Island Foods

With our next vacation looming ahead, I felt compelled to finish up these last few posts in a burst of frenzied energy. It's only been nearly a year right? Heh heh.

Anyhow, since it was on the way to the airport, we stopped by Island Foods West Indian Cuisine.

Heading out...

Raining while walking to our car...

Funny how just a few minutes ago, it was sunny and really warm. I even took off my sweater because it was that hot. But it seems like mercurial weather is common here.

We headed out to have lunch across town. Below, a Chapters store - this is the Canadian version of Borders or Barnes and Noble.

We had lots of time to kill before heading to the airport but anal me, I wanted to make sure we had lunch and got to the airport early. The thought of missing our flight would have stressed me out....

And I was wrong, it's not Jamaican food, it was West Indian food. Oops. Coming up next.

Riverdale Farm...

So, right across Necropolis was Riverdale Farm, which is right in the middle of an urban neighborhood. It's an actual working farm and it's free to the public.

Necropolis

Built in 1850 to replace the "Stranger's Burying Ground" (Potter's Field), the Necropolis is an old cemetery in Cabbagetown. It's right across the street from Riverdale Farm (post to follow). It's one of Toronto's oldest and most historic cemeteries. (more info here from the Necropolis website)

Robopolis

C in Manitoulin Island, this is for you!

Go to Toronto now I say!

Pattz....R Pattz.

He can wear combat boots with a pink feather boa and those nasty onion skin shorts from the International Male catalog and still look good!

St. James Park

Okay, HOLY SHITBALLZ, RPATTZ is in Toronto filming "Cosmopolis" and looking all kinds of awesome in his suit!!! Mmmm, finger lickin' good. Ha ha!

Toronto Sculpture Garden

Across the street from the imposing Cathedral Church of St. James was this beautiful sculpture garden just calling our names...

Cathedral Church of St. James

Right around the corner from the Gooderham building was this impressive church...

Gooderham Building

One last view of a mural near the St. Lawrence Market...

Although I'd seen this iconic building before on postcards in Torontian gift shops, we weren't prepared to see it up close and personal a mere few minutes away from the market. This was a pleasant surprise...

St. Lawrence Market, Part 2

Oh yeah dudes, European Delight was awesome!

If you're ever in the mood for Ukrainian foods, this is the place to go...

Last Day in Canada - St. Lawrence Market, Part 1

Finally, the posts from our last day in Canada. Man, this was nearly ONE YEAR ago! I seriously lag!

Our flight wasn't leaving until earlier this evening so we wanted to make the most of today. Here's the view from our hotel room - we stayed a few blocks away from St. Lawrence Market, which was to be our first destination for that day. As you can see, there was a bit of rain that morning...

Grey Roots...no not my hair!

Our traveling companion K mentioned seeing this place that had replicas of different houses. We figured we'd stop by to look at it. We weren't going to go in or anything. Turns out that the place, Grey Roots,was already closed when we got there.

Toronto Public Library - Lillian H. Smith Branch

OMG, air conditioning here we come! What better place to relax than a library? I just realized we've also visited another library from a past trip (Portland's Multonomah Public Library). We were walking down College Street to get back to our hotel and it was calling our name. Plus, we like hanging out where the locals bookworms hang out.

This was the Lillian H. Smith branch of the Toronto Public Library, the largest public library system in North America.

It is located the Grange Park neighborhood which gets its name from the local park. There is also a mansion called "The Grange" there. When I see that word "grange", I think of that ZZ Top song, "La Grange" ("They gotta lotta nice girls hehh!").

From wikipedia's entry on "Grange Park":

"Grange Park is a mixed, but predominantly residential neighbourhood. The residential stock varies from working men's cottages built in the 1800s to semi-detached homes to mansions. Many of the buildings have been converted to commercial use, including art galleries within the vicinity of the Art Gallery of Ontario, restaurants and offices. Many of the homes are rented to students of the Ontario College of Art & Design, located on McCaul Street, and the University of Toronto, located to the north."

(Map from Wikipedia, "Grange Park")

The Lillian H. Smith  branch of the Toronto public library was originally the location for the Boys and Girls House; Lillian H. Smith was its founder.  This branch's focus was on children's literature.
It was nice resting in room with AC on full blast. In the Children's Section, Bert kicked back and rested his eyes while TC leafed through a few teeny bopper magazines (looking at articles on the helmet haired femmebot Justin Bieber, no doubt), while I lay back in a chair and stretched my agonized legs and feet.

One of the statues flanking the entrance:

As Snoop Dogg would say, "So just chill...'til the next episode!"

Jumbo Empanadas

Where was I? Oh, we walked to Jumbo Empanadas (a Chilean place) with our potato roti and our beef/callaloo loaves in tow. Check out the yelp reviews here. Please not that their "official site" is disabled so don't bother clicking on it.

We figured we could eat our West Indian food here along with our Chilean stuff. We thought wrong! We sat at the edge overlooking the patio...

A female empanada!

Bert waiting in line and checking out the menu...

Weathered sign...

To continue where I left off at the last post...the woman who had our order saw our food from the other place and sharply said, "You cannot eat that here! Only our food!". I didn't want to argue with her but c'mon, we were ordering food from their place as well, so seriously, I thought it would be okay. But I didn't want to cause a fuss and I could see where she was coming from so  I apologized to her and put away our food.  I would be more pissed though if someone came outside and didn't order any food at the place.

First thing we got was the Corn Pie...

Can you believe we finished it all? It was like Shepherds Pie but instead of mashed potatoes, there's really creamy and soft corn covering spiced ground beef. Delicious!

