#32: La Cubana

Afternoon brunch at La Cubana!

#32 on blogTO’s 50 Best Brunches: La Cubana

The Location: La Cubana (across the street from The Westerly)

The Time: Mid December, late afternoon

The Company: Matt and Jacqueline

Veggie Menu: Baked Eggs with Sofrito and Yuca, Breakfast Sandwich (tomato, avocado, fried egg, and queso fresco), french toast with banana and dulce de leche. Sides include grilled corn, rice and beans, sweet plantains, tostones, french fries, and yuca frita. Most dishes also come with a side of beet slaw.

First, a lesson in Spanish:

Sofrito is a sauce that consists of garlic, onion, paprika, peppers and tomatoes cooked in olive oil.

Yuca is similar to a sweet potato, native to South America.

Queso Fresco is a mild, unaged white cheese, often used in Latin American countries.

Dulce de Leche is slowly heated, sweetened milk.

Plantains are bananas that I will actually eat (cooked).

Tostones are fried plantain slices.

Thank you, Wikipedia and La Cubana, for the lesson.

La Cubana is a great brunch place for carnivorous eaters and vegetarians alike. From eating similar dishes at The Queen and Beaver, The Stockyards, and The Good Fork, I knew I could count on La Cubana’s baked eggs. Here they are in all their Yuca, Avocado and Tostones glory.

Baked Eggs

And here is my side of sweet plantains.

Plantain-ful

Jacqueline had the breakfast sandwich. Here it is in all its egg and cheese glory.

Breakfast Sandwich

I really love Cuban food and I love this place. If you’ve never had a plantain before, visit La Cubana this weekend, and learn some Spanish while you’re there.

Shari’s Veggie Meter (out of five): 🍅🍅🍅🍅 

 

#20: Universal Grill

Goodbye Summer. Hello Universal Grill!

#20 on blogTO’s Best Brunches: Universal Grill

The Location: Universal Grill (We had passed its teal exterior many times along Dupont Street, heading east towards the Annex)

The Time: Mid-September, which seems to be the thick of fall for Toronto

The Company: My parents, and my Chris

Veggie Menu: Buttermilk Pancakes, Huevos Rancheros, French Toast, Spicy Chillie Cheese Spuds Supreme, Cheesy Scrambled Eggs, Granola, a pancake of the day, an omelette of the day (on this day, it was vegetarian, but had mushrooms, yuck) and if you want to, you can make your own breakfast by ordering a combination of eggs, spuds, fruit, toast and pancakes off of the Sides Menu

SCCS (That’s Spicy Chillie Cheese Spuds to YOU)

Walking up to the empty patio at Universal Grill felt like arriving at a funeral for summer. The patio was stacked and furniture was covered. Goodbye Summer 2014.

Thankfully, the Spicy Chillie Cheese Spuds were waiting for me, to warm me up and cheer me up. My dad opted for the vegetarian omelette, and my mom for the buttermilk pancakes. We were starving and hadn’t eaten anything all day. Alas, even though it was mid-afternoon and the restaurant was nearly empty, the meals took over 40 minutes to arrive.

I can only assume that the reason the meals took so long was because they were setting fire to my Spicy Chillie Cheese Spuds, and had to extinguish it. The food was SO hot that, even though I dug in immediately, it was at least fifteen minutes until I could taste any flavour. When the temperature settled, the meal reminded me a bit of the taco pie Chris, Cali and I made in university (that’s a good thing), except I could still walk after eating the SCCS (Spicy Chillie Cheese Spuds).

Chris and I also took advantage of the Sides menu and ordered one pancake to share. It was thick and fluffy and was extra tasty topped with the raspberry compote and maple syrup. It wasn’t my favourite pancake in the city, but close.

My second favourite pancake in the city

Apparently my dad’s vegetarian omelette was great too, but I didn’t go near it because of the mushrooms, yuck. I did have some of his challah toast, yum. Here is his dish in intimate detail, since he couldn’t figure out how to work the zoom lens on my SLR.

Mega zoom is what happens when parents take pictures.

Next time, if the restaurant promises to serve it in a timely fashion, I promise to order the Huevos. If Universal’s Huevos is in the same family as the Chillie Cheese Spuds, it may just compete with Mildred’s Huevos.

Thanks for the food, UGrill!

Shari’s Veggie Meter (out of five): 🍅🍅🍅

 

My blogTO’s Best Brunches List – Halfway Done!

Nearly a year has passed, and I’m halfway through my journey to trying out all 50 of blogTO’s 50 Essential Brunch Restaurants in Toronto. It has been quite challenging, as last year I worked nearly every Saturday and Sunday morning. I’ve also travelled a lot, and have been sidetracked into going to other great brunch spots that didn’t make blogTO’s list. My goal is to get through the rest of the list before blogTO makes anymore changes to it!

