Zoe’s Bakery Cafe

Location:

548 King Street West, Toronto

Cost: $8.50 average

www.zoesbakerycafe.ca

A great girls get-together should revolve around (I think) good food and drink….if those two components aren’t there, it’s almost as if one of your girlfriends is washing her hair.

Our plan was to meet at Zoe’s for lunch and despite the TTC strike everyone was able to make it out (mostly thanks to my considerate friend and her fancy new wheels).

Zoe’s is on King street near Brant; it’s hard to miss the giant black signage on the front and side of the cafe.

During the summer climate bright red umbrellas line the sidewalk in front of the cafe, under which enthusiastic patrons munch on enormous gourmet sandwiches and hearty salads.

Being slightly lower than ground level, the interior of Zoe’s is dimly lit although there is enough light streaming in through the many windows to make you feel warm and cosy. For a quick bite during the week there are round tables and high chairs in the front room and for longer, leisurely lunches there is additional seating to the right of the counter. Further down the hallway is a giant conference room (not pictured) for lunch meetings as well.

If you’re not one to break out in goosebumps at the slight bite of something cold, you’ll enjoy biting into the sandwiches at Zoe’s. I, for one, prefer my sandwiches toasted. I like toasty bread slices, melting cheese, warm grilled chicken—-you get my drift.

Alas, I failed to reveal this to our server when we placed out order, so what I ended up with was a cold Cajun chicken sandwich.

CAJUN CHICKEN sandwich
house-made mango chutney, pea sprouts, citrus aioli & mixed greens on 10-grain

Don’t get me wrong, it was quite tasty. The mango chutney was an especially great addition to the sandwich. If only it were hot. But, why didn’t you just ask to get it toasted, you ask? Great question! Thanks for asking. I think my problem wasn’t just the bread not being toasted…everything was cold. It would have had to have been microwaved (mmm….microwaved bread….) and that didn’t seem much more appealing. At least we had warm chicken quesadillas!

CHICKEN QUESADILLAS
filled with Cajun chicken, julienne bell peppers, red onions & cheddar

This was a hit with all of us. I think mainly because it was served hot and the cheddar had melted into a gooey mass over the chicken, pepper and onions.

AVOCADO sandwich
tomatoes, shaved granny smith apples, pesto aioli & mixed greens on 10-grain

There were no complaints from my friend who ordered this although I wouldn’t be likely to order it next time as it’s very close to what I made myself for lunch yesterday (but toasted, thank you very much).

CHICKEN WRAP
Cajun chicken, roasted peppers, cheddar, pesto aioli, shaved fresh apple & mixed greens

I preferred this over the cuban chicken sandwich…somehow wraps are easier to eat cold than giant sandwiches. Or maybe that’s just me?

GRILLED PORTABELLO MUSHROOM sandwich
julienne roasted peppers, herbed chèvre, tomato pesto & mixed greens on 10-grain

My vegetarian friend seemed to enjoy this immensely….and ‘roasted’ makes me think it was warmer than my sandwich…

Zoe’s has Illy coffees, a variety of teas and fresh juices (Good ol’ OJ pictured here…in a bottle….which turned out to be great, actually).

For a Saturday, I expected there to be more of a lunch crowd, however the few patrons who trickled in for a sit down lunch had fully emptied out by 3pm. Our server also proved to be quite absent-minded leaving me to trek back and forth with requests for cutlery, water and finally, after she’d disappeared altogether, the bill.

Ravi Soups

Location:

322 Adelaide Street West, Toronto

Cost: $10 for a soup (includes a cheese biscuit & chutney/sauce)

I went here with a friend recently and didn’t get anything myself as I’d already brought a lunch (I know…what kind of food blogger am I?), but she got the chicken hot pot and claimed it was delicious!

