Café Du Lac, a taste of Quebec

It was our third anniversary the other night so we decided to go somewhere a little special, a little fancy. Since there aren’t too many restaurants on the Shore that provide “special”—much less “fancy”—we finally got out to the relatively fancy Quebecois eatery, Café Du Lac, which Mandi has been curious about for some time.

Our experience was special right off the bat.

When we arrived a smidge after 5:30, the doors were still locked and we met another couple who were also waiting for the place to open. Also waiting on the doorstep was a twitching and writhing pigeon with its head and wings twisted at unnatural angles. Its feathers were filthy and ruffled and its beak opened and closed in palsied silence. I thought it might have had distemper—or whatever disease avian scavengers are susceptible to—or maybe had its neck broken by flying into the building. It was hard to tell, but it was certainly dying.

Bombay on the Lake

Though we’ve eaten at Bombay on the Lake relatively often, I’m not too familiar with anything on the menu other than the chicken vindaloo, plain basmati rice and garlic naan. But that’s really all I’m familiar with at any Toronto Indian restaurant (if it’s not a buffet). The fact we’re repeat customers tells you all you really need to know. The food’s good. But you’d better like your vindaloo hot.

Unlike some places which annoyingly tone down the spice for the gora and gori crowd, Bombay on the Lake doesn’t believe in mollycoddling. I don’t like my molly coddled. Especially not in public.

The only bad experience we’ve shared at Bombay had nothing to do with the restaurant itself. It was a hot day about a month or two back, in the middle of one of this summer’s many humid heatwaves. We were too hot to cook dinner ourselves and we gambled on them having A/C. They didn’t. But they did have one of those great tower fans that, as long as they blow on you, work almost as well.

It wasn’t pointed right at us when we arrived but it had a revolving base. I positioned it so that it’s sweep reached our table as well as the others which at that time were still unoccupied.

The table beside us wasn’t unoccupied for long as a trio sat themselves there shortly after our order was taken. Their party consisted of a couple and a female friend who sat across from them and complained, vehemently, about the heat. She saw the fan and said, “Oh, here’s a fan!” and pointed it directly at herself. “That’s better. Thank god they had this,” she said, seemingly oblivious to the fact that no other people in the room, not even her friends, were going to benefit from the fan’s cooling effect.

Looking up from her menu, the woman’s companion made brief, wary eye contact with me then, with an embarrassed manner, angled the menu to hide herself from my view. I was about to say something to the fan-stealing woman, but I decided against it at the last moment. She was roughly the size and shape of a large manatee.

I wasn’t sure if manatees are as vicious as hippopotami are reported to be, but I didn’t want to risk it. She looked a little like a hippopotamus as well, but less muscular and more flabby. And with the demeanor of a one-eyed, arthritic alleycat.

When I got home, Google informed me manatees are not especially dangerous. I should have spoken to the woman about her theft of the fan. The meal would then have been another perfectly delightful Bombay on the Lake experience. Or she might have bitten my head clean off.

Either way, it was still an excellent vindaloo.

Around The Corner

The west side of Sixth St. at Lakeshore is an interesting corner. Most Lakeshore Villagers would think of it as the home of the eminently sketchy Konrad Lounge. That’s a sad story in itself—a dirt bar that got a modern makeover on a reality TV show but didn’t manage to shake the old clientele— but that’s not what I’m here to talk about.

A few doors down Lakeshore is The Village Butcher, a gourmet delicatessen. And if you keep walking around the corner up Sixth, past the Konrad, you’ll find Around The Corner, a new boutique breakfast place owned by the village Butcher folks.

It’s probably the only place in the city you’re going to find Duck-Duck Hash. That’s right, hash browns made with pulled duck meat.

TASTE Portuguese Cuisine

They say you can’t judge a book by its cover but whoever “they” are, they’re wrong. Judging books based on their covers is pretty much the basis of the entire graphic design industry.

When you’re shopping for a book, if you can’t judge it by its cover, what are you going to judge it on? Outside of reading a chapter or two in the ubiquitous adjoining coffee shop, you have to rely on the imagery and typography to make that decision for you. A mere flash across your field of vision tells you if it’s sci-fi adventure, chick-lit, a classic, self-help, or a dark crime thriller. You can tell in less than a nano-second if the book even has the possibility of floating your boat.

The newly opened Taste is a hip, modern restaurant/lounge focussing on Portuguese cuisine but subtly fused with a blend of world flavours. Their signage however (Cooper Black Italic? Really?), says it’s a cheap greasy spoon or sandwich house. Though the logo does look a little better in reversed type on the website and business cards, merda that sign is ugly.

Unfortunately (or fortunately) the cover to this book is misleading.