To make things easier for me: Toronto brunch restaurants, please serve brunch on Fridays. Us artists like brunch too.

Here are updated rankings of blogTO’s best 50 brunches, and how I rank them in terms of their veggie options.

TIED FOR #1:

1. Bonjour Brioche (blogTO’s #27) – Many veggie options and they’re all mind-blowing

1. Mildred’s Temple Kitchen (blogTO’s #7) – The best Huevos in the city

The Rest:

3. Aunties and Uncles (blogTO’s #1) – A classic, and it’s the same guy who does Choir! Choir! Choir!

4. The Queen and Beaver (blogTO’s #47) – Going for the third time this weekend, at my mom’s request.

5. Rose and Sons (blogTO’s #4) – Poached pears and avocados. Heaven.

6. The White Brick Kitchen (blogTO’s #39) – Very rich, amazing, vegetarian foods.

7: Mitzi’s Cafe (blogTO’s #11) – Good food, good location

8: The Ace (blogTO’s #33) – I suspect it hosts the best eggs benedict. A revisit will confirm.

9. Easy Restaurant (blogTO’s #2) – Many Mexican-inspired veggie options

10: The Federal Reserve (blogTO’s #24) – Daily veggie omelette!

11: Okay Okay (blogTO’s #17) – McDonald’s Hash Browns meets OK2′s Benedict.

12. Lady Marmalade (blogTO’s #5) – Overhyped, and they wouldn’t serve me the miso breakfast poutine.

13. Little Fish (blogTO’s #14) – If you love custards and jams, you likely love this place more than I do.

14: Farmhouse Tavern (blogTO’s #18) – Inventive dishes, great ambiance, slow service, cold tea

15: Wallace & Co. (blogTO’s #50) – Tempeh substitutions are remarkable but not much else is.

16. The Stockyards (blogTO’s #15) – Stocky yards has great emergency vegetarian meals. Go with your carnivorous partner.

17. Voodoo Child (blogTO’s #25) – Very few menu options, period. Hopefully one of the three will always be a veggie meal.

18. The Westerly (blogTO’s #28) – Huevos Rancher-NOs (I can get a bit more mileage out of that joke, can’t I?)

19. Hogtown Vegan (blogTO’s #48) – Oh chicken and waffles, a dish I’d never tried before becoming a vegetarian, how I’ve missed you.

20. Weslodge (blogTO’s #46) – Decorated by Gaston (who uses antlers in all of his decorating). Gaston is not a vegetarian.

21. Emma’s Country Kitchen (blogTO’s #22) – The pig shelf says it all

22. Starving Artist (blogTO’s #37) – Their new location was not up to their usual standards. And their usual standards include WASPS.

23. Saving Grace (blogTO’s #3) – #3 blogTO? Really? I had a flavourless Indian-inspired meal.

24. School (blogTO’s #6) – I’m not sure why blogTO moved School up to #6. They ran out of half of their menu at their all-day brunch, and the items they had were dull and over-priced. LAME.

25. Lazy Daisy’s Cafe (blogTO’s #29) – Daisy is out of her league

Other:

Camp (blogTO’s #40) – Camp has been toying with my heart. First, they closed for three months. Then they reopened as a seafood restaurant and called themselves Fish Camp. Then they decided to close all together. I will miss you, Camp, and treasure the memories. May you rest in peace with my other favourite brunch spot, Kingston’s Epicure.

#3: Saving Grace

Too much cilantro.

#3 on blogTO’s 50 Best Brunches: Saving Grace

The Location: Saving Grace (a Dundas street car heading by Bellwoods from either direction will get you there)

The Time: Tuesday morning, mid-December

The Company: Friend and new mom Cali, and baby Berlin

Veggie Menu: oatmeal with raisins, red river porridge, polenta with walnuts, french toast (all of these have either caramelized bananas or apples, and maple syrup), standard fried eggs with toast and greens, rajastani scrambled eggs with chickpea masala, savoury french toast, toast with the

Berlin gets to eat her own brunch!

usual fixings, open baguette sandwich including brie and pear, and avocado and cheddar sandwich

Veggie Specials: almond pancakes, poached eggs on cornmeal waffles, scrambled eggs with mushroom (not a real option since it has mushrooms, yuck), spinach and feta frittata, lebanese “pizza”

Saving Grace is an unassuming little place without a lot of personality or charm. All of the charm can be found in the menu, with comfort items like oatmeal and porridge, and pear, brie and walnut sandwich. I chose the rajastani eggs and was, yet again, underwhelmed.

I’m fairly fussy about how cilantro is used, and in this dish it overpowered all other flavours. Then when I picked it off, I realized there were no other flavours to be tasted.

