Vegetarian on Baldwin

It's been a while since my last entry and the last two weeks have been absolutely crazy! in terms of the workload. I have two more weeks of undergrad left and sometimes, I wonder if it will ever end T_T. Anyways, I hoped your week went better then mine and here's a recap of the happiest event of the week.

I had a plant design reunion lunch with our lovely TA Jine Jine and my amazing group members. It was just so nice to see everyone after all this time to catch up and eat some good food. :)

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I had been to Vegetarian Haven a few times before and I feel like it's my go-to place when I'm in the mood for vegetarian. It was nice to go with a big group of people since I get my food pictures :D. Yes, I'm terrible.

Kenneth was brave enough to get one of their appetizers, Tofu Drumsticks. Apparently the inside tasted like vegetarian spring rolls. 

The "bone" is made of a sugar cane

I got the Singapore Seitan which was this sweet and sour veggie stirfry with rice. I really like the seitan here since it makes me forget that I'm eating vegetables because the texture is so meat-like. If you've never had seitain before, it's wheat gluten that's cooked and usually used as imitation meat. I later regretted getting this since towards the end of my meal, the sweet and sour flavours were getting too strong and unappetizing.

Thankfully, my friends seemed to be enjoying their selection. Both Nikhita's Curry Pad Thai and Esther's “Seafood” w/Purple Rice in Clay Pot looked super yummy .

There was no seafood in this, just tons of mushrooms! <3

Mizuka didn't want a heavy meal so she opted for the light lunch. Great choice since I later regretted ordering such a large plate of food. 

Comes with dumplings and tofu drumstick too!

The best thing about Vegetarian Haven is that they always have a special of the day that's not on their menu, so they'll have a ready-made sample to show people what it is. I've never been back on the same day of the week so I'm not sure what the rotation schedule for the daily special is like.

Salad, noodles, and a asparagus and seitan wrap, what's not to like?

Too pretty to only have 1 picture :).

Overall, I really like the food at Vegetarian Haven. A word of caution: if you go in a group of more then 6, they add a 17% service charge to your bill and then taxes the meal and the tip. Obviously, a lot of places do that and I can understand why since large groups are hard to deal with. However, I don't appreciate them taxing the meal and the tip as well. I know I'm cheap but I hate paying more then 15% tip on any meal and it sucks even more when they make you pay more tax then you're suppose to. :( 

Extras:


There was crazy warm weather in Toronto for a good 2 weeks and it really felt like Summer was here. Unfortunately, it's back to the humid, cold days again and I'm left waiting for the real Summer weather to come. However, because Spring is here, my mom's orchids are starting to bloom! Here are some picture to cheer you guys up until the weather is nice again :D (click to enlarge).

So many buds about to open!

Have a good weekend everyone!

Indian Food at Banjara

Another week, another birthday, it almost feels like everybody's birthday is in March somehow. This week, we ventured into the delicious world of Indian food. I'll admit that I'm a huge fan of Indian food, but sometimes I do feel a little bit intimidated by it since I don't know what all the dishes mean and the fact that some of their food can be incredibly spicy doesn't help either. So I was delighted when I found that we were going to Banjara Indian Cuisine on Bloor street for Shreya's birthday. Since she's Indian, I figured she could show me what's good and what's bad.

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I got a mango lassi to start off my meal and it was nice and sweet and thick. Lassi is an Indian yogurt drink and comes in sweet, salty and mango. I've had mango lassi before at the local indian cuisine place on campus but always found it too water for my liking. Banjara's lassi was really creamy and thick and it was so much better then the local campus place's lassi. :)

I found out later that you're suppose to drink your lassi with your food in case it gets too hot. I made the mistake of drinking too quickly and not saving any of it for my food.

Shreya got us an appetizer that had cottage cheese, onions and peppers. I think it was called the Paneer Tikka and it came on a sizzling plate. 

It sizzled when it came too!

I love Paneer!

A lot of us got the combo platters which came with rice, your respective meat/vegetarian dish and a lot of other stuff.

There's a vegetable curry with the combo platter too.

I got the Lamb Korma which I believe is like the beef version of butter chicken. The meat was really tender and I loved how much sauce I got with the dish.

There's even rice pudding with the platter!

There was also complimentary nan for everyone. Only 1/2 a piece per person, but it really complimented the food!

Shreya also got us another appetizer called Pekora and you eat them with chutney. I wasn't a big fan of these little guys since I found them a bit dry.

Overall Banjara was a great place and I would love to go back and try more dishes there. The food was good, not too spicy and the service was great.

Extras:
It also happened to be quite foggy that day and Queen's Park looked very mysterious with all the fog.

Love the light streaks of the cars

Enchanted forest anyone?

Richmond hill was covered in fog the whole day and this is what it looked like as I got off the bus.

Kinda reminds of scenes in horror movies...

 Last week was Gradball and they had mango charlotte as dessert. Very pretty and very yummy :)

Too pretty not to take another view of the food :)

Have a good week everyone!

