Keep an eye on this space for some new reviews!

Thai Island – Bay Adelaide Center

Now that the Bay Adelaide Centre is up and running there is an entirely new slate of the exact same restaurants to review. We dedicate today’s review to Thai Island – BAC Edition (or Thai-Land, for those in the know).

Harkening back to the May 14, 2009 review of the TI at Exchange and TD you’ll note an emphasis on the poor service. You’ll be glad to know that Thai-Land continues to let us down. It could be that the servers are flummoxed by the newly-opened and overcrowded food court, but the way they sharply and abruptly ask for your order it makes one wonder if they’re trying to get your order in before you can change your mind and decide to get down with an Extreme Pita next door.

The menu is your standard array of non-descript Pan-Asian delights, including lemon-grass chicken, a variety of curry dishes and General “Thai” Chicken*. Better than your standard dish at a Manchu Wok or even its food-court neighbour Szechuan Express – BAC Edition, Thai-Land offers a large variety of dishes at a standard price of about $8.00.

Summary

Best thing about Thai-Land: Two separate counters - one for “a la carte” Styrofoam box meals and the other for special orders of “mung” (a noodle dish with an unfortunate name if you believe urban dictionary), pad thai or soup - means you have a variety of ways to consume 75% of your daily sodium in one sitting.

Worst thing about Thai-Land: They’re still not very nice.

What makes Thai-Land unique: An extra charge for noodles over rice limits your starch choices for the cost-conscious high income PATH luncher.

Overall Ranking: PAT out of PATH

*As an aside, this reviewer would like to take a short break to discuss the amazing coincidence that so many different Asian cultures have found a way to separately yet concurrently converge on the concept of a red/orange heavily battered chicken dish, each invented by its own generals with surprisingly similar names. Were General Tao, General Tso, General Tsao, General Gau and General Thai all related or simply a group of military men brought together by their love of the sweet and spicy? After some serious research this reviewer believes that the various names stem from the root term “Zuo Zongtang” which literally means “mountains of cornstarch and trace amounts of broccoli”. In any event, whoever these generals were, I salute them!

Starbucks FCP

The above-mentioned emporium this morning was kind enough to sell me an apple fritter that had to be a week old. I was hungry enough to eat it. I spent most of the time thinking about returning it but had already had some pretty big bites.

Are the "grande" coffees smaller than before?

It's so expensive and not that good, but I go all the time. I'm hooked on Pike Place.

Toronto "A La Cart" - Take 2

I have been trying to find the samosa "A La Car" food cart that was supposed to be at Metro Hall for a while. I had a big walk over there in June sometime, and couldn't find it. Apparently it was a late roll-out. Anyway, I was walking back to work from the doctor the other day and finally happened upon it. I had a veggie samosa. I think it was 2 bucks, or $2.50, and it was pretty big, and it was good. Not amazing good, but pretty tasty, and for 2 bucks you can't really go wrong. One was enough for lunch. Even if you get 2, you are still at under 5 dollars. As someone who has trouble with keeping lunch purchases at under 5, or even 10 dollars, this was a good find. A big improvement over the sort of gross biryani food cart of Nathan Philips East.

Beyond the PATH

PATH lunch reviews has been rather quiet this summer - lazy reviewers spending time either on a lake or trying to rack up the billable hours.

In these summer months, this reviewer likes to occasionally stray beyond the underground confines of the PATH. Okay, I like to do it all year round, but am more inclined to run further than the Bay Street Mercatto when I don't need to put a coat on.

Now that I am back in Scotia Plaza, Jamie Kennedy's lunch spot, Hank's Cafe, seems less of a hike than it did when I worked at the Eaton Centre. Hank's is right next to the JK Wine Bar, in the space that was the JK Restaurant, I think, at 91/2 Church St. I've been to Hank's a few times now, and have been totally thrilled with my meal each time.

Things I love about Hank's:

1) That you can order a half a sandwich. For one thing, it is cheaper, and for another it makes me feel less guilty about eating a sandwich for lunch and not, say, some crappy salad. I am never happy when I just have salad for lunch. I know I've written fairly positive things about Sandwich Box in the past, but I went there the other day and had the GROSSEST salad. I was trying to be healthy and had quinoa in my salad and there were rocks in it. Barf.

2) That you can order small cups of soup. This way I can have soup and a salad and it isn't too expensive, and I don't have to make decisions about picking either/or.

3) That the iced tea is unsweetened. I love sugar, to a fault, but I do not like my drinks CRAZY sweet, which is what iced tea always seems to me to be. Also, my dentist once told me that all my cavities were from the ridiculous amounts of iced tea I used to drink so I am sort of scared of sweetened iced tea. I went on exchange once to a very weird boarding school in Switzerland that had in the dining room a bucket of super sweet iced tea with a ladle in it that you could drink all day. It was the only thing available 24 hours. Weird. Anyway, the best part is that Hank's has sugar syrup so you can sweeten the iced tea as much or a little as you like.

4) You can stay and eat at the tables and they will bring you your lunch that you order at the counter, or you can take out. This makes it a good place to meet someone for a quick lunch - you still get to sit down at a table, but you don't have to be in some weird underground food court.

5) The coffee is amazing.

6) It is very cute, with nice paper napkins and signs, and it is out of the downtown core, and based on how people dress it is clear that it is not just full of lawyers and bankers. It is like a mini-farmhouse cafe. I am always happy after I go there because it feel like a mini vacation. Like I've "gotten away from it all". Just kidding, but not really.

So far, my favourite sandwich is the smoked turkey. I've had the smoked trout, also pretty awesome, and the pulled pork which seems to be a frequent special. All the soups I've tried have been fantastic. Chilled watermelon with mint oil or something? Delicious. Can't remember the others, but I remember that I liked them. In future I will try and be a better food reviewer and take some notes or something.

In other news, I just now realized that there is a Petite Thuet at King and Yonge. Not sure how I missed that. Will go and review soon.

Special Edition - Free things in the PATH

I love free things, especially when I am on a self-imposed spending freeze. I ate leftovers from mom birthday dinner for lunch.

But in exciting PATH news, there is free iced coffee today between 12 and 5 at Tim Hortons -
http://www.timhortons.com/ca/en/menu/icedcoffee.html. Angus got into the iced coffee on the way up north last weekend - I tried it and it was sort of weird and too creamy for me. While I love most things fatty, I don't love cream. But because it was free iced coffee day, and very nice and sunny, I trekked down to Bay and Richmond to get myself a tiny iced coffee. The line was very manageable, and I asked for mine to be made with milk instead of cream. The result wasn't bad, but I did not stir mine and ended up with an insanely sweet last few sips.

THE VERDICT: PATH for being free. Order it with milk and stir. PAt on a regular day, as it is still pretty cheap.

Toronto "A la Cart" - Take One

This edition of Path Lunch Reviews takes us above ground.

Because I have deadline-related issues and am only capable of getting work done when it ABSOLUTELY MUST BE DONE, I spent Monday of the long weekend at work. 8 pm rolled around, and I experienced the frustration of being downtown on a holiday with none of my usual evening standbys open.

But then I remembered that the launch of Toronto's new non-hot dog food carts was taking place this very Victoria day! I had high hopes that my dinner would be saved by the biryani cart at the east side of Nathan Phillips Square. I've been irrationally excited about the launch of the new food carts, though somewhat confused by their geographic distribution (famed food write Naomi Duguid shares my confusion - and has some other problems with the "A la Cart" program as well: http://www.thestar.com/article/634699). For one thing, I love eating outside (though it violates a main tenet of PATH eating), and the $5 price tag appeals to me, as loyal path lunch reviews readers will know I have some problems following a lunch budget. Also, there is so much good street food to be had in the world, yet somehow our only options in Toronto thus far have been hot-dog after hot-dog shaped food. I hate hot-dogs. Here was our big chance....

Sadly, my first non-hot dog food cart meal in Toronto was a serious disappointment.* It may have been that I arrived at the very end of the day, as the owner of the shiny new cart with the flashy "A la Cart" logo was wrapping up shop, or it may have been that there were some opening day wrinkles to iron out. In any case, my only choice was biryani with rice (various websites had promised me "biryani and salsa karahi, served with pita, chapati, naan or rice") . What I got was a couple of pieces of pretty bland chicken in some cold and very greasy rice, with none of the minted yogurt I had also read about with great anticipation. I'm not a huge rice fan to begin with, but this was pretty gross. Nonetheless, I was hungry, and scarfed a fair bit of it down. Ten minutes later, I was not feeling great.

I'm holding off on posting a rating for the Nathan Phillip's Square east food cart - I'm hoping my crappy dinner was an anomaly, and that the food cart located closest to my office pulls it together so that I can fulfill my romantic street food fantasies without disappointment. We'll see. I'm going to give my stomach a break and check out the Nathan Phillip's Square west food cart later this week - review to follow.

* I frequently eat outside at Wednesday's summer market in Nathan Phillips Square, enjoying the roast corn, sweet potatoes, and peameal bacon sandwiches. I'm not sure why these perfectly awesome food stands don't count as "food carts", nor do I understand why they can't set up permanent shop in the downtown core for the summer. Especially given how happy it would make me. Clearly there are some "rules" or "laws" out there about mobile versus more permanently stationed food stands. Someone should explain them to me.

EDIT: It appears I misread the description for this stand in The Star - apparently Biryani IS a rice based dish. I thought it was meat that I could eat with naan or chapati. While I don't like rice, I do like bread. Anyway, my meal was still gross. The biryani did not look anything like these nice looking Biryani(s) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biryani