Don’t worry, we’re planning on going again sometime so I’ll have something for you soon…

Bijan Bakery and Cafe, San Jose, CA

Location:

170 S. Market St. Suite 110,
San Jose, CA

Cost: ranges from $1.50 +

www.bijanbakery.com

After a much needed breakfast at Il Fornaio, we remembered (from having passed by it the night before), that Bijan Bakery had a magnificent array of desserts and pastries and both agreed we had only enough room to share a small treat.

I don’t think I have ever seen so many pastries in my life! We got there when there was hardly a line-up but we took so long to decide what we wanted (read: overwhelmed with choices) that by the time we were ready to order a line had grown.

There were chocolate chip, almond, raisin, and various other cookies, baklava, marzipan, cinnamon buns, twists, strudels, biscotti, cookies with fruit centres, mousse pastries in a variety of flavours, cream puffs, fruits tarts, cheesecakes, eclairs, chocolate covered strawberries, napoleans, tiramisu, black forest…and….so much more!

We decided upon an apple tart (boring, I know, given all the selection! But anything else would have gone to waste since we were short on time and had already over-eaten at breakfast!)

Warmed, the apple tart wasn’t bad, but it didn’t blow my socks off. I should have tried their specialty Princess Cake (alas, if I had been plugged to trusty ol’ Chowhound I would have known to do so!) They also serve soups, salads and sandwiches!

Bijan Bakery and Cafe certainly leaves MUCH to be desired….

Jules Bistro & Cafe

Location:

147 Spadina Avenue, Toronto

Cost: $20 for a main

[Interior: Jules]

Hi. Do you have a take-out menu?

Sure, here you go.

Thanks.

…

..

Hi there…we’ll get the grilled salmon with ratatouille, salad and fries.

Will you have it for here or to go?

We’d like to take it to go, but we may eat outside on your patio.

No sorry, we don’t allow that. You can eat in or take it to go but not take it to go and sit in.

Oh. So we can eat here and then pack it to go?

No.

Uh. [pause, look at each other....] Okaaaay, we’ll change our order from take out to eat in then.

No, it’s too late, the prices are different if you want to do that and I’ve already put the order in.

{But, we haven’t even paid yet!}

Fine. We’ll just take it to go.

..

.

…

..

.

[At the park]

Mmm…..not too bad….

Yeah. Too expensive for what it is, though…fries, salad, the smallest portion of ratatouille and that chef just fried the salmon in butter, I saw him.

Oh yeah?  Tasty fries…although…they’re kind of like McDonald’s fries hahaha!

Yeah! I know! But Mcdonald’s fries are like, two bucks!

Yeah….mm…so this is ratatouille? I’m not impressed…definitely doesn’t look like in the movie!

I know. And the salad is drenched through…way too much dressing…why do they always do that?

I don’t know…we should get it on the side, next time.

Nah…I don’t think I’ll ever go back there.

Me either.

***

Such was our experience at Jules, the fancy-schmancy place on on Spadina (north of Richmond and RIGHT BESIDE FUSARO’S!).

Two completely different eateries.

Fusaro’s Kitchen always has a lunch line-up that goes out the door and practically down the street, has consistently friendly service and delicious (albeit high fat) foods…whereas Jules rarely has more than two tables filled, has terribly rude (and potentially racist) service and mediocre dishes! 

The BEST thing on their take-out menu was the dish we ordered for $20…and that’s not saying much at all!  And they don’t have such an impressive wine selection either!

Not to forget one price for eating in and another for eating out!  Seriously, do they even want customers?

BUT, to each his own as they say.  If you feel like eating pretentious French cuisine in a highly pompous environment, by all means, Jules is your venue.  Knock yourself out!  You’ll need to before seeing your bill!

 

Recipe: Cooking Light’s Chocolate Cupcakes

Let me tell you, my husband made these for me the other night and they are fantabulous…everyone should taste how heavenly these are!! You’ll never go out and buy another chocolate cupcake again! I promise. They’re light, but not light in that ‘omg this is so healthy I can taste the flour before it was ground’ light, it’s still sweet enough and chocolately enough that you feel like you can have 10. And you just might.

