Date Night!

Whenever Andrew comes, we always go to our favourite restaurant: Gran Caffe L’aquila. Nothing beats the meatballs, pasta e fagioli (bean) soup and the pappardelle.
  

My Pork Roast and Garlic Mashed

Another experiment from Trader Joes: the porchetta wrapped pork roast! It’s pre marinated and you just pop it in the oven for a few hours and it comes out deliciously! Definitely not something to cook if you’re starving and need to eat right away, but very worth the wait!  I also made garlic mashed potatoes and fed them to my guinea pigs, Mark and Amanda.

Momofuku

If you’re anywhere near a Momofuku, you have to try their ramen! It’s absolutely amazing stuff! In Toronto, there are 3 different levels to the restaurant. The first floor serves up ramen and it gets a little fancier as you go up.
    Here is the Momofuku ramen (if you’ve never been before I recommend trying this one!) Honestly this ramen is probably the best that I’ve EVER had! So much flavour packed in each bite and the restaurant itself smells heavenly probably from all the ramen and bao that are surrounding you!
  I also finished my meal with some Momofuku milk bar! This is definitely one of those places that I can’t wait to go back to!

Le Petit Dejeuner and St Lawrence Market

We had heard wonderful things about Le Petit Dejeuner so we went there for breakfast… well brunch at 1 in the afternoon…
  I loved the waffles! They were very light and fluffy. I could keep eating them forever!  But the Croque Madame was really good! The slaw on the side was also super unique. It had some apples in it which made it slightly sweet too!
  After lunch we went to the St Lawrence market. We got to sample some ice wine from the Niagara region and it was delicious! (Ice wine is what we produce in Canada. We leave the grapes on the vines during winter and it causes the grapes to concentrate in flavor. It also means that each bottle requires tons and tons of grapes!!)
  I miss Canada!

Toronto Temperance Society and Fran’s

While in Toronto, Sehe took us to the Toronto Temperance Society.
  The bartender made us some very unique drinks and we had so much fun learning about his story and his inventions.
    This used yogurt powder which made it taste amazing!
    Sehe and our bartender!
    After visiting the Temperence Society, we passed by Frans and I decided that I was super hungry… so we went to eat breakfast!

Time for me to break out my waffle/pancake ring!
  Eggs florentine at 4 in the morning tastes amazing!  But that grilled cheese…
  
Yum! So maybe not the best diner food but when you’re tired and hungry, it works!

Random Toronto Wanderings

Here were some random things that I found while in Toronto!

I found a Famoso in a mall and had to eat all the food! Tomato bisque and Famoso salad are my top recommendations!

We had food from Naansense the Indian food truck!

(This was the butter chicken)

The CN Tower at night:

We also went to see Second City in Toronto. It was tons of fun and I’m glad we got a chance to check them out!

Christmas Market

The distillery district in Toronto hosts a Christmas Village over the holidays so we decided to go check it out!We met up with my sister outside of the hockey hall of fame (apparently it’s a really great meeting spot for us!). The inside of the hockey hall of fame was decorated very nicely!

The Christmas Village was decorated very nicely. There were snowmen, and trees all around!

We also took a cute photo inside a hershey kiss!
  After dinner we met up with Karen, who used to be in our class but transferred to UofT to finish up her degree. We met up with her in Eaton Center and on our way passed by a random man doing push ups in the middle of the street!

We ended up going to Swiss Chalet for the holiday meal! It was American thanksgiving after all..
  We also checked out Nathan Phillips square after dinner!
  

We had so much fun meeting up with Karen and it was good to see her again!

Kensington

One of the top recommended things to do in Toronto is to visit Kensington Market. I haven’t been to Kensington Market for years and it felt like it hadn’t changed. It seemed like a very neat place to hangout because there were a ton of coffee shops. There were also a few novelty shops like a cocktail store that had the coolest prints that break cocktails down into their ingredients!   There was also a bagel shop called Nu Bagel that baked their bagels instead of boiling them. I couldn’t really tasted the difference but they were definitely fresh tasty bagels!
  This was also the first time that I’ve seen pre-flavored water. It didn’t look too appetizing since the fruit looked kinda old.   I was also glad to see that they were celebrating the American holiday too!
  Kensington: the coolest place ever!  After going through Kensington, we walked through downtown Toronto and saw some cool things!
  The CN tower looked amazing with this lighting!
It was so much fun just exploring Philly! We walked over 27,000 steps but definitely got to see some cool things!

Smokes

On our drive up, Akash recommended that we should get Smoke’s so that Sehe could try some poutine while she was in Canada. There isn’t a Smokes in my hometown so I had never been before either! We also met up with Ben.
  We ended up getting three different types of poutine and just rotated through them. We tried an original poutine, a triple pork poutine and a chili cheese poutine. The poutine was absolutely delicious and made me miss having it so much!  But it was so much food and so filling even though we were starving! Maybe I’ll get lucky and they’ll open a food truck here in Philly!
If you’re looking to try some traditional poutine, I definitely recommend trying Smoke’s out! The snack sizes are great for sharing! (Or you could just go all out!)

Grazie

While we were in Toronto, my sister took us to Grazie, an Italian restaurant in her area. It was family run restaurant and everyone who worked there was super nice – it reminded me of what I miss about Canada!

Sehe called this one the bipolar oil plate. They separates a spicy chili oil from the regular balsamic and olive oil with a little wall of parmesan. I’ve never seen that done before and it was surprisingly good!
  We ended up splitting a few different dishes like the baked goat cheese salad, the cefalu, and the penza. They were all really great dishes, but I really enjoyed the penza with the creamy tomato sauce.

  I definitely loved the atmosphere of the restaurant. It felt like we had been invited to a family’s home for a meal and they treated us like the most important guests. The food was also superb! Though it doesn’t quite beat my favorite Italian restaurant in Philly, it was still pretty amazing!

Sehe and I also caught a comedy show after dinner and it was hilarious! we found out about it off an ad on the train and decided to go check it out. It was super cheap (only $6 because it was a Wednesday night) and worth it! I’d say that our first day of adventure in Toronto was a success!