Cheap Eats Toronto restaurant guide blog

Our New Intern From Korea

I'm pleased and delighted to introduce you to our new intern here at Plethora Press, Gwanghyung "David" Lee. David has been working with us since mid-June and though he is only here until early August, we've really enjoyed having him in the office.

David has a great sense of humour and it has been fascinating to see "Canadian food" from a new perspective.

So it seemed time to do a more formal introduction in the form of an interview.

Who are you and where are you from?

My name is Gwanghyung Lee. But I use the English name "David" here. I'm still a student in Korea. So, you already know that I'm from Korea. Perhaps, you may be curious about why I am here. I am here to learn English and it is going well so far with Alexa's help.

What do you do at Plethora Press?

Work hard. Obey Alexa. Frankly, I help Alexa with book orders, blog posts and so on.

Where is your home town and what is it's signature dish?

Hmm... My home town is Jochiwon in Korea. This town is very small. I think around 30 thousand people live there. Although, my home town is small, we have a nice signature dish. That is Pa-Dak which is made of chicken and green onions. Basically, Pa-Dak means green onions and chicken in Korean. Perhaps, you are wondering how we make it or how we eat it. Let me explain this.

Reservations 101

Reserved by Cafrine

There's a great article by Corey Mintz, the new Toronto Star's restaurant critic, on the Toronto Star website about the business of reservations.

...the average Toronto restaurant is open for dinner between 5:30 and 10 p.m. Torontonians will not, by nature, eat before 6 unless they are going to a show, or after 10 unless they are Spanish.

With such a small window of operation, a restaurant needs to maximize that time period. Empty seats are holes in their gas tank, draining fuel. If a table is booked for 7:30, it's next to impossible to use that table earlier or later. This is called a single seating.

Corey goes on to explain and discuss that "space and time are perishable commodities" and how restaurants do their best to keep tables turning and get people in, fed and out for the next seating. 

Interesting, since I just got off the phone confirming my online reservations for tomorrow's 11am brunch which had somehow gotten "lost".  

Read the complete article here... and then come back and tell me what you thought.

[Thanks to Paul Lin for pointing me at the article]

National Pupusa Day - almost

As I was preparing a detailed and lengthy post for today's National Pupusa Day, I realized that it was not an annual El Salvadorian holiday on November 13th but actually an annual El Salvadorian holiday every second Sunday of November. Ack! 

So I wish you all a happy-belated Día Nacional de la Pupusa and encourage you all to go out and find yourself a pupusa to celebrate with.

I'm still fairly new to pupusa, having been introduced to them at Perola a couple of years ago by Jeff during one of our food crawls through Kensington.  I'm delighted that even though it shut down after Irma retired it has been revived by these new pupusa ladies.

Perola is still my favourite place to go for hot pupusa on a cold Sunday afternoon but I'm looking for more places to try this tasty treat. Especially now they are only serving them Saturday & Sunday.

I've been told, and am waiting for details on, a "fantastic pupusa place" on Kennedy between Lawrence and Ellesmere.  I'd love to hear about any other spots you might know.

I have to find a couple of places to eat my shame away from missing Día Nacional de la Pupusa.

Conference Food - The Ultimate CheapEat (sometimes)

I just spent 2 days at the CMA’s Digital Marketing Conference where they told me all the things I’m need to be doing better here and attempted to convince me that a $20K budget was “almost nothing”. But the really interesting thing was the food.

You know how good food gets you talking about other times you’ve had good food, and bad food, well, it gets you complaining. Last year’s DMC food was so good that it started a conversation around the need for a conference food-review blog. This year’s food got us complaining.

While I was delighted with the fruit trays and the coffee was dark, hot and strong, I could have done without another round of tarts and cookies during the afternoon break. Especially if it were swapped for enough sandwiches at lunch that there was something on the tray when I got there other than the bottom of a pumpernickel roll with a wilted piece of lettuce underneath it.

Given the location of the venue, we didn’t even have the option of sneaking out for a snack.

Since the organizing team was on top of every other issue that arose Day 1, the enthusiasm around the lunch boxes on Day 2 was palpable. It harkened back to last year when lunches were boxed, and you could tell people thought “hey they listened to us!” Sadly, that enthusiasm fizzled when I opened my box to find an apple, a cookie and what amounted to a vending machine roast beef sandwich on Wonderbread.

I don’t think I even took a photo. Imagine!

Gotta Getta Corn Dog!

  IMG_0662
Originally uploaded by Phil Marion.

This week's  CheapEats Photo of the Week is   IMG_0662 taken by Phil Marion.  (Add your own photo to the CheapEats Toronto Flickr Group and it could be our next Photo of the Week.)

Vovici Online Survey Software

Because what is the CNE without Corn Dogs aka Pogos?  It's okay, you can admit it.  We all have our favourites. Those treats we crave all year and can only get at the CNE.  I like Tiny Tom's doughnuts so much that I took a video of them cooking one year.

The media use them to remind us of the tastes and smells of the EX (the good ones anyway), and most of us leave with our bellies full and talking about how much bigger, better or cheaper they were before.  But we all know we'll be craving them again soon and spend another year fantasizing about our favourite treats.

For a little bit of CNE food trivia, did you know that each year more than:

• 18,000 glasses of lemonade are consumed
• 50 tonnes of butter are used for butter sculptures
• 20,000 lbs of Tiny Tim Donuts are devoured

If you are planning your visit around the food building, check out our Food Building Favourites post listing all your, and my, food building favourites.

Be the Griller of Glory

As many of you know cooking with fire and beer are 2 of my favourite things.  So I am very excited to announce that I'm one of the judges at Rickard's Griller of Glory BBQ cook off August 28th in Yonge-Dundas Square.  

