Tag: Canada

Jessy’s Pizza

This restaurant closed in April 2022. Thanks for the memories!

Nova Scotian chain has finally arrived in Toronto

For some reason, donairs have had a hard time surviving in Toronto. Places that had good donairs, like Fuzz Box and Hopgood’s Foodliner, only lasted for a few years. Here’s hoping that Jessy’s Pizza will have a more successful run.

Jessy’s Pizza is a chain from Nova Scotia that opened 2 years ago here, marking its first outlet outside Atlantic Canada. Sure, it sells pizzas but its main draw are donairs. They are the most authentic I have tried here.

Canada’s own shawarma

Sorry Ottawa, Halifax deserves the title of shawarma king even though it doesn’t have as many shawarma restaurants. While Ottawa’s version is mostly Lebanese, Halifax’s variation is a weird Canadian invention. The donair looks like a Greek gyro pita sandwich. The twist is in the sweet donair sauce made from condensed milk. Also, a classic donair is topped with diced tomatoes and onions. Nothing more. The meat used for grilling is finely minced and packed into thin strips. This results in a mystery meat texture—great if you like Spam.

Only a few regions outside of the Middle East have their own take on rotating meat slices on a spit. Mexico has al pastor, Greece has gyros, Turkey has döner kebabs, and the Middle East has shawarmas. Canada’s very own donair is celebrated on a dedicated website where you can find out where to get it in the country. It hasn’t been updated in a while though.

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JaBistro

Blowtorched Canadian-Japanese sushi for a treat (COVID-19 update)

JaBistro is one of two famous aburi oshizushi restaurants in Toronto. The other is Vancouver transplant Miku. While Miku has the edge over variety and is slightly better executed across the board, JaBistro has better prices and the single best aburi sushi dish in Toronto: the JaBistroll. Both offer more than aburi sushi and have traditional nigirizushi as well. They also have entrees and lunch specials but Miku has more variety and offers desserts too.

Before we go on a detour about what aburi oshizushi is, I want to complain. Why do so many high-end restaurants try to look invisible? JaBistro looks like an abandoned steel workshop from the outside. If you are not looking for it, you are likely to miss it. Whether it is to keep the riff-raff out or to maintain an air of secrecy and prestige, it clearly doesn’t work in the world of Yelp and Tripadvisor. When a restaurant is outstanding, people will come.

Exterior of JaBistro
JaBistro with an industrial exterior

Canada’s own sushi: aburi oshizushi

Most people associate sushi with two forms. Nigirizushi (握り寿司) is a rice mound shaped by hand and has a slice of seafood pressed on top of it. Makizushi (巻き寿司), also known as maki roll, is encased with seaweed and rolled with a bamboo mat. The fillings are in the centre of the maki roll.

A lesser-known sushi type is oshizushi (押し寿司). It is formed with a rectangular mold and requires the least amount of skill. But if you are into geometrical shapes, this looks the prettiest because everything is angular and precise. This form of sushi has really taken off in Canada in the past decade, starting in Vancouver and spreading to Toronto.

To be precise, it is aburi oshizushi that is a Canadian specialty. Aburi (炙る) means scorched. Aburi sushi is blowtorched on top to give extra colour and flavour. This is not new. Aburi nigirizushi has been around in Japan for a while but remains a novelty there. The Canadian twist is to apply this technique to oshizushi and use non-traditional ingredients like jalapeños.

Some people say that aburi sushi is a way to mask poor quality seafood and shoddy knife work. I say aburi has a more tangible impact on flavour and a better test of cooking skills. Knife skills can make something pretty and mold texture but it won’t help a lot with taste. If aburi sushi allows chefs to use lower grade seafood and reduce prices accordingly, I am all for it.

Oh, and if you are wondering why sushi is sometimes spelled as zushi, that’s because the Japanese s sound changes to z when it appears before certain words.

