I just learned, right before I started to type this post, that White Squirrel Coffee has 2 locations, one at Queen West and one in Rosedale. I have to specify that I went to the location on Queen West, just incase staff/service would be specific to location. White Squirrel has been on my list to check out for years and years, just because the name is kinda funny. I finally fulfilled my wish on Valentines day. Not that it was a Valentines day treat (most, if not all my close friends all know how anti-valentines day I am), but because White Squirrel on Queen West was actually on my way to the Sacred Love Market, where my friend had a booth there. Check out Pulp Function for all sorts of interesting paper goods!
As I was heading to my friend's show, I wanted to grab my coffee to go, and also grab some hot drinks for my friends as the venue location was freezing cold. Hence no pictures. Won't see much in a takeout cup. I placed my order for a flat white, hot chocolate, espresso macchiato, and a hot water. As I was placing my order with the barista (male), he responded in a snarky tone, "You know they won't stay hot right? But I'll make it anyways." I was like "WTF?" in my head. Did you just give me attitude? No shit that it won't stay steaming hot, the weekend was the coldest weekend this entire winter. You don't think I know that? And no i'm not walking around downtown carrying this take out order. I'm jumping back into my car. I smiled and just said "OK".
When I got to pay, the barista/cashier (female), was SUPER nice. She added up all the drinks in her head, pretty quickly I was impressed. She told me also that for the hot water, it would be 50 cents for the cup. Makes sense. But I ended up with only 3 of my 4 drinks. The barista (male) that was making my drink forgot the espresso macchiato. And he was standing around playing on his phone. Professional eh? While reading this, you would probably picture someone that's a punk/hipster in his 20's. But NO! He looked like 30's, early 40s. You would think he would know better than to play on his phone in front of customers right?
Anyways, coffee wise, was quite weak in my opinion. But I guess it's because I prefer stronger coffee. I did like that they used Harmony milk. Curious to know if the Rosedale location is the same or better.
White Squirrel Coffee
907 Queen St. W.,
Toronto, ON
M6J 1G5
Phone: (647) 428-4478
Hours: Monday - Friday 7:30a - 7:00p
Saturday - Sunday 8:00a - 7:00p
http://www.whitesquirrelcoffee.com
Saturday, February 27, 2016
Saturday, January 16, 2016
Jatujak Thai Street Style Food
A while ago, I found an article titled
“30 Of the Best Restaurants in Scarborough”.
Although I grew up in North York, Scarborough was foreign territory to
me. Scarborough never has anything that
interested me, so I never ventured into that area. I also find Scarborough a bit sketchy to be
honest, theres some pretty ghetto looking areas…… Anyways, I sent this link to a friend and a
few days ago I got a message from my friend asking if I was free for dinner and
that we should try something from this best of list in Scar bough. There were some restaurants on the list that
we’ve tried already, so we were able to narrow down our choice pretty quick to
Jatujak (also because we didn’t want to drive too far on a weeknight).
I was pretty excited, the reviews on Yelp
for Jatujak were pretty good. And I love
Thai food. My favourite is Pai in
the Entertainment/Theatre district. But that’s
FAR! So I was really hoping that Jatujak
would just as good so I wouldn’t have to go so far to feed my Thai food
cravings. For the four of us, I think we
ordered a lot of food. Guess it’s
because one of the guys essentially eats the amount for two people. Drinks, we got Thai iced tea, and a Nom Yen
(Red Milk Tea). The Thai iced tea I
found was too sweet and too weak.
Previous iced teas I’ve tried usually has a really strong black tea
base. And for some reason, it smelled
like grass jelly. The red nom yen,
supposedly a Thai specialty drink, smelled sweet and syrupy, reminded me of
cough syrup. It looked like Pepto Bismol
in ice. I wasn’t so keen on trying
it. The friend that ordered it said it
was just meh…..
 |
| Thai Iced Tea |
For appetizers, we got chicken and beef satay (an order only
comes with two skewers), lemon grass chicken wings. I’ve never been a fan of satay skewers. I’ve always envisioned the skewers to be barbequed
at a high enough heat to cook the meat, not overcook it, and also carmelize the
outside of the meat. I’ve never had
that, EVER…… These skewers had some
colour on it, but very little, it could have been nuked in the microwave for
all I know. Served alongside the skewers
was a salad. It seemed to have pieces of
iceberg lettuce, red onion, apple and green mango. The salad was just ok, nothing special.
 |
| Beef & Chicken Satay Skewers |
Lemongrass chicken wings, looked like soy
sauce chicken wings, lacked lemongrass flavour.
