Ciao Roma Pizza

Originally seen from an episode on You Gotta Eat Here, and it has been on my places to visit since.  But because of location, and my lack of free time, the visit has been postponed till recently.  The main reason why I wanted to try Ciao Roma is their pizza purchasing concept.  I don’t think there’s anything like that in the GTA as of yet.  You pay for your pizza by weight.  I think its pretty cool.  You specify how big of a slice you want (from their available pizza options, they cut you your slice weigh it, warm it up for you and then tell you how much you owe them.  You get to have more than one flavour of pizza!  Awesome for greedy food me.

The afternoon we went (for a late afternoon lunch around 2pm), they had a continuous stream of people coming in and either sitting down and eating or grabbing some slices to go.  The slices that we picked up were bacon & potato, tuna artichoke & tomato, rapini & sausage, sausage bacon & mushroom, mixed mushroom & truffle oil, tomato & mozzarella.  All of the combinations are not readily available from your normal neighborhood pizza places, so it’s quite unique in that sense.  The combinations were all delicious.  My favorite was the tomato and mozzarella.  The most surprising flavour combination was the bacon potato.  Every that ordered it loved it.  But it’s the combination of carb on carb that kinda makes me not want to order it again.  If you aren’t worried about your carb consumption, definitely order it.  You will love it.  Another thing that makes Ciao Roma different is the crust.  The crust isn’t like your normal bready crust.  This is more focaccia like.  So its more light and airy. 

Definitely worth a visit if you are anywhere near the area.  I know I will be going again.

Pizzas

Ciao Roma Pizza

28 Roytec Rd. #12a,

Vaughan, ON

L4L 2V5

Phone:  905-264-2121

Hours:  Monday 12pm - 7pm

             Tuesday - Saturday 11am - 8pm

             Sunday 12pm - 7pm

http://www.crpizza.ca

Maple Bakery

Cronuts were the big food fad of last year, up until the CNE rolled around and a bunch of people got sick from eating the cronut burger.  I think the hype has died down significantly, not sure if its because it was just a fad that bakeries didn't really catch on to, not allowing the general public to be able to really try them, or if the cronut burger scare scared people off from it.  From what I remember, there were only about 2 or 3 bakeries offering the cronut in downtown Toronto.  I actually forgot about the cronut until I did a random Italian coffee shop search in Vaughan, and cronuts popped up.

What is a cronut?  A cronut is a cross between a croissant and a donut.  Interesting?  Yes.  Delicious? Also yes.  Maple bakery is an Italian bakery which offers fresh baked breads, Italian desserts and pastries, a hot food table (meats on a bun, or dinner plates), and of course cronuts.  The only flavours that they have are sugar, cinnamon sugar, and chocolate glazed.

Cronuts

My favourite ended up being the cinnamon sugar.  Out of the three, the chocolate glazed was the least liked for me because I found that chocolate was too baking chocolate like.  The inside of the cronut was very similar to a croissant, it had many layers in there.  The only part that I think resembles the donut part is the deep frying of the dough part.

Inside of Cronut

Location of Maple Bakery is kind of far, but would definitely come back for cronuts and maybe to try some more additional Italian treats.  Almost forgot to mention, their coffee was pretty good too.  We tried a latte and an espresso macchiato.  Coffee was very smooth.

Maple Bakery
10040 Keele St.,
Maple, ON
L6A 1G3

905-832-2987

Hours:  Monday - Friday 7am - 8pm
             Saturday - Sunday 7am - 7pm

http://www.maplebakery.ca

Cucina Locale

One of my favourite places for pizza is way up in Richmond Hill.  Come to think of it, i've never blogged about Nonna's Oven.  Next time I go, i'll take some pictures.  Cucina Locale opened recently in the Markham area, a little bit closer to home.  If it's anywhere as good as Nonna's, then I would come here instead.

We ordered a meat pizza, 2 veal sandwiches and an arugula salad to share.  I can't remember the name of the pizza, but looking at pictures, there was sausage, ham, and peppers on the pizza.  The crust was done well, but didn't have that crisp edge while maintaining chewiness.  Veal sandwiches were just ok.  The veal was a little drier than I prefer, and the tomato sauce was a bit bland.  The arugula salad was the best in the bunch.  Very simple with arugula, cherry tomatoes, roasted pepper and a balsamic vinaigrette.

Meat Pizza

Veal with Rapini Sandwich

Arugula Salad

Even though this is much closer, I think I will be continuing to feed my pizza cravings at Nonna's.

Cucina Locale
4471 Hwy 7 E.,
Markham, ON
L3R 1M1

905-479-2054

Hours:  Monday - Saturday 11am - 10pm

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Cucina-Locale/533600090057705

Queen's Pasta Cafe

I have to start this post off by mentioning that this is not my first time eating at Queen's Pasta Cafe.  Normally my posts are of restaurants that I visit for the first time.  But since this is the first time that I have visited Queen's Pasta after starting this blog, I figured this counts as a "first time".  I have eaten at this restaurant many times before and loved it every single time.  This is the restaurant which introduced to me what al dente pasta tastes like.  Their pastas are fresh homemade pastas that are made on site.  Across the street they have a store where you can buy their pastas to cook at home.  But I've never actually seen the store open for business.  Even when the store hours say they're open, it's always closed.