Kris and Sophie's Birthday at Etsu

 It was Kris and Sophie's birthday and we had a small gathering at Etsu on Baldwin Street. I've never met someone with the same birthday as me and it's nice that Kris and Sophie had enough overlapping friends to celebrate their birthdays together.

Etsu was a pretty small restaurant and seats under 30 people. But the place was nicely decorated with large photos on each wall and fresh tulips on each table.

The menus had this embroidered covering and a metal plate. Very chic-looking indeed.

Even though I've never been to Japan before, the place did feel very authentic and I liked how the staff wore kimonos.

All of the food that we got was so beautifully presented, definitely a feast for the eyes. 

Kris's sushi pizza

Chelsea got this interesting dish with sashimi on top and rice at the bottom. Not sure what it was called, but very pretty looking indeed :)

Kai got the sushi set and I just love the presentation of the sushi on the plate. One thing I have noticed when I go out for "Sushi" most people get rolls or sashimi or teriyaki. We never really get sushi which is raw fish on balls of rice, sounds gross but I swear it's really good!

Even the wasabi is in a flower shape.

Kris the birthday girl got the red dragon roll and it was the prettiest roll of the night. The linear alignment of the rolls really made it look like a dragon.

Shreya got the vegetable tempura and even a simple dish like that that came in a beautiful structure. I got the spicy roll set and the spicy salmon was so good! I would definately get it again.

We got complimentary homemade coconut alcohol ice cream. I don't usually eat anything with coconut in it since I dislike the flavour. But in this case, the chunks of coconut really added texture to the ice cream and the flavour was not too overpowering. The alcohol was also subtle and added to the overall taste of the ice cream.

We got the birthday girls handbags for their birthday. A Nine West bag for Kris since she needs more feminine pieces for her wardrobe, a Tommy Hilfiger bag for Sophie so she has more choice in her wardrobe. 

Overall, Etsu was a nice, chic place to grab dinner your friends after a long day at school. Great little place, would definitely go back. :)

Extras:
They were having a buy 1 get 1 free sale at Rexall on a lot of their makeup products. Since I had picked up a Revlon Lip Butter earlier in the week, I decided to get two more. I'm just such a sucker for these deals.

At least they look pretty all lined up...

I love ice cream!

Have a good weekend everyone!

Lunch at Caplansky's and desserts at Wanda's

The weather is starting to get nice here in Toronto, I 'm so excited for Spring to come ! On a lovely Spring-like day, I decided to bring a few friends to Caplansky's on College Street to try out their smoked meats.

A beautiful day on College Street

I first heard about this place when I was watching Dragon's Den on CBC and the owner Zain asked for money on the show to start a food truck. Unfortunately he didn't get the money but everybody on the show loved his food. So since it was so close to school, I decided to walk over and try it out.

The store is pretty easy to find and it's on a corner on College between Spadina and Bathurst.

The decor inside is like a deli meets diner meets 1920's. There were lots of big glass jars holding sausages and what not and you can even bring some (cooked) meat home. The waitress even had hot red lips!

Everyone decided to get the Caplansky Platter so that we can try out all the meats on their menu. It came with Montreal smoked meat, chopped liver, turkey, sausage and (I think) smoked tongue. 

You also get little slices of bread to make your own sandwiches. There were lots of variety of mustard to choose from which was quite nice. The honey mustard was my favourite and maybe next time I go, I'll buy a jar home to use on my bbq stuff. 

Believe it or not, the tongue was my favourite out of all of this. I know the concept of eating tongue sounds strange, but it was so tender and flavourful! Definitely worth a try. 

I really enjoyed Caplansky's and its food is unique in Toronto. I mean, where do you find Montreal smoked meats outside of Montreal? Also, the owner was such a nice guy!  I left my sanitizer on the table and he chased us down to give it back to me ( even though it's not worth anything).  

 Wanda's Pie in the Sky

I guess we were still hungry after so we decided to search for a ice cream/cupcake/ froyo place. Nothing really came up within walking distance so we settled on Wanda's Pie in the Sky in Kensington Market. 

This place was also super retro looking too. I guess that's the "in" thing now a days?

Notice the retro coffee signs. And no, the coffee wasn't 5 cents/cup

Other then pies, they had quite a large selection of cupcakes and sweets.

 Some of them are even Vegan!

I actually ended up getting hot chocolate which was quite good. I'm not sure what they added but it was like a hot milk drink with chocolate flavouring. Sophie ended up getting the butter scotch pudding, which was good if you're into caramel.

Overall, I'm not sure if I would go back to Wanda's since a lot of their items seems a bit pricey and I'm not a huge sweets person. But if you're into sweets and pies, it's definitely worth a visit.

Extras:

I ordered an Olympus 45 mm lens online and it finally came today! This lens is supposed to be for portraits and I'm pretty excited to test it out over the next few weeks.  

Such a small package! 

Here's a test shot of my mom's pretty orchids using the new lens. 

The one thing I noticed was that I have to be standing quite a bit further back to get a shot then compared to my 20 mm Panasonic lens. Also, the lack of image stabilization within the lens was pretty noticeable since I have shaky hands. But hopefully, I'll get the hang of things soon and take some more shots. 

Have a good weekend everyone!