Mykonos Grill

Date: December 12, 2013
Location: business located at 881 Yonge St (Yonge/Rosedale), but my work had it catered to our building
Website: http://www.mykonosgrill.ca/
Cuisine: Greek
Meal: lunch

My thoughts:
This was the second time my work was having food catered from this place, but unlike the first time, I had my camera handy to snap food pics. Also, last time, I had the hummus and the gyros wrap. It seemed like nearly everyone else ordered a Chicken Caesar or Chicken Greek wrap, both of which were a couple of bucks more but about triple the size of my puny Gyros Wrap! 

I vowed that if my work ever ordered from here again, I would order Chicken Wrap, and I'm so glad the opportunity came up. I chose the Chicken Greek Wrap ($12), which consisted of grilled chicken breast with romaine lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, red onions, sweet peppers, feta cheese and tzatziki.

While the size of the wrap was pretty impressive (see pic below), the taste did not impress me. It wasn't bad, but it certainly wasn't anything out of this world. This was partly my fault because I was anticipating the opportunity to try this wrap for so long, and I think I inadvertently set higher expectations for it.

My wrap came with a side of fries or garden salad, and I chose the latter. The salad was fresh but plain (there were no toppings whatsoever), and the vinaigrette was a bit too sour for my liking this time. The last time we ordered from here, it was sweeter, so minus a point for inconsistency.

The hummus, which I had last time, here is heavenly, although very oily, pricey ($8) and the quantity very small. 

All in all, this place is nothing to write home about.

As an aside, one of my coworkers made 'party favours' for the team and circulated them during the lunch. Cute, huh?

Song Cook's Korean Restaurant

Date: December 8, 2013
Location: 72 Steeles Ave W #6, Thornhill
Website: http://www.songcooks.com/
Cuisine: Korean
Meal: dinner

My thoughts:
I came here with my family to celebrate my mom's birthday, and knowing my mom weighs a restaurant's ambiance (more specifically the noise level) with the food pretty equally, I suggested this place. I was here a few weeks ago with MT, and liked it enough to come back.

Tonight, however, was a different experience. It started off with the seating. We were a party of five, and although about a third of the restaurant was vacant, we had to wait about 20 minutes and we had reservations. 

We were eventually seated off to the side in an area separate from the main room, and we should have known that that was a bad idea. We were pretty much left unattended for most of the evening. Anytime we needed something, we had to get out of our seat and flag a waiter in the main dining area over to our table.

Another reason why my experience today was not as enjoyable as last time was the food wasn't as good. Because there were more of us today, we were able to order more, and outside of what I had ordered last time, most of the things were not very good quality. Take, for example, the kalbi ribs, which is a specialty in Korean cuisine. The ones here though, both the BBQ and the braised ones, were by far the toughest and least flavourful kalbi ribs I have ever had. Up until today, I'd never tasted kalbi ribs that were not good - and I've had quite a lot of kalbi ribs over the years. This led me to believe that they simply did not exist! Song Cook proved me wrong.

We had a small order of the Kalbi Jim ($12.99), which according to the menu is "delicately marinated fall-off-the-bone steamed beef ribs with carrots and radish." Carrots and radish were there, but delicately marinated and fall-off-the-bone? Don't think so.

We also had LA kalbi ($11.99), which the menu described as "laterally cut short ribs marinated in sweet garlic sauce and grilled to perfection." This was better than the steamed kalbi, but I cannot vouch for what the menu claims to be "grilled to perfection." The meat was cut very thin and dry.

We ordered Combo H6 ($15), which included a half order of Ja Jang Myun and a half order of Khan Poung Gi. Ja Jang Myun is a chewy noodle dish with a thick black bean sauce. If you've never tried it, go. Now. Try it. Khan Poung Gi is sweet and spicy chicken, which like last time, was tasty.

We also ordered a whole order of the Ja Jang Myun ($7.50). This was a good size for the price, and everyone enjoyed it. This was the highlight of today's meal.

My family was not impressed with this place, and I was annoyed because we were here to celebrate a special occasion. I won't be back.

Dinner at MT's

Date: December 3, 2013
Location: downtown

Right after the discovery of my new favourite SPF place that is Imperial Pub, I met with my old friend MT. He cooked me dinner, which consisted of pork chops with an apple cinnamon puree sauce, rice and a salad - with some red wine. Everything was delish. Most importantly, it was very thoughtful!