Almond Pancakes

The service was fairly slow and we waited a long time to get our bill. At least it gave me a chance to catch up with Cali and get to know little Berlin!

Like has been the case lately with my blogTO top 50 visits, I was more impressed with the uniqueness of their dishes and ingredients than with any flavours these unique ingredients provided. Maybe I’m already jaded. Maybe I’m ordering the wrong items. But I’m starting to wonder if blogTO compiled a list of the 50 most diverse brunches, rather than the 50 best.

Too much cilantro makes my hair curl.

#5: Lady Marmalade

#5 on blogTO’s 50 Best Brunches: Lady Marmalade

The Location: Lady Marmalade (everyone lives west of here, right? Then take the Queen Street car all the way east of Broadview)

The Time: Friday afternoon

The Company: Fellow brunch-enthusiast and regular blog guest star Wendy, and husband Chris

Our vegetarian dishes are friends

Veggie Menu: Standard eggs with toast and potatoes, A.M. poutine (vegetarian!), Huevos Rancheritos and Huevos Migas (variations on a theme), organic tofu scramble, roasted vegetable or fresh tomato and pesto Eggs Benedict, a fruit parfait, porridge, and buckwheat crepes filled with fruit

Veggie Specials: Roasted garlic and navy bean soup

Going for brunch involves paying your dues. Usually this involves standing in line in a drafty doorway, or hungrily waiting for a text from the hostess while at a nearby coffee shop.  Our good brunch friend Wendy paid these dues for us today as we cleaned up an unappetizing doggy accident and made an emergency trip to the dry cleaners. Thank you Wendy, for making this brunch possible.

Lady Marmalade is all business, so it’s no wonder they’re number 5 on blogTO’s list. The service was friendly and the food delivery was fast. They’re clearly old pros and know how this brunch thing works. Because of this, they decided to stop serving their breakfast poutine because it was slowing them down. It makes sense for efficiency, but was a huge disappointment. Poutine for breakfast needs to be a part of my life. Take it off your menu, Lady Marmalade, if you can’t serve it when you’re busy – it’s my understanding that you’re ALWAYS busy.

Brunching buddies

Our waitress recommended a vegetarian version of their Huevos Migas. I enjoyed the process of eating it, as I like dipping tortilla chips in anything and everything. The food tasted good too, but I remember the event more than the flavours. Chris’ roasted veggie Benedict was a decent benedict, but I wouldn’t travel out of my way to have it.

Lady Marmalade thrives in Leslieville because their residents also take brunch very seriously. In my opinion, it pales in comparison to the nearby Bonjour Brioche, which is more chaotic, less organized, but more delicious.

Lady Marmalade had a chance to win my love, commitment, and loyalty, as Bonjour Brioche doesn’t have a vegetarian breakfast poutine. But you withheld from me, Lady Marmalade, and for now, my Leslieville heart belongs to someone else.

#27: Bonjour Brioche

Wendy’s jiggly egg

#27 on BlogTO’s Best 50 Brunches: Bonjour Brioche

The Location: Bonjour Brioche (take the Queen streetcar and get off two blocks east of Broadview)

The Time: Friday at noon

The Company: Wendy and Chris

Veggie Menu: Mixed green salad, fresh fruit salad with yogurt and granola, omelette, baked french toast, vegetarian sandwich (with mushrooms, yuck!)

Veggie Specials: Pumpkin Soup, Quiche (arugula, tomato, pepper and feta cheese), tart (fig, caramelized onion and blue cheese), roasted beet and quinoa salad, plus a fried egg dish that Wendy convinced them to make vegetarian.

Wendy’s excited about her food!

This was my first visit to Riverside. These people sure do like their brunches. There were line-ups here AND at Lady Marmalade, on a FRIDAY! I would say that these are my kind of people, if I didn’t feel the need to compete with them for a table. The kitchen takes up most of the space on the floor, like all good french cafes, so three of us squeezed into a table for two, as ladies next to us ignored the rules and took up TWO tables.

This restaurant boasts quite the selection for vegetarians! Because I was hungry, and, you know, for research, I decided to have two of the specials: the pumpkin soup, and the quiche. They were both two of the best dishes I’ve had in Toronto. I even took a photo of the inside of my quiche to show how fluffy it was. And you can tell a lot about a brunch place by its salad. This salad was not an after-thought, or a plate filler. It was amazing and complimented the mains perfectly.

Quiche!

Mid-quiche

Quiched.

Vegetarians, go here, but beware: it was very difficult to continue on with my day after this meal, as I was *literally* (okay, probably figuratively) food drunk. I couldn’t even go to my next planned stop: deep fried pickles. That’s serious.

Don’t get two dishes. It just isn’t worth the hangover.