The Host is a venerable Toronto restaurant that also boasts the best Indian AYCE in the city. The draw of AYCE is quantity over quality but this is a rare case where you can get both quantity and quality. This buffet is only offered during Friday lunch hours, so plan your visit accordingly.
Two reasons why this is the best buffet. Every item is good enough to order on its own. That is the hallmark of a great buffet. Even secondary items like naans and dessert are done well. I can’t think of any other AYCE restaurants where everything is a hit. The second reason is that it costs $22.59, which is shockingly affordable. If you need more reasons, it’s consistent in quality and conveniently located downtown.
To be clear, there are slightly better Indian buffets in the Greater Toronto Area which includes Mississauga and Brampton. However, The Host reigns supreme in Toronto proper.
Buffet room at The Host
The buffet is hosted in a naturally-lit room at the back of the restaurant. There is plenty of seating space and it’s easy to get a table even though the buffet is popular. It attracts staff from the nearby University of Toronto as well as Yorkville residents.
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.
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
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)
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.
Best chicken ramen in Toronto, beating most pork ramen
COVID-19 update: 20% off all orders!
Ikkousha (一幸舎) may be a global chain but its ramen are among the best in Toronto. The original store near Hakata train station in Fukuoka, Japan, is famous for its tonkotsu ramen and its rendition in Toronto is just as good. It’s a close second after Santouka (山頭火), another Japanese chain.
While the first Canadian outlet sticks closely to the formula from the original Japanese location, Ikkousha recently opened a restaurant two doors away that focuses solely on chicken. Even the side dishes like gyoza (pan-fried dumplings) are based on chicken. This is the first Ikkousha restaurant in the world that specializes in chicken ramen. And it is out-of-this-world good.
Ikkousha Ramen Chicken
Table seating
Ok, technically, this isn’t the first Ikkousha restaurant that serves chicken exclusively. Some branches in Indonesia only have chicken ramen to appeal to Muslim diners. However, the menu here is completely different and this Toronto restaurant is the first to be branded as “Ikkousha Chicken”. If you are wondering, there is no halal or kosher certification.
Ramenology primer
There are many ways to classify ramen. Broth seasoning, broth base, and noodle type are the most common. For this review, you just have to know the difference between broth bases. Ikkousha has long been associated with tonkotsu (豚骨), a whitish concoction from boiling pork bones and cartilage for hours. Their second restaurant in Toronto focuses on chicken broth bases. The two types are tori paitan (鶏白湯; literally chicken white soup) and tori chintan (鶏清湯; literally chicken clear soup). Like tonkotsu, tori paitan is made by boiling chicken bones and cartilaginous parts like chicken feet until all the fat and connective tissue melds into the broth. The result is a creamy, umami-rich, high cholesterol chicken soup.
Copacabana is one of the few places in Toronto to experience a Brazilian churrascaria, rodízio style. A churrascaria is a grilled meat restaurant while rodízio means all-you-can-eat. In Brazil, such restaurants typically have waiters going around tables with different cuts of meats on a skewer. The meat is carved tableside. Outside of Brazil, this sort of restaurant is simply known as rodizio, or a Brazilian steakhouse.
Copacabana is the longest-running rodízio in the Toronto region. However, this branch is not the oldest. It’s the most convenient though, right in downtown Toronto.
Dining area, lower floor
How to eat at a rodízio
The typical rodízio has a buffet where you pick up vegetables, appetizers, and desserts. But that’s not what diners are there for. Waiters roam around the restaurant, brandishing skewers of barbecued meats. Diners use a mechanism on the table to get the waiters’ attention. At Copacabana, this mechanism is a disc. Flip to the blue side “Sim” (Yes) to indicate you want more meat. Flip to the red side “Não” (No) to stop the flow of meat.
Top right: disc used to indicate whether the diner wants more meat. Appetizers clockwise from left: cheese bread, roasted brussels sprouts, farofa (toasted cassava flour), feijoada (bean stew), roasted zucchini.
Copacabana also provides each diner with a small tong to grab slivers of meat as they are carved in front of them.
Special orders can be made on request, especially for more expensive items or items that take longer to prepare. The hostess at Copacabana frequently moves around the restaurant and asks diners which items they would like to have. This is a good idea as it reduces food wastage.
Guangxi (广西) is a relatively poor province in China and is known more for its scenery than its food. The cuisine is really peasant food. There are a handful of specialties in the big cities but there are no regional dishes. Perhaps that’s why there are so few Guangxi restaurants, even within China.
Toronto is blessed to have a Guangxi restaurant that offers the representative noodle dishes of the province. Taste of Guang Xi started at First Markham Place and opened a branch in downtown Chinatown a few months ago. I stopped by the downtown branch for this review.
Taste of Guang Xi (downtown)
The most popular dish here is luo si fen (螺蛳粉; river snail rice noodle). This noodle soup dish hails from the city of Liuzhou (柳州). It’s rare to find a fresh version outside of Guangxi and most Chinese consume the pre-packaged version. There is no visible snail meat but rest assured that there are snails. Entire snails are simmered in the broth until the meat disintegrates and the shell remains are left in the pot. You can’t really taste the snails anyway with all the spices.
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.
