal.

The three dishes in the top row of that tray are: aloo baingan, a flavourful mixture of eggplant and potato; chana masala, a chickpea curry; and aloo methi, a potato dish cooked with methi leaves (also known as fenugreek).

It was all really good, though with its fragrant intensity, the aloo baingan was clearly the star of the show. It was a flavour bomb in the best way possible. It helps that the accompanying ultra-fresh naan was superb; it was the perfect combo of lightly crispy outside and chewy inside.

The dessert was moong ka halwa, a creamy, pudding-like dish made mostly from lentils. Indian desserts tend to be a bit of an acquired taste, and I was so full at that point that I was kind of hoping I wouldn’t like it so I could take one bite and throw the rest out. But it was so good. So of course I had to eat the whole thing, food coma be damned.

If I had one small complaint, it would be that while everything was fairly spicy, it does feel like the spice level has been toned down to accommodate the aforementioned Friends-like clientele. A bit more of a fiery kick would have been nice, but everything was so amazingly tasty that it really didn’t matter.

Country 037 – Nigeria (Village Suya)

Published on July 10, 2016 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 900 Rathburn Road West, Mississauga
Website: http://www.villagesuya.com/

I think I should preface this review by saying that Village Suya has only been up and running for a few weeks; I wasn’t too crazy about the meal I had here, but it’s quite possible that they still have some kinks to work out. So you might want to take this review with a grain of salt.

For the uninitiated, Suya is Nigerian-style grilled meat, typically sold by street vendors on skewers. This particular restaurant serves beef and chicken; I went with beef, and got it with a side of fried rice.

The rice was easily the highlight. Though it looks fairly similar to Chinese-style fried rice, it definitely has a personality of its own. It’s a touch on the oily side (my mouth felt grease-slicked for at least an hour or two after eating), but it has a satisfying curry-tinged flavour, and just enough of a kick to put some sweat on your brow.

And whatever they’ve marinated the beef in is actually pretty tasty; it’s nicely seasoned, with another solid dose of spice. But (and this is a fairly big but) the beef was excessively chewy and dry — it’s kind of unpleasant (of course, this didn’t stop me from eating almost all of it, but I digress).

The meat was either severely overcooked, or they’re using a cheaper cut of beef that’s meant to be stewed (or, more likely, a little from column A, a little from column B). It’s too bad, because if the meat were a little bit more tender (or, more accurately, tender at all), it would probably be pretty good. The elements, otherwise, are all there. But when the beef is that jerky-like in its consistency, it’s kind of tough to enjoy — even if the flavour is pretty good.

Country 036 – Afghanistan (Naan and Kabob)

Published on June 26, 2016November 12, 2016 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 30 Bristol Road East, Mississauga
Website: http://nandk.ca/mississauga/

This is a probably a bit of a generalization, but there are a couple of pretty dependable rules of thumb for judging if an ethnic place is worth your time:

A nicer looking restaurant probably doesn’t mean you’re going to get better food. Don’t ask me why, but when it comes to non-Western eats, the tastiest stuff tends to come from sketchy little hole-in-the-wall joints.
This one is super obvious — a place filled with people who come from the country of the restaurant’s cuisine is always a good sign. If people who know what the real deal tastes like think the food is good, then the food is probably good.

Now, it doesn’t necessarily mean anything, but Naan and Kabob fails both tests.

For number one in particular, this seems like a particularly unfair complaint to make. What? Your restaurant is bright, clean, and stylishly designed? Ugh, no thanks. Kind of an insane critique, isn’t it?

Of course, arbitrary rules aside, the easiest way to determine if a restaurant is worth your time is to eat the food. Which I did, obviously.

I ordered the Qabuli Palau, Afghanistan’s national dish (according to Wikipedia, at least).

It’s pretty simple: spiced rice, topped with shredded carrots and raisins, and served with meat (in this case, braised veal, though you can upgrade to lamb for a couple of bucks). They also serve it with a bowl of chicken curry on the side.

It’s not bad. The rice is a little bit bland, and the sweet carrots combined with the even sweeter raisins makes for a dish that’s a bit more cloying than it probably should be, though the savoury chunks of braised veal help to offset some of the sweetness. However, while about half of the meat was unctuous and fork-tender, the other half was stringy and dry.

