Winterlicious: My First, My Last, My Everything

Moi:

My epicurean nature was diverse from the get go.  Born to an Indonesian father and Japanese mother there was always an abundance of fresh seafood, traditional Japanese fare paired lessons about how to perfectly fry Lumpia (aka. Indonesian spring rolls.)  Couple this with my appetite for delicious bites (particularly Italian or French), much world travel and love of all things Food Network you get a Vancouver transplant foodie eager to see what Toronto had to offer.      

The Background:

beet butter
Originally uploaded by always_naomi.

I always say you don’t know a city until you know where to eat.  I’ve lived in Toronto for over a year now and can’t say that I had any particular restaurants I’d recommend and so was borne the Great Winterlicious Extravaganza!

As a recent Vancouver transplant I wondered where to start: Google? Twitter? Word of Mouth? Being the geek that I am, I went for the techie approach and hashtagged the heck out of my posts and Googled repeatedly.  Bymark, Thuet, Brassaii, Amaya, Wish, Auberge du Pommier the names just kept coming at me.  Seeing as this was my first and last Winterlicious I decided to go whole hog.  Based on menus, a couple of lists I found on Google and many, many @replies from Tweeple, I decided on Bymark, Bite Me, Brassaii, Pangaea, Fred’s Not Here and Tutti Matti.  After doing a sell job on my friends and boyfriend, I managed to assemble a barrage of reservations (and rack up some Visa points)

The Great Winterlicious Extravaganza begins: