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

Thai Island (Exchange and TD)

The number 32 at Thai Island, a chicken, springroll and noodle number, is a standby for some of us. It's flavourful and filling, and a nice break from sandwiches. Once in a while the meat is a bit iffy (unidentified hard bits often require the two finger rescue from your mouth) but that's part of the fun.

However the real excitment involves one of the more hostile environments for PATH lunch counter transactions.

The staff (one woman at the Exchange court in particular) have a few things they get a real kick out of:

1. Giving you your lunch in a bag to go when you asked for it on a tray.
2. Sulking when you then ask for it on a tray.
3. Keeping a stack of popular beverages next to the cash registers so they get nice and warm.
4. Ignoring "sauce on the side" requests (they are frequent as the alternative is about 200 mls of thai sugar sauce on your food. They keep a stack of pre-filled sauce containers for sauce on the side requests).
5. Generalized customer-focussed hostility.

Number 3 is the one I hate the most. The fridge is maybe 40 inches from the cash register. They can't be saving that much time. What's the point of a fridge if you return beverages to room temperature before their sale?

I used to quietly fume about this. Now I ask for a diet coke from the fridge. I am secretly hoping that they refuse at some point so I can freak out.

Never a dull moment at TI.

OVERALL RATING: PAT

(the relative value of the meal gets it a third full letter)

A tale of two Mr. Subs

Often in the world of PATH lunches, we are often just looking for something that is fast, and not gross. Mr. Sub in the Exchange Tower court (one of my favourite courts) is fast and clean. They do a tremendous amount of counter wiping. Things were very tough for them during the sliced meat "troubles". Often I felt like the only customer. But they pulled through.

The staff are very cheery, although I was once rebuked for not using the cookie tongs. Generally they are pleasant.

I only get the tuna sub (I've not seen sharkwater) and the meatball sub. I'm sure both are terrible for you but they are fast, filling and won't break the bank. It's my go-to bring back to the desk lunch.

The First Canadian Place Mr. Sub is closer to my desk, but I avoid it because the staff is not as friendly and the tuna tastes "different". Also, it is in one of my least favourite courts. The FCP court should be among the best, with the abundance of natural light, but somehow the noise, the decor and the food offerings conspire to make it kind of dead and downmarket. Basement courts in the Exchange Tower, Commerce Court, TD, and now even Royal Plaza are much preferred by this reviewer.

Also, the FCP court invariably has birds in it. If I wanted indoor birds, I'd go to the Metro Zoo and visit one of those geo-domes. Speaking of the Zoo, it's a real shame about that monorail.

OVERALL RANKING: PAT out of PATH (Exchange Tower)

OVERALL RANKING: PA out of PATH (FCP)

North of Queen

I've recently spent some time working north of Queen Street, which has opened up a whole new world of PATH lunch options. Not many of them have been good. For one thing, the Eaton Centre food court at the south end of the mall is scary to me and full of teenagers. This is not something you normally encounter in the PATH core. I have mostly avoided it.

For a while I ate almost exclusively at the soup and sandwich place in the Church of the Holy Trinity, which is through the doors on the west side of the mall, just before Sears. This is mostly an unfamiliar place for people who work south of Queen, but it is super cheap and they have great daily specials. I like the spanakopita. After a while I got bored of the soups and started to think they all tasted the same. I wish they made carrot ginger more often.

After my church phase, I started eating at the T-spot in the basement of the Bay pretty much every day. This is the opposite end of the price spectrum - really way too expensive for daily lunches - usually around 14 bucks with tax for an entree and salad. Not that that stopped me.

The salmon is generally pretty good, and the onion tart is amazing but they never make it. I usually go here if I am trying to be "healthy" and get some sort of fish and salad. I'm never blown away, but it's only been not good maybe one or two times. The spinach salads are great. For some reason, the soups are terrible. No idea why, but I was getting soup for a while until I realized I didn't like any of them.

Then we got really busy at work, and we started getting Sandwich Box delivered every day. You can't really go wrong with the Sandwich Box. I liked that I could change my order everyday and avoid getting bored. I like the side salad. I like the bread options. The smoked chicken or turkey or whatever it is is great. The downside is that grilled sandwiches don't really sit that well, so if you can't get to the sandwich right when it gets delivered, it gets very soggy. Someone I work with had to stop with the sandwiches because that grossed her out, so she got a salad everyday, and then got bored with the Sandwich Box. I think it just might be because eating salad everyday for lunch is boring, but I do think they have a great variety of salad ingredients, and I'd venture to say that the quality of ingredients is better than any of the other salad joints.

So that is north of Queen. I'm looking forward to my return to Scotia Plaza, which has a terrible food court but is at least closer to more PATH lunch action.

Soup Nutsy

I would describe the location as somewhere in netherworld between TD and Commerce Court. Just south of a shoeshine stand.

I haven't been in a while, but I go through phases during which it will be one of my top lunch options. Then I'll get a gnarly bit of chicken in my soup, and I'll give it a rest for a few months.

PROS:

• The soup usually tastes good.
• Quick moving line.
• The bread that comes with the soup is surprisingly good; try the crusty rolls.
• The fruit is a nice touch.
• Centrally located, and not in a food court.
• Loyalty card option for those so inclined.
• Good winter option.

CONS:

• Quite salty (and I like salt)
• Expensive and not that filling - 8 bucks for soup, and then you are starving at 4pm.
• They make you ask for butter.
• It's a bit tense in there.

OVERALL RANKING: PAt out of PATH

Saisons in the Sun

What motivated me to launch this blog was the demise of the Ooh La La (OLL) in the Exchange Tower/FCP area. It wasn't perfect, but it had lots of seats, and Mulligitawny Mondays are sorely missed.

This week "Saisons" opened in the former OLL space, and I gave it a try. These were my impressions:

• a guy was freaking out about the end of calypso chicken (popular OLL sandwich and wrap filling - never tried it myself). In response the cashier kept repeating that there were new owners. I know how you feel, pal.
• they were out of diet coke (single most popular non-water PATH beverage I would guess).
• asparagus soup had lots of woody bits - they were not trimming the ends of the asparagus enough.
• it's more expensive. Soup sandwich and diet coke used to be in the 8 dollar range. Now a flat 10. Seemed fishy.
• seating /decor is nicish? cashier was slow.
• layout is not good. Hard to explain. You'll have to check it out yourself.
• tuna salad looked so weird (pink?) that I switched to ham (which was decent).
• bread not toasted enough. the OLL sandwich woman was better. a travesty she was not hired on to the new venture.
• there was a stray Toronto Sun hanging around, which is always nice.

OVERALL RANKING: Pa out of PATH