Rickard's is looking for Toronto’s best backyard griller, and the contest is open to anyone with a recipe featuring Rickard's Red or White. 

 

To enter:

1. Email your best beer grilling recipe featuring Rickard's Red or White to grill@rickards.ca
2. In your email submission, include:
• a photo of your creation
• a 1-2 sentence description
• a name for your recipe, using "Rickard's" in the title
3. The deadline to get your recipe in is Friday August 22nd!

It's that simple to become one of 3 finalists I'll be judging in the cook-off in Yonge-Dundas Square on August 28th. Oh, and Rickard’s Griller of Glory winner will be walking away with a prize pack including a new Napoleon Gourmet Grill. 

I'll be judging alongside Phil Nyman of Phil's Original BBQ who has whipped up a video with some secrets of grilling with Rickard's.

Rickard's Griller of Glory: Phil Nyman's Beer Grilling Tips - video powered by Metacafe

More details are available at www.rickardswhite.ca.

How Do You Like Your Eggs?

SiFu Renka's photo reminded me of Gerry's recent switch from being a Scrambled Egg Guy to an Over Easy Guy.  This seems like a minor change, but it had a very positive impact on his day and now he almost always orders his eggs Over Easy.  Unless of course he's going for a Bennie.

It's amazing how much impact your morning eggs can have on your whole day.

When I was a kid I had my eggs hard-boiled with a little butter. I loved the ritual of cracking the eggs open and watching the butter & yoke melt together into a lovely sauce for the whites. 

Now I'm a scrambled egg gal. Country-scramble if I can get it, where the eggs are cracked onto the grill and loosely scrambled so the yoke and white are still distinguishable. 

 

How do you like your eggs? How long have you been eating eggs that way?  Have you tried a new style lately?

Vovici Online Survey Software

Breakfast in the Sky

I just returned from what is probably the most invigorating breakfast I have ever had, all to launch Amex's Summerlicious (July 4-20). But more on that later... right now I'm still buzzing from eating yoghurt & granola 35 metres above Yonge-Dundas Square.

As part of Amex's launch of Summerlicious, I was invited to have breakfast in the sky with Dinner in the Sky.  22 of us were seated, strapped in and hoisted up, up and up!  Then the champagne was popped and we all cheered, while I gripped the edge of the table tightly.

The chef, server, photographer & safety guy were walking around in the centre of the table looking after us all.  We were served Yoghurt, granola & fruit with pastries and we ate our breakfast, sipped our mimosas and snapped photos to our hearts content. All while dangling in the air on level with the huge billboards that surround Dundas Square..

The chairs even swivelled all the way around so you could dangle your feet and feel truly adventurous. All the while safely strapped into your seat with 3 separate seatbelts.

I've been waiting to try a Dinner in the Sky since I read about it being launched in London, so when I was invited to come out for it's launch in Canada, it was hard to control my enthusiasm.

It was the most invigorating breakfast I've every had and one of my top 10 dining experiences so far.  The food was okay, the company was great and the view was spectacular. And it just got better when I relaxed enough to swing my chair around a bit.

This is a not to be missed dining experience and a fantastic way to build some buzz around Summerlicious.

Thanks to Amex, Dinner in the Sky & Hill & Knowlton for the invite!

Toronto Taste

You'll just have to come to Toronto Taste and find out.

Join Toronto’s most inventive and altruistic chefs as they create some of the most memorable dishes you’ll ever have the privilege of tasting at Second Harvest's

Toronto Taste 2008  

Chef's are giving their passion and skill (and donating all their ingredients) so you can enjoy gourmet fare and equally impressive libations – all to support Second Harvest – Sunday, June 8th, 2008.

Here are some photos from Toronto Taste 2007.

Tickets are $225 and even with the tax receipt for $125 this is not a CheapEat, however it's a great event for an even greater cause.

For tickets and more information Click Here

or help out by:

• donating to Second Harvest
• buying a raffle ticket 
• volunteering at Toronto Taste.

Technorati Tags: second harvest, toronto taste, toronto taste 2008, toronto chefs, toronto restaurants, food events

[For disclosure purposes: I am on the Steering Committee for Toronto Taste 2008. ]

Tech Update & Apology

First of all,

Apology for those repetitive posts

I'd like to apologize for filling your RSS Readers with those "Quick  Notes".   My intent was to use LoudTwitter to share the CheapEats Toronto twitter updates with you.

But what was initially a quick and easy way to share short notes turned into an RSS-clogging annoyance.  

So I've turned it off, and hopefully that's the last you'll be seeing of that.

Tech Update - @CETO on twitter

However, we are doing occasional twitter updates which might be of interest to you.  If you are on twitter, you can follow @CETO, send comments to @CETO, or even tag your CheapEats tweets with #CETO.

If you aren't on twitter or if you want to track the whole CheapEats Toronto experience on twitter, check out http://twitter.zappos.com/ceot. The guys at Zappos.com/Zappos.ca set this up for us and it's great! (Thanks Zappos!)

Tech Update - New Plethora Press Store for CheapEats

On a less frustrating note, we've successfully launched our new sales site for CheapEats - the Plethora Press Bookstore (Plethora Press is our publisher, who is also us.)

Thanks to everyone who helped get test it out.  Your books are in the mail.

Did you miss out?  Sale extended to May 19th!

If you missed out on the sale, the discount checkout code cheapeater has been extended until Monday May 19th and works for CheapEats Toronto and the just-published CheapEats Ottawa.

Thanks for your patience!

Technorati Tags: CheapEats Ottawa, CheapEats Toronto, books, bookstores, Plethora Press, twitter, ceto, zappos.com, quick notes, apology