Lakeshourmet: Lucky Dice Restaurant Dining Lounge

We’ve probably been to Lucky Dice more times than any other restaurant we’ve reviewed. Mandi, having grown up in the area, has eaten there numerous times. Myself, I’ve only been there a total of three times and for two of these meals I was hung over. I suspect Mandi was hung over most of the times she’s been there too. It’s a good place to nurse a hangover. Grease, starch, sugar, soda pop, all the tonics for what ails you. It’s a hangover kind of place.

Chances are you won’t be the only one in the joint with a hangover. The restaurant itself is a hangover from another time. It’s a real, true blue, dyed-in-the-wool, greasy spoon diner.

Dundas Dining: Littlefish

In direct contrast to our previous installment of Dundas Dining, the staff at Junction breakfast-place, Littlefish, know how to deal with a busy day.

We arrived and there were no free tables. That had something to do with arriving at a brunch-centric restaurant at noon on a Sunday. Not being idiots, we didn’t really expect to get a table and were prepared to move on. We were informed it’d be no more than a fifteen minute wait and theyd bring us coffees to the waiting couch, if we wanted. We wanted.

So we sat on the comfy but hideous blue couch and watched every single hipster from the Junction eat breakfast. The young folk were hipsters, the older yuppie couples were hipsters, even the families with young children were hipsters. It was a hip place. The kids sitting across from us talked about Mogwai a lot. We waited for our coffees.

Dundas Dining: The Beet Organic Café

The Beet is a place I’d been hesitant to check out for some time. I wasn’t sure exactly why, but I thought it had something to do with the logo. To me the logo says “hip and healthy urban eatery” which translates to run by pretentious hippies and/or overpriced bland and woody food. Sometimes it means delicious and not actually healthy food—but be careful you don’t dare say that in earshot of the people deluding themselves at the next table.

Mostly I was afraid the staff and patrons would all be wearing Birkenstocks, hemp jewelry, designer bike shorts and smarmy holier-than-though smirks on their faces which would prevent me from being able to keep my meal down. There was indeed some of that to be found. But since I myself was wearing Birkenstocks, I decided to let that aspect slide.

My other preconception about  places like The Beet is hippies provide bad service. Hippies by and large are defensive, angry people who tend towards flakiness. I should know. I’m a hippie. If I were a server, I would provide you with the worst service you’d ever experienced.

So I have to admit I feel a little bad about what I’m about to write.

Dundas Dining: Lenos Bar-Restaurant

Let’s get this out of the way right now. Despite being another restaurant which doesn’t believe in apostrophes, Lenos is by far the best dining experience we’ve had in The Junction. And that isn’t to say it was merely the best of a bad lot (The Junction serves up some fine meals), it was one of the better experiences I’ve had in the city of Toronto. Which, in terms of service, might still be saying “the best of a bad lot”.

Toronto has strangely low service standards for a city which considers itself a competitor on the world stage. The service at Leno’s was as good as the best service I’ve experienced anywhere. Even cities outside of Toronto where servers understand they have to work for their tips.

For the first time since starting Dundas Dining, we really felt like we had a professional—more than just a merely competent— server.

But perhaps more importantly, the food was truly delicious (and reasonably priced). Though if you’re not familiar with Colombian dishes (like us), you might not have any idea what exactly the items on the menu are. They are all familiar—similar to Mexican, Central and South American dishes—but tweeked slightly. This is where the good service came in. Our server happily walked us through the menu without making us feel like gringo noobs.

Mandi said, “I love her.”

Dundas Dining: Vesuvio

There’s not much point in reviewing a place like Vesuvio Pizzeria and Spaghetti House. It’s been around for about a million (perhaps closer to 53) years and is a Junction institution. A good or bad review here or there isn’t going to make a lick of difference in their next 53 years of business. But here goes.

As we walked up to the door we were greeted by the delicious smells wafting out the window of of their take-out pizza counter next door. It’s really quite amazing it’s taken me a year and half to enter Vesuvio because every time I walk down Dundas West my appetite is stirred by the aroma. I think they must have fans blowing it out onto the street. I think they also must add some kind of pheromone to it because the magnetic pull towards the door takes every ounce of my willpower to fight. Every. Single. Time.

Just before we entered, someone in a group walking past us complained Vesuvio were just copying The Sopranos which apparently had a restaurant called Nuovo Vesuvio in it. One of them replied in that kind of know-it-all voice that this Vesuvio had been around since 1957.

Upon stepping into the restaurant, it was clear some of the furniture had been around since 1957 as well. Actually, probably closer to 1987. A pair of faux-leather chez lounges near the window were quietly delaminating. The rest of the decor seemed fine though. A warm family atmosphere not nearly seedy enough for Tony Soprano to hang-out in. I’m not sure if there was even a booth in the back corner.