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Aloette

Elevated classics with a touch of fusion (COVID-19 takeout edition)

Aloette is the more approachable sibling of Alo, the best restaurant in Canada. It takes at least a month to get a reservation at Alo, so Aloette is a reliable fallback that gives a glimpse of what to expect. It has long operating hours, walk-ins are welcome, prices are within a good lunch budget ($20 – $40 mains, after tax), and best of all, food quality and service is similar to Alo. I actually prefer Aloette because the quality/price ratio is heads and shoulders above its competitors.

Exterior of Aloette
Aloette is on the ground floor of a nondescript building. Alo is on the top floor.

Both Alo and Aloette offer takeout in light of COVID-19. Honestly, only Aloette makes sense because Alo’s fine dining tasting menu doesn’t translate well for takeout. People go to Alo for the ambience, the plating, the “complimentary” dishes, and the interaction with the chefs. Even at a lower price point of $73.45 per person for its “Alo at Home” multi-course menu, it’s still a lot of money. Aloette’s casual à la carte menu works better for takeout. They have also reduced prices for most items, so take advantage of the opportunity to try them. When I visited in the evening, the restaurant was slammed with orders. I guess that’s a good problem to have in an economic slump.

Takeout bag from Aloette
Takeout bag

Aloette’s menu looks boring. It reads like the usual gastropub fare: burgers, pastas, salads, and pies. There is the occasional twist thrown in like yuzu honey for fried chicken. Don’t let the unexciting descriptions put you off. Aloette’s strength is in execution and presentation. They succeed in elevating these common dishes and inject a bit of their personality in it.

The food

Take the fried chicken, for instance. The accompanying yuzu honey jam was a contemporary combination of sweet sauce in Korean fried chicken and lemon sauce in pseudo-Chinese lemon chicken. The zing from the yuzu zest was potent and lighted up the chicken. The hot sauce was decently flavoured, but not as good as that from Korean fried chicken specialists. The spice was gentle.

Fried chicken (right) with bibb lettuce (left) from Aloette
Fried chicken (right) with bibb lettuce (left)

The star of the show was the chicken itself. When I was bringing the package home, the aroma tempted me to sneak a bite multiple times. The pieces are de-boned for convenience, another thoughtful departure from traditional Korean fried chicken. Meat was moist and seasoned, though most of the spices came from the batter. The batter remained crunchy even a few hours later.

Fried chicken from Aloette
Fried chicken

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Gandhi Cuisine

This restaurant closed on 30 June 2020. Thanks for the memories!

Pioneers of East Indian roti and still the best

Gandhi is one of the first restaurants to serve East Indian roti in Toronto (and also the world). The East Indian roti might even have been invented here in the 1990s.

From India to the Caribbean to India to Toronto

A bit of terminology. East India refers to India, the country, as opposed to the West Indies in the Caribbean. Roti is a generic Indian term for bread but here it refers to the version in Trinidad, Guyana, and the windward islands. The life of a roti starts with a bread dough made up of maida (wheat flour). Then, ground dhal (split peas) are filled in the dough and the dough is rolled out to a thin disc. The result is a flatbread with a layer of dhal crumbs sandwiched in the middle. The semi-hard dhal doesn’t add much flavour but it provides textural contrast to the soft bread. This flatbread is known as dhalpuri roti and is a Trinidadian creation.

When people talk about West Indian roti, they usually mean a meal involving the flatbread and not the flatbread itself. Take a dhalpuri roti, put your choice of curry, meat, potatoes, and vegetables in the middle, and then fold it up into a rectangular parcel. Lightly toast it on a tawa (hotplate) and you get a West Indian roti. The fillings are usually Caribbean entrées like chicken curry and goat curry.

Gandhi takes the concept of a West Indian roti and uses traditional Indian fillings. The most popular filling here is butter chicken but you can also find other North Indian curries like jalfrezi, vindaloo, and korma. Another departure from the West Indian roti is that they use a chapati instead of a dhalpuri roti. It’s mostly the same thing except the chapati doesn’t have dhal and is much thinner.

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