My favorite breakfast in Toronto!

We went to Fire of the East Side of breakfast and it was AMAZING!!!  I had one of the best breakfasts I have ever had.

Eggs benedict on corn bread with chipolte hollandaise sauce.  The eggs were prefect and runny, ham just salty enough, the sauce had just slight heat, and corn bread had a nice crack, the salad had a sweet vinegarette and the fries were crispy.  And of course, I got more chipolte hollandaise sauce to dip the fries in....hey - I was on vacation!  This plate truly has everything I like in a dish....heat, sweet, crack, crunch, soft, salt. PERFECT!!

Saturday - Lunch at St. Lawerance Market

We had crepes at the market for lunch. I had an apple and caramel crepe....and then I asked for him to add some nutella to that.....why not?!?! It was vacation!!!

Spreading the batter

Flipping it to cook both sides.

Yum!

Folding

You have got to be kidding!!!  This was amazing!!!!

Saturday - St. Lawerance Market - Downtown Toronto.

I am just going to post all these pics I took at this amazing indoor farmer's market.  It was amazing!  So many different vendors. All fresh and exciting.

Serve yourself mussels

Kabobs galore!

Mustard stand

Say cheese!!

Antipasta bar

Beautiful fresh vegis

Rices

Beans

The grossest thing we saw there!!

Friday - Dinner

On the way back to Toronto, we stopped for dinner. Mai Vi, "modern vietnamese cuisine".  It was in St. Catherine.  We just stumbled upon this area, and this restaurant.  I had pho for the first time.  I loved it.  After a day of drinking sweet wines, nice simple pho was perfect.  And I like to squeeze lime juice in it.  S liked to eat it with the basil, but I didn't.  We had it with brisket and beef balls.

Friday - lunch

On Friday, we got in our rental car and drove out to the wine country.  It was great.  They are known for their ice wines out there.  We came home with 17 bottles of wine.  We bought a cheap piece of luggage in Chinatown, got bubble wrap and packed all the bottles.  We declared it all at customs, then put the bag through with our checked luggage.  Can't wait to drink those bottles over the next several years.  It will always bring back great memories.

Here is my dream house....thought I would just drop that in here. Even a Super Mom can dream!

While we drove around the wineries, we stopped and had lunch at The Ravine Winery.

These were the mussels I had.  It was in a puttanesca sauce. To the top right of the picture you can see the bread, so between the fries and the bread, none of the sauce went to waste.

Here is a close up of the sauce....can't you just lick the screen????

Dessert....need I say more?

Dessert....need I say no more!

Very special Thursday dinner at Canoe

I picked Canoe as our first place for a "nice" dinner because I had read that the view was amazing....and it was.  We saw all of downtown Toronto lit up at night.  I made my choices for most restaurants we ate at this weekend using both Yelp and Open Table.  Using a combo of those two websites has never disappointed me.

At Canoe, we ordered from the tasting menu. We also did the wine pairings with it.

They served fresh, crusty bread with a little ramekin of a puree of carrot, garlic and some bean, with olive oil on that.  It was delicious....I will need to try to make that.

We started with "Crazy Horse" sake....it tasted good, but smelled like dirty socks. That came with the Amuse Bouche.

This was Qualicum Beach Scallop Ceviche, Apple Cider Seaweed, and Fresh and Preserved Apple.  This was amazing! The smooth scallop with crunch of the seaweed....and the acid from the apple cider foams.  Crazy good....texture and taste.

I don't have a picture of the next dish....which is SUCH a shame because it was both of our favorites.  It was Jerusalem Artichoke Soup with crispy artichoke, sunflower seed oil and maple braised pork belly.  It was the creamiest soup, so creamy there was almost no texture (if that even makes sense!).  I didn't get any the crunch of the artichokes but the 1 inch piece of pork belly was great with the smooth soup.....just crazy goodness all in one bowl.  It was paired with an Ice Apple Cider....not a good pairing and we told the manager who kept coming over to talk with us.  It was WAY too strong of a flavor with such a delicate, smooth soup.

Our intermezzo was concord grape ice.....ok.....nothing great, but really wasn't meant to be great.

We got to try two of the main dishes.

This is a Deep Water Char with molasses glazed salsify, cookstown beets, cranberry shallot compote
and borscht jus. When eaten with the cranberry, it brought out the flavor of the fish.  I would have liked
a bit of a crispy skin.  It was served with a Keint-He Vineyards Pinot Noir. Tasted like liquid dirt to me. Yuck!

Now this was a first for me.  I ate venison.  It was served with spaghetti squash, chestnut
tourtiere, and huckleberries (see them sprinkled all around the dish?).  This was so good.  As you can
see, it was served quite rare.  I thought it tasted like a smoother steak. I would eat venison again.

Though it wasn't on the menu, they gave us each a cheese plate.  It included ash covered goat cheese.  I love goat cheese.  The ash, to me, had no additional flavor. There was also a homemade cranberry biscuit.  All nice.

This dessert and the soup were our favorite dishes.  This was caramel poached pears, with birch caramel, an almond cookie, and pecan and wildflower ice cream.  You can see under the ice cream candied pecans poking out.  This wasn't in the description, but a nice addition. I was apprehensive of the ice cream, but it tasted like vanilla to me, not flowers.  And the pears tasted like caramel with the texture of cooked pears.  It was interesting. On the way out to Toronto, I was reading the Food Network magazine and there was an article about chefs now incorporating different barks into their dishes.  There it was right in front of me. Didn't taste any woodiness (is that even a word??).  Just yummy caramel.

They gave us a special anniversary plate.  They were wonderful there. I recommend Canoe to anyone.  It was a costly dinner, but worth every penny!!

Thursday Lunch - Curry Pockets - Yum

These were curry pockets we also ordered.  It had a flaky crust and served with a sauce...tasted like fish sauce with some sugar, peppers, carrots and cucumber in it.

This was the inside of the curry pocket.  Potato with curry....yum yum!!!

Our Trip to Toronto - Thursday Lunch

We went to Toronto for our 16th anniversary.  We landed and rented a car. On our way to the hotel, we found this little place for thai food, Royal Elephant. We ordered Pad Woon Sen.  I had never had that before and figured it was a great time to try something new. This dish was delicious.  It had glass noodles, egg, carrot, scallions, cauliflower, bok choy, tofu and onion.  It was served with a spring roll and mango salad.  Everything on this plate was delicious.  Norah Jones was playing and it was a great little place.