So, here it is:

Ingredients

Cupcakes:
3/4 cup granulated sugar
5 tablespoons butter or stick margarine, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 large eggs
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup fat-free milk

Frosting:
1 tablespoon butter or stick margarine
1/4 cup granulated sugar
3 tablespoons fat-free milk
1 ounce unsweetened chocolate, chopped
1 3/4 cups powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preparation

Preheat oven to 350°.To prepare cupcakes, beat first 3 ingredients at medium speed of a mixer until well-blended (about 3 minutes). Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Lightly spoon flour into a dry measuring cup, and level with a knife. Combine flour, cocoa, baking soda, and salt, stirring well with a whisk. Add flour mixture to sugar mixture alternately with 1/2 cup milk, beginning and ending with flour mixture; mix after each addition.

Spoon the batter into 12 muffin cups lined with paper liners. Bake at 350° for 22 minutes or until cupcakes spring back easily when touched lightly in the center. Cool in pan 10 minutes on a wire rack, and remove from pan. Cool completely on wire rack.

To prepare frosting, melt 1 tablespoon butter in a small, heavy saucepan over low heat. Add 1/4 cup granulated sugar, 3 tablespoons milk, and chopped chocolate, and cook 3 minutes, stirring constantly. Remove from heat, and cool. Stir in the powdered sugar and 1 teaspoon vanilla. Spread frosting over cupcakes.

Voila!

Yield

1 dozen (serving size: 1 cupcake)

Here’s the other information nobody really understands or cares about:

writeNutrient();

Nutritional Information

CALORIES 261(28% from fat); FAT 8.2g (sat 4.8g,mono 2.4g,poly 0.4g); PROTEIN 3.5g; CHOLESTEROL 53mg; CALCIUM 32mg; SODIUM 180mg; FIBER 0.3g; IRON 1.1mg; CARBOHYDRATE 44.5g

Il Fornaio, San Jose, CA

Location:

302 South Market St.
San Jose, CA

Cost: less than $30 for two

www.ilfornaio.com

Redemption, baby!

Il Fornaio was easily the best breakfast we had on our trip. After barely eating the day before we were ecstatic over the prospect of breakfast!

The Hotel Montgomery’s desk clerk suggested we breakfast at Il Fornaio which was literally down the street, so we decided to give it a try.

We found it situated inside The Saint Claire, a gorgeous 1920s boutique hotel.

The enormity of the restaurant is not fully conveyed through these two measly photographs. With high ceilings, buttery walls and toast-coloured seating (okay, that may just be my stomach talking) Il Fornaio had a superb ambiance for breakfast and all things edible.

FILONE CON RIPIENO PICCANTE $8.95

Filone bread stuffed with eggs, sausage, bell peppers, onion, tomatoes and Tabasco topped with cheese (in my case, cheese on the side). With a glass of Arancia (Orange juice) $3.50

The Babelfish translation for this dish is: “TRADITION WITH FILLING PICCANTE” (anyone?)…whatever, it was delicious and it’s something I plan on creating myself one of these days!

UOVA PIACERE $5.95

Two eggs (we chose egg whites only) , any style, grilled potatoes and onions; toasted filone bread.

Yes, “EGGS APPEAL TO” appealed to me very much, thank you Babelfish.

Beautiful china like this was filled with coffee and my usual, Earl Grey tea.

Overall Il Foranio gets huge props for its lovely ambiance, friendly service, great prices and tasty dishes! In fact, we would have gotten some pastries from there too but we’d heard that Bijan Bakery & Cafe boasted an enormous array of delectable treats, so we decided to head over there instead.