Imperial Pub

Date: December 3, 2013
Location: 54 Dundas St E, Downtown Toronto (just east of Yonge)
Website: http://imperialpub.com/
Cuisine: dive bar/pub
Meal: snack

My thoughts:
I forgot to mention on my Les 3 Brasseurs / The 3 Brewers post on November 28 that as I was paying for my bill, I told our waitress that I really enjoyed the sweet potato fries. She responded, without even lowering her voice, "If you liked our fries, then you'll really like Imperial Pub's." I was surprised but happy that she divulged this information to me, especially when she works for what can be called a competitor. 

From that day, I decided I just had to come here. I am a devoted sweet potato fries (aka SPF) lover, and I am determined to find the spiciest and crunchiest ones out there!

I was so determined that I came here on a whim by myself. I was meeting my friend MT for dinner at 6:30pm and had some time to kill, but I really didn't want to do unnecessary and additional damage to my wallet and ending up with a bunch of things I already have 10 of by 'window shopping' at the Eaton Centre. (For me, 'window shopping' always becomes actual shopping.)

The moment I stepped foot in the restaurant, I was overcome with self-doubt. It was dimly lit, kind of stingy-looking, and I don't think I saw 100% of the customers were male. I gulped, and bravely trotted on in, trying to keep in mind that I was doing this in the name of good food. In fact, I was on a mission.

Long story short, I totally do not regret coming here! After I got settled down at the bar, I started doing a crossword puzzle and no one bothered me. And the fries.. wow, they were so good! They were definitely better than Les 3 Brasseurs and were certainly giving Burger Stomper a run for their money! The fries were thick-cut, breaded and crispy. It came with a standard chipotle mayo dip. It was $5.95.

It kind of ruined my appetite for dinner with MT, but I'd choose this for dinner any day! Next time, I'd like to bring company with me though!

KG Cooks a Birthday Dinner!

Date: December 1, 2013
Location: Home!
Cuisine: Um, I'd say international
Meal: Dinner

My thoughts:
Okay, maybe 'my thoughts' is not the best title for this section, seeing as how I made everything. But I will attempt to be as objective as possible.

As I said in my last post, it was my dad's birthday, and my dad wanted to eat-in and have steak, so that was exactly what he got!

I made a mushroom risotto, a creamy alfredo pasta, steak, twice baked sweet potatoes (courtesy of the Food Network), and my dad's favourite 7-layer Mexican nacho dip, which was one of the cheapest things to make that night and what my dad ate most tonight! (I should've bought less a steak or two. Just kidding!) In hindsight, it's a good thing I had today off to prepare the food. 

Here's the dinner table:

And my plate full of food:

And my dad's birthday cake, which was made of durian.

I think my dad had a good birthday, which I'm very happy about. Just wanted to make a shout out to my dad, "Happy birthday dad!"

Big Head Prawn Vietnamese Restaurant

Date: December 1, 2013
Location: 4450 Highway 7 E, Markham (just west of Main St Unionville)
Website: N/A
Cuisine: Vietnamese
Meal: lunch

My thoughts:
For once, I didn't have to work on a Sunday, which is a rarity for me. I'm known in my circle of friends to be a workaholic and work 7 days a week. I've 'cut back' on my schedule a bit in recent years and don't work on holidays anymore.

Anyway, it was my dad's birthday today so I did kind of deliberately take the day off. We came here as a family after my parents and I did a bit of shopping, which worked up a bit of an appetite in all of us! We ordered the following:

Spring rolls ($5.50) - as you can see, not much there for the presentation but the spring rolls themselves were pretty good. 

House special pho ($7.95 for a large) - the colour of the soup was intriguing and full of seafood, but this was not my favourite of today.

Curry beef brisket ($6.50 for a small) - this was hand's down my favourite thing we ordered today, but it was very oily. I am not normally a fan of pho, but I thought that the thicker sauce of the curry better coated each mouthful of noodles, which gave it flavour. 

Beef satay pho ($6.50 for a small) - I didn't really like this. The meat and tendons were tough, and the soup was salty and oily. 

Hai nam chicken rice ($7.50) - a coconut and ginger-infused rice with chicken. Both the chicken and the rice were very oily and neither had much flavour. Fail.

The restaurant was very quiet when we arrived til around 1:30pm, at which point it got busy all of a sudden. It was obviously this is a mom-and-pop shop. The service was mediocre and the place not very clean. Probably the only thing possibly worth coming back for was the curry pho. But given the fierce competition of restaurants in the GTA, I won't be back.