 |
| Lemon Grass Chicken Wings |
For
mains we ordered holy basil with chicken & egg, khao soi with beef, gaeng
kiew whan with chicken, and pad see eew with beef. The holy basil with chicken is my favorite
dish when I eat Thai food. I love how
fragrant the basil is. The chicken is
cooked with the basil and served with steamed rice and a fried egg. The chili sauce that was served on the side,
was spicy and very salty. I thought
there would be some sweetness in the sauce but there wasn’t.
 |
| Holy Basil Chicken |
Khao soi is a must order for us whenever we see it on the menu. When the curry sauce/soup/broth is done well,
I eat it with any sort of white rice that’s left on the table. This broth was just ok. There was plenty of noodle, egg based I
believe, and plenty of fried noodle. But
by the time I got to serving myself a portion of this dish, there was still
plenty of noodle, but just one last piece of beef. Complaints around the table with this dish
was that the beef was tough….and tough it was.
 |
| Khao Soi |
Gaeng kiew whan is green curry.
The green curry had good flavour, just the right amount of spice, but
was to thin consistency wise. One thing
I noticed was that the chicken in this dish, and the skewers had a bit of a
rubbery texture. The texture was similar
to how Chinese restaurants do sliced beef, they typically ‘treat’ the beef with
something, to soften it. I wonder if
they did that with the chicken here.
 |
| Gaeng Kiew Whan |
The
pad see eew with beef was my least favorite of the bunch. The dish is essentially sliced beef (there
was a lot of beef), stir fried with vermicelli.
From what I saw and tasted, it wasn’t rice vermicelli, it was mung bean
vermicelli. And when mung bean
vermicelli isn’t in a sauce of some sort, it clumps together. So it wasn’t exactly appetizing looking. Flavour wise, no basil flavour even though
it’s supposed to be cooked in a basil sauce.
It again was heavy on the soy sauce flavour.
 |
| Pad See Eew |
I have to say first of all, I have never
been to Thailand, so I cannot claim that I know Thai food. But in my own personal opinion I think
overall, the food here is lacking something.
In Chinese it would be ‘wok hay’, extra fire? For Thai food uptown, I would consider this
to be better than any other Thai restaurant in Markham/Richmond Hill. But I still prefer Pai over Jatujak.
Jatujak Thai Street Style Food
1744 Victoria Park Ave.,
Toronto, ON
M1R 1R4
Phone: (647) 352-1744
Hours: Monday - Sunday 11:00a - 10:00p
La Boheme Cafe
We had a friend come back from Hong Kong,
and brought her coffee loving husband along to check out Toronto. So I was going to take them to De MelloPalheta, my favorite coffee house uptown, but my friend overheard that
I haven’t tried La Boheme Cafe and its on my to try list, she said we should check
it out.
The inside of La Boheme is quite large,
with plenty of tables for people to sit.
At the counter, behind the glass case, there were plenty of desserts and
sandwiches to choose from. I ordered a croissant
and latte (they don’t do flat whites), the hubby ordered a spinach and cheese
pastry/croissant and espresso macchiato.
The friends got a regular coffee and café au lait.
I’m not even sure I feel like going into
detail about the coffee or food. It was
disappointing overall. The latte lacked
much coffee flavour, my friend said that her café au lait was disgusting. The regular coffee took the longest to
arrive. The friend’s husband who loves
coffee said that his coffee was ok, but then my friend said he also liked Tim
Hortons coffee. So loves to drink
coffee, any type of coffee kind of guy I guess.
My croissant was large, but bready, not so buttery. Hubby’s spinach and cheese croissant, they
gave him a ham and cheese instead……when they changed it for him, I took a bite
and it was like bread with spinach and cheese inside, nothing remotely like a
croissant. Friend also ordered a blueberry tart and a macaron of some
sort. They didn’t finish either dessert. I’m taking it as it wasn’t very good. When I
was paying for our food, I noticed a sign saying that the bread was from
another bakery…..made me wonder if all of the breads and pastries are brought
in from elsewhere….. They do open pretty late for a bakery, so it only makes me assume all baked goods are brought in from elsewhere.
 |
| Latte & Crossisant |
So if you’re in the area, skip La Boheme,
and go a few doors north to De Mello Palheta where they have great coffee and
cook their own baked goods!
La Boheme Cafe
2481 Yonge St.,
Toronto, ON
M4P 2H6
Phone: (416) 489-2233
Hours: Monday - Friday 8:00am - 7:00pm
Saturday CLOSED
Sunday 9:00am - 7:00pm
http://labohemecafe.ca (Not sure if the website is broken, but when I last checked it doesn't load)
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