This was the Jumbo Empanada - filled with spiced ground beef and served with a type of Chilean salsa called Pebre which contains cilantro, chopped onion, olive oil, garlic and ground or pureed spicy aji peppers.

Wow, look at that - you can see sliced boiled egg and and olive in there! We really liked this! One other thing we should have ordered is the Sopaipilla, a type of fried pastry that can be eaten plain or topped with lettuce, tomatoes, and sour cream.

Bert also ordered a Mini Empanada which was filled with spiced chicken.

This filling also had boiled egg in there. It wasn't too spicy either but I'd have to say that I liked the beef much better.

These remind me of the Chilean version of those Hot Dogs that you see on top of Superdawg in Chicago.

For today,  we originally planned to go to St. Jacobs, a small town about an hour or so away from Toronto. This town is known for its large population of Mennonites; they even have a Mennonite Museum/visitor center along with a Maple Syrup Museum. We changed our minds and decided to stay in the city for today. I didn't want to invest 3+ hours driving back and forth when we could use our time more efficiently and take in more sights/culture in the city. Maybe next time we go to Toronto...

We did do quite a bit that day. We rode a cool stomach lurching Charlie and the Chocolate Factory type glass elevator up CN Tower and enjoyed the sky high views of the city. We also went to the Hockey Hall of Fame and got up close and personal to some jerseys in a locker room sans the sweat the the puck bunnies, and rode public transportation in this fine city. That last one is a biggie since we are normally NOT pedestrians or users of public transpo.  After lunch, we were getting a bit tired and wanted to head back to the hotel, which was blocks and blocks away. In Bert's eyes, the locations looked pretty close on the map. But when it's freaking hot outside and your feet feel like they're going to fall off, it wasn't close at all.

Patty King

In the previous post, you saw a tiny bit of the sights as we walked through Kensington Market. For this entry, you will see what we ended up eating...

We already had our fill of European food the other nights. We wanted something different and this one seemed to fit the bill - Jamaican or West Indian food. We were actually looking for another restaurant, but we went here first..."Patty King":

It was kinda grungy outside...

And it was pretty crowded inside! Check out their menus....

And their baked goods...unfortunately we didn't buy any because we wanted to eat something else instead.

Oops, look like I should have rotated this photo. Not sure exactly what "peg" bread is though.

More baked goods...

More menu items...Ooh, I like oxtail! Hmmm, goat (not sure about that)! While this was a West Indian place, the owners were Asian. According to C, a lot of ethnic eateries in Kensington Market are owned by Koreans and/or Chinese. Doubles looked interesting and in retrospect, we probably should have ordered that. Here's a cool post on Doubles...which are two pieces of fried bread filled with curried chickpeas. Yumm!

Now we're going to fast forward to the place where we originally wanted to eat. Since Patty King didn't really have seating inside or outside, we walked around and found Jumbo Empanadas. So we brought our "loaves" and drinks here. TC and I were waiting at the table while Bert ordered more good eats. This was our beef loaf.

Here was our Potato Roti which was insanely massive! We barely made a dent in that. A roti is like a thin tortilla that you can stuff with different meats or vegetables. This was pretty damn starchy.

We got two kinds of patties (well, they were actually "loaves") at Patty King: 1) Beef and 2) Callaloo (spinach). I think the filling to dough ratio was uneven, especially the spinach one. Having only tried a Jamaican patty once before (at Niagara on the Lake), I thought the dough would be the same, which was nice and flaky. Instead, this dough was too soft and too bready for my taste.

As I was taking photos of these patties, the woman serving our food at Jumbo Empanadas came to our table with our stuff...

Kensington Market

After having seen all that damn hockey memorabilia, we tried out Toronto's public transportation system. Being the spoiled Southern Californians that we were, this was like an adventure. We took  the subway which was easy enough to navigate. Our stop was Spadina Street which sounds like vagina. The guys in the booths advised us to get a bus transfer where it would later deposit us near Kensington Market, our next "sight to see"...I think it was Dundas Street or something.

By the way, that is a clown in the photo below.

While walking to Kensington Market, we passed through parts of Chinatown.  It's not hella crazy or overcrowded like in San Francisco but more spread out. Here's their gate...

Looks like we made it (sing it like Barry Manilow)...and say "Kensington" like Austin Powers says, "Miss Kensington, oh behave!"!

The Market is just steps away from the University of Toronto

(map from wikipedia, "Kensington Market")

I remember C telling me that we had to check out this place as well as St. Lawrence Market (which we eventually saw before the end of our trip). Kensington Market is several blocks of shops selling all kinds of things under the sun, plus vegetable and fruit stands, as well as tons of ethnic eateries. It's kind of overwhelming because there's a lot going on in every street. You can smell the food wafting from the food stands which is also comingled with other unsavory odors from other booths.

Here's one we should have stopped at, "Cheese Magic"...by this time, our stomachs were grumbling.

There were lots of Latin markets and booths...

I can get tacos like these anytime in Chula Vista....

World Cup Fever was all around us...(another sport I don't really follow)

More taco places...

A holy trifecta...You know, they're missing the "Buddy Jesus" from Kevin Smith's "Dogma"!

I thought this was a beautiful mural...

Saw this on our way out...

If you're wondering if we ate, yes we did, But that will be a separate post. After our progressive lunch, we headed back to our hotel which was a bit of a walk. Here's yet another Simpsons reference, this restaurant/lounge is called "Rancho Relaxo" (after the episode in which Marge contemplates cheating on Homer).

"You can't spell Relaxo without RELAX!"

Here's another cool street mural...every city that we visit, I try to take pictures of things like this. It's much more interesting that the same old touristy shit. I love photos of graffiti and murals....

Where's the food??? It's on it's way...