There’s the curry, too — and it’s not bad — though to be honest, I’m not sure why it was even there. It felt a bit out of place with the other flavours in this dish.

The whole thing is decent enough, but I can’t imagine anyone walking out of the restaurant raving about it.

Maybe there is something to those generalizations after all…

Country 034 – Myanmar (Royal Myanmar)

Published on May 29, 2016 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 483 Horner Avenue, Etobicoke
Website: http://theroyalmyanmar.com/

Sometimes it’s hard to figure out what to order for this blog; how do you distill a nation’s cuisine into one dish? I mean, you can’t. But it’s always nice to get something that can at least give a partial view of what a country’s food has to offer.

In the case of Myanmar, there doesn’t seem to be much debate over their national dish: it’s mohinga, Myanmar’s take on Asia’s ubiquitous noodle soup.

So, that’s easy. Mohinga it is.

Though Royal Myanmar’s version of this dish features noodles that are overcooked and somewhat mushy, and flavours that are more muted than you’d expect (for something that is ostensibly a fish soup, there is an odd lack of anything even resembling a seafood flavour), I still quite enjoyed this. It’s subtle, but a squirt of lime and a sprinkling from the jar of fiery-hot crushed chilis helps to kick it up several notches. It also has a nice garlicky hum, an added richness thanks to the sliced hard-boiled egg, and a vibrancy from the abundant fresh cilantro.

The broth has been thickened, but subtly so — some thickened Asian soups can be a bit gelatinous for my tastes, but here it’s just thick enough to to give it substance without going overboard.

It’s topped with crunchy chickpea fritters; it’s kind of like topping a soup with crackers, only with a million times more personality.

Country 031 – Austria (The Musket)

Published on April 17, 2016 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 40 Advance Road, Toronto
Website: http://www.musketrestaurant.com/

I can’t say I know too much about Austria, though they did give the world the gift of Arnold Schwarzenegger — so clearly, it’s a country worth knowing about.

The obvious order at The Musket is probably the schnitzel, but I decided to go a bit off the beaten path, and ordered the leberkase (without particularly knowing what it even was).

This turned out not be a particularly adventurous choice — leberkase is a mix of corned beef, pork, bacon and onions, which is ground into a fine paste and baked in a pan. It resembled, more than anything else, a really big, flattened Vienna Sausage patty. Served with a perfectly cooked fried egg on top and with a side of home fries, it was more classic comfort food than adventurous eating.

I quite enjoyed it, but then Vienna Sausage and eggs was a staple when I was growing up, so it definitely brought back some warm, fuzzy childhood memories. The fried egg compliments the salty leberkase quite well, and the home fries help round things out (I question their Austrian authenticity, but hey, if it works it works).

Country 030 – New Zealand (Hemingway’s)

Published on April 3, 2016April 3, 2016 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 142 Cumberland Street, Toronto
Website: http://hemingways.to/

Quick: name three dishes that come to mind when you think of food from New Zealand.

Yeah, me neither.

Suffice it to say, whatever New Zealand is known for, it’s probably not food (other than, of course, the ubiquitous New Zealand lamb).

Hemingway’s seems to be one of the only restaurants in the city representing Kiwi cuisine, with that representation being loose at best — its menu is dedicated almost entirely to generic pub staples like nachos, chicken wings, and burgers. The brunch menu, however, does have one dish of interest: the New Zealand Bacon and Egg Pie, which is described as “a New Zealand favourite.”

The pie is filled with bacon, eggs, onion, and peas, and wrapped in a flaky puff pastry crust. It reminded me a lot of the pies from the Pie Commission — but those pies are always delicious, so it’s like a bizzaro-world version of the Pie Commission, where the Pie Commission is lousy.

Yeah, it’s not great, unfortunately. The pie has two separate layers — a bottom layer of meat, and a top layer of egg. The egg is disastrously overcooked, with a rubbery white and a chalky, desiccated yolk. That alone is enough to sink the pie, but even the meat layer is underwhelming. Despite being crammed with bacon, the flavour is muddled, underseasoned and bland. It also had an underlying funkiness that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. It’s kind of unpleasant.

