Eating all fancy like: the best end of semester procrastination

I resurface briefly from the school thing to shamelessly promote my neighbourhood again. (Yes, there remain back-burner posts that I have neglected, including our November 2013 turducken adventure I promised on my Northern bread baking post; I have not forgotten!). There may or may not also be a boastful gleeful lookee!-my-lunch-was-really-the-bestest sentiment that motivated today’s post.

Shortly after Hintonburg Market opened, Wellington Street West welcomed a new bakery: Bread By Us. Over the past few weeks, I’ve had the pleasure of trying a rather dark and dense sourdough, a walnut-apricot loaf, baguettes, and both sweet and savoury croissants. I feel neutral about sourdoughs most of the time (but when I’m in the mood I’m sure I’ll go back to pick something up–likely a lighter rendition). Furthermore, the boy is an avid baker, so I wasn’t blown away by the (objectively delicious) walnut-apricot loaf. It’s really the baguettes and croissants (and the very lovely folks behind the counter) that keep me coming back.

Grand opening of much needed Hintonburg greengrocer

Source: The Hintonburg Market

I’d been walking past The Hintonburg Market’s “opening soon” sign every day for what has seemed like an eternity. Today, my step had extra spring when I walked in for a peek on their grand opening. Hooray! 

shoestring delight [Chez Lucien]

source: Chez Lucien

Back to back burger post! I’m delighted to report that this burger platter, while not the perfect burger platter, left me satisfied (and way more so than the last). I’d heard tales of Chez Lucien since moving here and was happy to finally visit this week with a lunch companion who worked close by. Lucky for me, it’s also spitting distance from campus.

On my initial visit to any restaurant, my usual tactic is to get a sense of their food by establishing a baseline with something they really should be nailing. That is, a dish that any self respecting [insert descriptor here] restaurant wouldn’t screw up. For example: rare beef pho at a Vietnamese restaurant; pad Thai at a Thai joint; chicken’s feet and BBQ pork buns at dim sum; steak at a steak house.

opt for Tennessy Willems instead [Zazaza, Hintonburg]

Source: ZaZaZa

The food was OK, just nothing to write home about especially at their price point (which rivals the tastier & better executed Tennessy Willems across the street). Don’t get me wrong – you might have an good experience here (service was great, staff were friendly, neat looking restaurant with a pretty good vibe; fun pizza names / theme). I just found it a bit gimmicky (check out the menu), and my rule for eating out (or returning to a restaurant) is only if it blows me away and/or is a tasty dirt cheap hole in the wall / hidden gem of a mom and pop shop and/or something I don’t make (or can’t make better) at home.

e18hteen

Some time ago, the boy promised to take me out on a real date. Unfortunately our last pre-summer/treeplanting weeks in London were filled with errands – moving the contents of our apartment into storage, on his part: final papers & exams, on my part: wrapping things up in the lab so as to leave things at a natural breaking point for the next research assistant.

Putting London on hold, we decided to postpone the date until Ottawa.
Enter e18hteen.

Classically trained Matthew Carmichael’s menu features local ingredients. Despite the unsurprisingly little amount of ‘adventurous’ foods, the dinner turned out extremely tasty. We created our own tasting: they “usually” only allow blind tastings if the entire table partakes, so we couldn’t manage to convince the waiter to serve a few extra blind dishes in addition to one order of the tasting menu.

ottawa feasts, midnight snacks, and lunch

Part of the long weekend was spent in Ottawa, during which, unsurprisingly, there existed a repeated theme of food. Easter dinner with the boy’s family included: a creamy broco-cran salad, a lettuce salad with uber sharp red onions, spiced butternut squash soup, turkey (served with a nutty pecan stuffing), clove-studded ham, vegetarian quiche, sweet potatoes, apple pie, cherry-apple pie, lemon meringue pie. (!!)

Onwards, post dinner adventures: brief catch-ups with friends, meeting of the fiancée, cigars on the rooftop of a 20-something story building. And then? Someone wanted shawarma. Do you know how difficult it is to find a joint that is open on the Sunday night/Monday morning of the Easter long weekend? Scouring downtown Ottawa shortly after 1am, we finally landed on the corner of Elgin & Gladstone. Marroush International is a very moderate joint, with a very nutsy balding and mustache wearing owner. Entertaining. Random. And “full service” entails a dramatic unwrapping of your sandwich, complete with the rip-plus-toss-with-a-flair of the foil covering. All in a farcically sexual (but so very unsexy) manner. I was trying to parse the expression on the face of a North Bay-er: was she creeped/shocked/entertained/laughing/etc? I didn’t order anything myself, but snuck a bite (or two or three) of the boy’s sandwich. Thumbs up from him.

After sleeping off the randomness, we met with an old friend of the boy’s for lunch. It seems that cross-city franchises have different expectations at their various locations. The boy, when in Winnipeg last summer, had positive remarks regarding drinks and cocktails at Moxie’s. I, on the other hand, encountered a version in Toronto (the one at Fairview mall) that left me wanting much, much more. If memory serves me, I had ordered the soup/sandwich combo – my soup was tepid, and my club sandwich was lacking bacon and tomatoes. Due to my preconceived notions of Moxie’s nation-wide, I had to do a slight double take this past Monday: we walked into a modern looking venue that was large and two-storied, with an open kitchen (though the fake wood-fire oven was disappointing), and attractive waitstaff. I soon discovered tjat the washrooms were just as trendy (I’m a fan of the tiled trough sink). Then, the food. For what it was, it certainly surpassed my expectations (the fries did, however, leave me parched for the remainder of the afternoon). I ordered the portobelo baguette-sandwich, and the boy and friend seemed to find their respective steak sandwiches just dandy (open-faced steak sandwich, which was the special of the day, and greek salad steak wrap).Back in Montreal, the snagged turkey leftovers (now sitting prettily in the freezer), hopefully imply that we’ll finally get around to making a savoury, curry pie.