Though the place was very busy (always a good sign), we were quickly seated by a friendly young boy who reminded me a bit of Even Stevens. I thought, Well, the service is pretty good. Of course, we hadn’t met our server yet.

Not that she was by any stretch a bad server. She just wasn’t very attentive, prompt or personable. Whenever she did manage to eventually come around to our table, she seemed to treat us with an off-hand manner that implied we were merely an incidental facet of her job instead of actually being her job.

Which, all things considered, was actually fine in my books. I don’t much care for insincerely gregarious and chatty servers. And she definitely wasn’t that.

I was glad, however, I didn’t want my water refilled at any point because it wasn’t going to happen. A trade-off I’m ultimately comfortable with and as far as service in the Junction goes, this was pretty darn good. Though the Junction’s standard extra-long wait for the bill still applied and she didn’t even make eye-contact when she swept past to pick up my credit card. Which felt a little weird. Like she wasn’t going to come back with it.

But what I came for wasn’t service and ambiance, it was to find out if the pizza could live up to its aromatic promise. It did, but only partially. The sauce certainly had the garlic and basil zing its smell advertised, but they could have been a bit more generous with it. The crust was also a bit of a disappointment. It was neither the fluffy, bready style crust of Pizzaiolo nor the gourmet, thin crust of Terroni. Instead it was a sort of dense, chewy middle ground. Not a terrible crust by any means, but also not as delicious as the toppings. I have to say, I’ve been more impressed with the cheap and absurdly named  1 Plus 2 Pizza and Wings take-away down the street.

Mandi’s spaghetti carbonara was apparently an entirely different basket of eggs. She said it was delicious. This made me wonder if I shouldn’t have tried the chicken parmesan or another of their dishes instead. Perhaps pizza isn’t really their specialty after all. Also not a disappointment was our half-litre of house Merlot. It wasn’t, as is sometimes the case, disgusting but was pleasantly inoffensive.

One of Vesuvio’s strengths, though, has to be the people watching. The joint was full of older couples with a hint of that old-world charm. They’d probably been patrons since the place first opened and there’s something about that vibe which is always great to drink in. And if the service and pizza is good enough for them, who am I to say different?

Jakob: 3.5 slices out of 5 mouth-watering aromas
Mandi: 5 spaghettis out of 5 carbonaras
Service/atmosphere: 3.5 empty glasses of water out of 5 old couples dressed-up for a night out

Dundas Dining: Swirls Cupcakes

Swirls falls a little outside of our usual Dundas Dining boundaries (roughly The Junction neighborhood), but it’s not too far past the Ghettobicoke line so I figure it’s fair play.

Mandi and I both love cupcakes. So it was with a little trepidation we approached Swirls. It’s not too far from my place so, if it were the heavenly cupcake experience it threatened to be, it’d be game over for us. We may as well start stocking up on insulin and acai berries.

Luckily, Swirls was merely “meh”.

Which is always odd for a restaurant or bakery which specializes in one product. If you’re a cupcake bakery, it’s completely fair for your patrons to have lofty expectations of your product. Which, frankly, I did have of my Still-a-Vanilla cupcake. So when the buttercream icing seemed more like whip-cream out of a spray can and the vanilla cake was a bit rubbery, I have to say I had not choice but to be a bit let down. I did ask myself if this was a case of my expectations being too high. I think I would have been a little more forgiving if cupcakes weren’t their specialty, but even so I’d have to rank this cupcake as just on the high side of average.

Mandi got the Red Velvet which was a better cake, but not as “red” as you’d expect. It did have a slight rosey tint to it. It was brown. The sign also said it was supposed to have cream cheese icing which she said it clearly didn’t.

As we left, we noticed they were putting out an Oreo cupcake which appeared to have proper buttercream icing. It looked absolutely delicious. Maybe it was. It made me doubt my cupcake had buttercream icing on it at all and I was right in thinking it was merely whip-cream out of a can.

As we were leaving we also noticed Swirls apparently makes fondant laden art cakes as well.

We think that’s the apple from the book cover.

One thing that was really fabulous about our visit to Swirls was the coffee. One of the best Americanos I’ve had on Dundas, bar none. Also the small size is apparently huge. But in typical Dundas Dining fashion, there has to be some awkwardness in ordering. You need to place your coffee order with someone at another counter entirely from where you place your cupcake order. Then they tally your coffee on a calculator which they slide over to the cupcake people. Really? That’s the best way to do it?

There’s also the option, the girl informed us, to pay them each separately. Though why they’d think anyone would ever want to do that never came to me. True, it would be more awkward and be slightly worse customer service which is the ideal in Dundas West restaurant culture, but I can’t really see the advantage.

The coffee was well worth the awkwardness. The cupcakes, not so much.

2.5 cups out of 5 cakes
5 Americanos out of 5 awkward moments