The crust was quite nice, though, with a good balance between substance and flakiness. It made an amiable attempt to save the pie, but alas, it was DOA.

Country 027 – Jordan (Tabule)

Published on February 21, 2016 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 2009 Yonge Street, Toronto
Website: http://tabule.ca/

I recently tried the Winterlicious menu at Tabule; everything was quite tasty, particularly the perfectly cooked salmon kebab, but what I want to talk about is the Knaffa Ashta.

Knaffa (which has various spellings that I’ve found online, including kanafeh or kunafa) is one of those dishes that should really be bigger than it is; it’s seriously delicious. I actually got to try the real deal while on a trip to Jordan, or at least one variation on it — it changes somewhat depending on where you get it and who’s making it. The one that I had in Jordan consisted of a layer of soft, white cheese, sandwiched between two cakey layers made of semolina flour, soaked through with a sweet, rosewater-infused syrup. It was amazing. I know cheese in a dessert sounds odd, but trust me, it was pretty much the best thing ever.

The version they serve at Tabule is a little bit different, with a more coarse, noodley pastry, and ashta — a Middle Eastern pasty cream — instead of the cheese. It doesn’t quite hit the heights of the one I had in Jordan, but it’s probably one of the better versions of this dish I’ve had in Toronto. The creamy ashta, in particular, really works well, and the amount of syrup is pretty much perfect — this is an easy dish to make cloying, but the amount of sweetness here was just right.

Country 026 – South Korea (Cho Dang Soon Tofu)

Published on February 7, 2016 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 5130 Dundas Street West, Etobicoke
Website: None

If the whole point of this blog is to try new things, then I’m failing pretty miserably with this entry; not only have I been to Cho Dang Soon Tofu several times before, I’ve even written about it for another blog.

Still, I haven’t written about the restaurant’s namesake dish: an intensely flavourful, bubbling hot stew that I can’t get enough of.

Like any Korean restaurant worth its salt, the meal starts with a generous selection of banchan — essentially a variety of small appetizers. My favourite here are the crispy, addictively salty fried sardines, but the silky cubes of soft tofu (made in house) with a little bowl of sesame- and green-onion-infused soy sauce for dipping are also quite memorable, as is the obligatory (and delcious) kimchi.

But of course, the reason to come here is that delicious, piping-hot stew. I got mine with pork, though several other options are available. It’s spicy, flavourful, and seriously hearty — aside from the aforementioned pork, its absolutely suffused with the restaurant’s creamy house-made tofu, not to mention the egg that you crack into the bowl yourself, and the generous bowl of purple rice that accompanies the stew (made that distinctive colour by mixing black rice in with the white).

The best part? All that food? Eight bucks. Yeah, it’s a deal.

Country 025 – United Kingdom (House on Parliament)

Published on January 25, 2016January 25, 2016 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 454 Parliament Street, Toronto
Website: http://www.houseonparliament.com/

I remember, as a kid, scotch eggs were a special treat that I always looked forward to. But I haven’t had one in many, many years, and I’m not sure why. It’s one of those dishes where it’s pretty much impossible to go wrong. Take an egg, ensconce it in delicious sausage, cover it in breading and then deep fry it? You’d have to work pretty hard to mess that up.

House on Parliament does not mess it up.

First, there’s the perfect egg, hard boiled but not overcooked, with a creamy — not crumbly — yolk. It’s surrounded by a really tasty sausage (wild boar, pheasant and cognac) that has an almost pate-like richness of flavour that suits the dish perfectly. The fried breadcrumb layer is light and crispy, and just in case it’s not quite indulgent enough for you yet, they top the whole thing with a generous helping of rich, creamy hollandaise sauce.

It comes with a side of delightfully crispy homefries that were a touch underdone in the middle, but otherwise very close to perfect.

The restaurant was absolutely packed — we were able to get seated right away at just after 11:30 on a Sunday, but by the time we left the entrance was crammed with hungry diners waiting to get their brunch on. Eating the food, it’s easy enough to see why.