Asian Food: Thai

Double post! I know, I feel like its my birthday as well. I was going to go with Christmas but decided to go with a nondenominational event (Hi Jews!) So this adventure wasn't so much about experiencing new types of food as it was about eating delicious food. Thai food is everywhere so finding it isn't hard but finding good quality stuff can be.

So we set off to find said tasty Thai food. Our adventure took us to Parliament and Dundas, a place not really known for having nice things (unless you count rundown buildings and homeless people as nice things.) But Thai food is something that place has going for it. Sukhothai is a tiny restaurant just south of the intersection that could fit 20 people max and is little more than a glorified hallway but don't let that distract you. The food is well worth the feeling that you are in every conversation in the place.

Speaking of food, the menu is sparse but what they do they seem to do well or at least they do pad thai well enough that I've ordered it twice and I have issues with pad thai. You put tomato in my pad thai and I will cut you and that will be the least of your worries. But I digress, back to the food. On this adventure we got a Massaman beef curry (It means Muslim curry) and pad thai with shrimp and spring rolls (because we were really hungry when we got there. Ethnic roulette doesn't pay for itself .)
The spring rolls were hot when they arrived but we were clever enough to know better than to try and eat them. Having been burned one too many times before. When they finally cooled down enough to eat them they were spring rolls. Nothing extraordinary about them. Good, but nothing really stood out about them.

The entrees were where the action was happening. Tastiness abounded. The curry was thick and not overly coconutty and the beef was tender and without being mushy. It also came with fried onion and toasted coconut (fanciness abounded as well.)

The pad thai was what I was really looking forward to eating. Pad thai is tricky in that it only has about three ingredients in the sauce: Fish sauce, tamarind, and sugar. Being that simple means it's really easy to mess up. The ratios have to be right and you have to not put other shit in it (I'm looking at you ketchup.) Sukhothai is one of the only places I'm been to that can get that right (Bangkok and Cash and Curry in Montreal are the only others I can think of). The shrimp were big and buttery and not overcooked. There was also enough herbs to give it some interesting flavours without over powering the dish.


Tune in next time for a review of Tibetan food. If we get our shit together.

African Food: Ethiopian

In this week's edition of Ethnic Roulette we decided to do Ethiopian food, because well we had no idea what African food was. So the only way to remedy this was to go and get African food. We decided on Ethiopian because it is, apparently everywhere in Toronto. I can think of no less than five different Ethiopian restaurants, without having been to any of them.

Now without further ado let us discuss the adventure. A TTC day pass is your friend, your best friend if you are traveling with a partner (In the gay sense or otherwise) because it allows two people to ride as much as you want for 10 dollars. Five tokens cost you 12.50, so as long as you ride somewhere and back with your friend its worth it. If you are like us you get one and start making unnecessary trips. That place is only a ten minute walk? Day Pass! You don't need to go to the park but might want to? Day Pass! You get the idea.

I feel like I just got sidetracked... oh right. So we went to get Ethiopian food and needed to take the subway there. So we got out at the station and saw a long line of bikes.
This line of bikes went by us for at least 20 minutes. We gave it a Fermi estimate of about 500 to 700 bikes. Haven't found the actual count yet. So I'm going to go with I'm correct. It was tricky crossing the road but we managed. The bike cops were fond of yelling "tighten the gap" at the bikers and the bikers were fond of doing nothing when they yelled that. I'm not sure what they hoped to accomplish. I'm assuming yelling that just made them feel less useless.

So we were originally going to go to a restaurant called Queen of Sheba. It was closed or appeared to be closed. So we went down the street to the other Ethiopian place Lalibela (I told you they were everywhere). The service was nonexistent when we arrived and (according to John, I think he is crazy or hard of hearing) really quiet. Once we were served the food came quickly.

So Ethiopian food is served on these giant flat breads called injera. They are porous and stetchy and kind of feel like skin. They are also slightly sour tasting.
We ordered a platter of vegetable and meat options. What exactly each of them were, I couldn't tell you not because I'm being an ass but because I don't know. But here is a picture and you can make your own guesses. There were lentils, potatoes and cabbage, meat, beets, salad, and a chicken leg. The lentils were surprisingly tasty and different from each other (see yellow and red blobs). The beef (or was it lamb?) tasted like an Indian curry while the chicken was spicy and almost tasted like a barbecue sauce. Overall it was quite tasty and you got a good variety and plus anything with beets can do no wrong (they make you pee pink!) View:
We missed out on getting coffee which is supposed to be extremely good. I don't like coffee so I'm skeptical and my associate didn't want any. We had much TTC adventuring to do so it was probably for the best.

Sri Lankan Adventure

The inaugural Ethnic roulette food post. How exciting. I know I'm excited, but I've been known to get excited about riding the Scarborough RT, so what do I know? Obviously nothing about Sri Lankan food, thus the adventure.

So I'm hoping that I'm not the only one who was completely unaware of the fact that Sri Lankan food existed. Well I suppose I could have conjectured that it existed, because well, Sri Lankans have to eat something, but I didn't know it was any different from say Indian food (Sorry Sri Lanka but you have got to get a better PR person.) Without further ado here are crappy pictures of Sri Lankan Food. Crappy because we were the only people in the restaurant and it was kind of awkward to be taking pictures.

The picture in the corner is of tasty crab soup which was like a spicy chowder but not so potatoy. That is just the beginning of the mind bending powers of my adjectives both real and imagined.

For the main attraction we had mutton curry which was served with what coconut sambol and string hoppers. The string hoppers were noodle like creatures that were turned into pancake like serving devices. They came with a mysterious yellow sauce that looked like thin hollandaise sauce. So now for the most important question: what makes this curry any different from any other curry? The answer: The curry flavour seems much more intense. In an Indian curry the flavour seems to build until half way through eating it you think to yourself "Wow, this is pretty spicy." In the Sri Lankan curry it seems to hit you as soon as you put it in your mouth.

The most remarkable thing about the trip however was not the food, it was the picture in the mens bathroom. It was like a 3D wolf in the forest with leaves falling masterpiece. I think I'm going to start taking my camera to the bathroom with me more often which sounds so much wronger than I thought it would... moving right along.

We missed out on Hoppers which is a shame because they look off the hook (Its true, Google that shit!) It was also the namesake of the restaurant. The Hopper Hut located at about Kennedy and Ellesmere, not to be confused with the Chinese Hut located nearby. For further instructions consult google maps.

Ethnic Roulette - Creation Myth

This blog is to document our travels into Toronto's ethnic cuisines. I know it sounds kind of racist but, I mean, what else would you call it. Immigrant food? Still sounds bad. So we'll skip the PC bullshit.

We shall be making an ethnic roulette (which won't really be a roulette but more like a wheel of fortune or game of life spinning device) then exploring whatever cuisine the roulette tells us to. Its like a cult but tastier.