Smash Kitchen and Bar

Date: August 25, 2012
Location: 4261 Highway 7 East (west of Kennedy Rd), Unionville
Website: http://www.smashkitchen.com/
Meal: dinner

My thoughts: 
My parents and I had heard it had just changed ownership about two months ago, and we were eager to check this place out. We shared the following dishes:

Calamari ($11) - cornmeal dusted, pico de gallo, horseradish aioli. Fresh, lightly chewy and crispy. Very good, and the aioli was the perfect pairing.

Grilled salmon salad ($17) - baby spinach salad topped with asparagus cherry tomatoes, goat cheese, candied pecans and honey dijon vinaigrette. Fresh and very loaded salad! Expensive, but we all loved this. My favourite was the pecans.

Neptune pizza ($17) - herb garlic butter, ricotta, tiger shrimp smoked salmon, red onions, capers, arugula, balsamic vinegar. This was also very good. If you have read my previous posts, you should be aware that I am a big cheese lover. Although this wasn't very cheesy, I surprisingly didn't miss cheese at all here. This was good the way it was.

Very good food, but considering the fact that we came on a Saturday night at the regular dinner hour, we were surprised this place wasn't packed! There is a patio overlooking green space and a brick fireplace, which gave the restaurant a nice cozy touch.

Wabora

Date: August 17, 2012

Location: 550 Wellington Street West (east of Bathurst), Toronto

Website: http://www.waborasushi.com/

Meal: dinner and drinks

My thoughts:

Another girls' night! I'd been here before and was very impressed with the food and experience and suggested this place as our dinner stop that night. My friend, who is impartial to sushi, was very impressed with everything.

To start, we each ordered a martini ($14 each). My friend ordered the white chocolate and I some fruity martini - I forget the name unfortunately. Anyway, we both loved the white chocolate martini. It was very strong and it was clear the bartender didn't cheap out on the alcohol! A must-try!

 

Next, we had the Chilean Sea Bass ($14). Sooo good. If you've never had this type of fish, it has a very unique taste. It is a very fatty fish, which makes it very tender and soft. Highly recommended!

We ordered a few rolls, also to share. Our favourite was the Crabmeat Dynamite ($15), which consisted of snow crabmeat, mushrooms and chopped onion in a spicy creamy sauce on a bed of California roll. This was absolutely to die for!

Next, we had the Crispy Valentine's Roll ($13), which was a California roll topped with spicy salmon and shredded crunch potatoes along with their house sauce. Loved the crunchy topping. Delish.

And finally, the Titan Roll ($12) - shrimp tempura and crab meat, topped with spicy tuna and dynamite sauce. Not bad, but this really paled in comparison to the other outstanding rolls.
 

For dessert, we shared the Cheesecake with some fried chocolate spring roll of some sort ($15). Gosh, I really wish I hadn't waited so long to blog about this. So sorry, folks! We were told that the cheesecake is not made in-house, but at some local bakery (we were not told which one). The cheesecake was alright. Right now, I don't really remember much of the fried stick. But if it was good, I'm sure I would have remembered!

 

This place is located in the Thompson Hotel on King West, so as you can imagine, it is quite upscale and expensive. The restaurant has a lounge-y atmosphere and is a great place to celebrate a special occasion or if you just want to live the life of the rich for one night!

Second Cup

Date: August 10, 2012 
Location: 287 King Street West (west of John Street), Downtown Toronto
Website: http://www.secondcup.com/
Meal: pre-drinks ;)

My thoughts:
And this was Part II of our girls' night! We initially came here for a caffeine jolt because we planned to hit up a bar later, but we were swayed by the comforting taste of chocolate and ended up getting a cold hot chocolate!

The coffee barista, a very friendly and kind young gentleman with his hair tied up in a pony-tail, told us that a few days earlier, a woman came in claiming to be on a city-wide hunt for the best frozen hot chocolate and that she'd found it at that particular Second Cup! While we can't deny that it was pretty good, we both agreed that the woman's claim was very bold and she probably hadn't tried very many drinks yet! I'd definitely suggest asking for chocolate shavings/chunks to be added to your drink. Yum.