Miss Cora’s Kitchen

Location:

69 Kensington Ave., Toronto

Cost: $5 or less for a light lunch/snack

www.misscoraskitchen.com

I do not like Jumbo Empanada (as you may have noticed if you read the Jumbo Hairpanada entry) however, I do LOVE LOVE LOVE Miss Cora’s Kitchen!

This love story began when lunch at Jumbo Empanada went “hair“wire (yes, that’s right, I went there) and we left disappointed and dissatisfied.

We passed by Miss Cora’s Kitchen on the way back to work and the tiniest of desserts sitting in the window beckoned me in. Actually it was the “pesto chicken pizza” scribbled on the blackboard inside that really called out to my grumbling stomach.

So we decided to pop into the ‘kitchen’. It really DOES look like a kitchen; a very small but clean, organized and great smelling one!

Fresh flowers, cookie jars, thick wooden butcher-slab counters, a giant wall clock. Yup, looks like the kind of kitchen you wish your Aunt had. Or you had, for that matter.

In the back, a brick wall lends a nice backdrop for the garnishing, icing, kneading and what have you that goes into creating these fabulous treats that Miss Cora herself serves you. Yes, Cora Devries takes your order and brings your dishes hot to your seat (one of three stools along a side table that runs against the window).

Our request for hot sauce results in THREE bottles of the red stuff, but it turns out the square of pesto chicken pizza was so delicious, it didn’t even NEED it!

And the little pear/spice muffin we had was light and spongey with a slight hint of spice and pear…it was so yummy.

Very small though, as you can see here:

There’s nothing better than being indoors on a rainy day, except maybe being indoors and being cooked for on a rainy day.

Miss Cora’s Kitchen = a lovely place. I highly recommend paying the wonderful Miss Cora a visit.

Blue Front Cafe, San Francisco, CA

Location:

1430 Haight Street, San Francisco, CA

Cost: avg $8

www.bluefrontcafe.com

I’ve declared this the worst food day during our whole San Francisco journey.

Our breakfast consisted of toasted bagels with (albeit pretty good) Trader Joe’s strawberry jam and tea made from the last remaining tea bag in our relative’s cupboard. Our Japanese Tea Garden venture was all of one bowl of shared snacks and again, tea, this time, Oolong. You can figure that even before lunch we were dying to try something incredible in the city’s famous Haight-Ashbury (or “Hashbury”) district.

A very colourful, ‘hip’ place to be. We only had a limited amount of time to spend there but wanted to eat something memorable, so we asked the lady behind the counter of the Tabacco store where we could find some good fare. Her props were for the Blue Front Cafe where, according to her, we would get great Meditteranean food. Perfect!

And there it was!

Huge-ass menus AND lineup! This place must be amazing! The beefy men behind the counter were needless to say, busy and had a real no-nonsense attitude to them. We were almost afraid to order.

As we waited for our chicken gyros we noticed the accolades decorating the wall….it seemed like this was the place to visit in Hashbury! Awesome. Unfortunately, our gyros took, what seemed like decades, and we had to run to catch the bus back so that we could then catch another bus to Japantown to meet our friend who was giving us a ride to San Jose for the premiere of his film at the festival. Gah!

So, we took the wrap to go, resisting the urge to devour it in the bus in anticipation of sitting down properly with it when we got back to the house.

Finally (and I really do mean, finally) we sat down and unwrapped the gyro. It came with this cream sauce on the side which I greedily doused onto the wrap and took a bite. Then another bite, just to give it another chance.

But no.

The sauce had no kick. And the chicken was GREY!! Or GRAY…whichever you prefer. Or maybe BLUE for Blue Front Cafe. Diiiissguuuuusting. I was heartbroken knowing that we had another long trek ahead of us and all I saw was a half-eaten mess on the plate in front of me.

If you’d like to know what we ate for dinner…let me just say, we didn’t have time to eat before the film started and I never knew a Cliff bar could taste so good. That was all we ate before we headed to the film’s reception at the San Jose Museum of Art where the line up for whatever it was they were serving snaked into the other room!