Even with all the love I have for this restaurant, I'm sad that my post about it will be a bad one.  This last visit, wasn't horrible, but wasn't good either.  My pasta was overcooked, my hubby and cousin's lobster was overcooked, the sauce in that pasta tasted funny (like a Chinese herbal soup), and my other cousin's veal was dry.  Dessert was passable too. We ordered a slice of lemon tart. The lemon filling had just enough tartness, but unfortunately it had a metallic after taste as well. What is it that gives it a metallic taste? I must do some googling to find out.

I assume this was just a bad day for them.  Out of my numerous visits here, this has been the only bad time.  This one visit will not deter me from visiting again in the future. 

Pasta Primevara in Lemon Garlic Sauce

Porchini Fettucine & Seafood in Brandy Sauce

Veal Parmigana

Lemon Tart

Queen's Pasta Cafe
2263 Bloor St West, Toronto
416-766-0993

Paese Ristorante

Paese Ristorante has two locations.  We visited the King St. location before the TFC vs LA Galaxy match.  The restaurant was filled with red TFC jerseys.  We got to the restaurant a bit later than we would have liked so our food choices were limited to the 'quick cook' options.  There was no way that I was going to miss my time with David Beckham!  I apologize in advance for the low quality pictures.  The restaurant was quite dark.

We started snacking on some rosemary focaccia with hummus that our server brought over.  The focaccia was good, nice and warm with a crusty outside.  The hummus was horrible.  It was not smooth, no flavour, no salt, no nothing!  Even the hubby thought so!  And he normally never says anything is bad.  He's like a human garbage can.


Focaccia with Hummus

Next up came the Grilled Octopus served with potato salad, grilled escarole, mint, lemon, and chili oil.  The potato salad was not really a potato salad, it was more like 4 slices of potato.  The octopus was grilled nicely with good char flavor and super tender.  My fave dish of the night.

Grilled Octopus

All of a sudden, 3 different coloured jars appeared on our table.  The server mumbled something along the lines of "It's for the pizza.".  Because I was curious, I decided to give it a little taste test.  They turned out to be chili sauces for the pizza.  Thank goodness they were not super spicy!  Our Funghi Pizza arrived.  I was a little disappointed with the pizza.  I was expecting the pizza come with a variety of mushrooms, but it appears that they only use roasted white button mushrooms.  The crust was also a little more bready/doughy than I would have liked. 

Chili Oils

Funghi Pizza

Our final dishes arrived just as I was starting to worry about time.  A side of rapini (forgot to take a picture) and an order of clams cooked in a beer and lots of bacon chunks.  Sorry, I was hoping to find the exact dish on their online menu, but it's not there.  Best rapini I have ever tasted!  Not a single sign of bitterness at all.  And just simply cooked in olive oil it seems.  No lemon, no vinegar, no extras of any sort.  The clams were just that, clams cooked in beer.  I think I enjoyed eating the bacon chunks in the broth more so than the actual clams.  The size of the clams were also very tiny, meaning mini sized clam meat.  Not worth my time and effort.

Clams

Just based on how delicious the grilled octopus was, I think its worth another trip back to give the rest of the menu a taste.  I don't think it's fair to judge a restaurant based on their appetizers.

333 King Street West,

416.599.6585

Shiso Tree Cafe

A bunch of my friends and I decided to meet at Shiso Tree Cafe (J-Town) on Friday night because we haven't seen each other in such a long time.  The type of food Shiso Tree Cafe serves is Japanese style Italian pasta (Wafu).  I had no idea such a thing existed.  The definition of Wafu: pasta cooked in a japanese style or to japanese tastes (as opposed to a western style).  I was in for an awesome night!

When we walked in, we immediately saw a board that listed the specials.  We looked at the specials and took a peek at the regular menu and most of us decided to order off tthe specials menu.  All the pasta dishes come standard with a salad with wafu dressing and slice of garlic toast.  You also had the option of making it a full meal by adding $7 for a soup and a slice of cake for dessert.  The cakes I hear are not actually made by the cafe but brought over from Bakery Nakamura (J-Town).

For our appetizers we ordered the Nori Fries and Fries with Tartar Sauce.  Both delicious freshly cut fries, not from frozen.  The Nori Fries were supposed to be dressed with wafu dressing topped with shreds of nori.  However none of us could taste the wafu dressing.  The Fries with Tartar Sauce were the same fries as above topped with a large amount of home made tartar sauce.  Most of us loved the sauce, minus the one that normally dislikes mayo.

While we were chomping on our fries, the soups arrived for the ones that ordered the combo set.  There was only one soup option which was the soup of the day.  The waiter never mentioned what it was when he set it down so we figured we could take guesses after we tried it.  None of us had a clue.  It was green, undersalted, and super creamy.