So we took in some of the jazz…

And decided to check out Goya and Picasso and then the rest of the Museum upstairs where…

….we settled our teeth into the lovely cupcakes, cake-on-sticks, eclairs and donuts. Yes!

When the pass-arounds came…er…around, I “gorged” on a lettuce leaf, a little cup of asparagus cream soup and later, some veggie mexican mish-mash served in the VIP area. You’d be right in guessing that the reason there are no photographs of these so-called meals is because I was eating with both hands!

Japanese Tea Garden, Golden Gate Park, SF

Location:

Tea Garden Drive and Martin Luther King Jr. Drive
San Francisco, CA

Hours:

Garden: Daily 8:30-6:30
Gift shop/tea house: Daily 10:30-4:30

Cost:

Entry free: $4 pp
Tea: less than $10 for two.

Golden Gate park is HUGE. You can tell when you look at those terribly off-scale tourist maps and find that a significant part of it is “Golden Gate Park”….then you realize it’s really that big and the map is totally to scale.

I knew I wanted to see the Japanese Tea Garden, imagining it would be like going to a real tea garden, in Japan. I’d like to think those aren’t so very touristy.

However, it was beautiful….

with the cherry blossoms and…

lush foliage and vibrant colours but…

…it was crowded. The pathways exploded with noisy children running around freely and the tea house was crammed with people (luckily we got a corner seat overlooking the pond) .

The kimono-clad waitress who served us wore a digital watch on her wrist and walked with the gait of someone who had to catch a bus at 5, instead of the graceful tiny steps my imagination willed. Instead, she brushed me off and hurried away when I asked to take a photograph of her. Okay, so I am a tourist. Possibly the worst kind…grasping my hefty Nikon and clicking noisily at my surroundings while we waited for our tea.

The Oolong (one of the only three on the menu along with Green and Jasmine) was plain but a welcoming thirst-quencher. The ’snacks’ were a combination of salty and sweet, some fishy tasting, others eggy and sweet.

Overall, the Tea Garden was not what I imagined it to be, but in retrospect, we were still able to catch a quiet moment in the sun where I put away my camera for a while.

Jumbo Hairpanada

Location:

245 Augusta Ave., Toronto

Cost: under $15 for two empanadas, a drink and a pastry.

What is that hairy toy you smack around to get the candy out? Piñata! That’s right!

But I digress.

Perhaps Jumbo Empanada should be renamed Jumbo Hairpanada.

We started with lunch at Jumbo Empanada and ordered the chicken and veggie empanadas and an alfajor. We wanted the chilean salad too, but Irene (owner) was busy and she said she was low on staff that day. Disappointment numero uno.

What was numero two-o? Yes, yes, numero dos? Discovering a hair baked into the alfajor. Irene was “good” enough to exchange it.

The replaced alfajor. Made out of condensed milk and biscuits/pastry (correct me if I am wrong).

The empanadas were tasty as was the salsa (although not hot enough for my taste – we asked for extra hot sauce and were told that the salsa was it).

Sorry foodies, this salsa isn’t that good. Wait till you read about the salsa at Eggs n’ Things in Oahu, Hawaii….now, THAT’S salsa!

The VEGGIE Jumbo Empanada…pretty JUMBO, wouldn’t you say?

The inside of the VEGGIE Jumbo Empanada.

The CHICKEN Jumbo Empanada.

The inside of the CHICKEN Jumbo Empanada.

Then I discovered another hair baked into my chicken empanada crust. Yum.

Disappoinment numero tres.

That was the end of that.

That’s TWO hairs.

I wasn’t aware hair was an ingredient!

On the way back to work, we passed by Miss Cora’s Kitchen and saw the desserts in the window and the pesto chicken pizza scribbled on the blackboard inside and since I was still hungry, we went in……let’s just say it was so good that I have to save the FULL review for next time!