Big Crow Restaurant, Toronto

Finding Big Crow for the first time may be a challenge but once you see it, it truly cannot be unseen… or forgotten. Head just west of Dupont and Davenport, locate Rose & Sons restaurant and follow your nose down the alleyway to its backyard sister. A big A-frame shaded patio  will welcome you, flanked …

The Tempered Room, Toronto

What is your perfect dessert?   I know, such a loaded question for anyone with a sweet tooth since this choice is dependent on the circumstances around this item’s consumption… is it a hot summer day? a palate cleanser? a meal replacement? a post breakup remedy?… Regardless, for me, it involves butter, vanilla, cream and …

Nana Restaurant Toronto

Located at 785 Queen Street W. (in the Trinity Bellwoods neighborhood), Nana sparked a lot of excitement when its doors opened almost a year ago. Being the younger sister restaurant of one of my favourite places in the city, Khao San Road, my initial dining experience here felt a lot like meeting my significant other’s …

Khao San Road – Toronto

If I needed to pick my favourite restaurant in Toronto for 2014, Khao San Road (Adelaide and Peter) would definitely be the one! The food is amazing, the vibe is so much fun, the restaurant as a whole is unpretentious (a rarity in our foodie town) and did I mention that the food rocks?! I …

Taking food recycling to a whole new level

Figured this was a pretty neat piece of news to share with our readers.  Adam Smith is a trained UK chef who has come up with an interesting restaurant known as “The Real Junk Food Project”. He cooks up nutritious meals using volunteers and all food that is deemed “un-sellable” by supermarkets and restaurants. This …

Brunch at the Whippoorwill, Toronto

Happy 2014 to all our readers and welcome back. A short regroup and here we are, writing about what’s important: food and especially where to eat it in Toronto. Our last meal out on the town was just yesterday morning and it honestly was so disappointing that we rushed over to our computers to do …

A few upcoming changes

Just want to give all our readers a little heads up that our site will be undergoing some annual maintenance and a slight make-over. If things are a little strange for a little bit please bear with us and we promise to try to make this process as painless as possible. Keep reading and remember …

Soupstock Toronto

In an effort to protest the limestone Mega-Quarry proposed for the agricultural land of Melancthon Township (100km northwest of Toronto), the Canadian Chef’s congress and the David Suzuki Foundation are organising Soupstock. This major effort will go down on October 21st, 2012 in Woodbine Park (Coxwell and Lakeshore) from 11am until 4pm. If this is …

A journey around Toronto’s pastry world (2)

So here we go again, more pastry talk from our epic journey around Toronto. Last post I talked about Frangipane Patisserie, Nadege, Patachou and La Bamboche. This post will bring us to the east side of Yonge and all the delicious treats that can be found around that side of town. Rahier Patisserie (Bayview and …

A journey around Toronto’s pastry world (1)

So it’s Saturday afternoon, the sky is grey and depressing, our stomachs are growling so what are we to do?!?! Well, most people would make lunch, but here at Notes On a Meal, we don’t find that to be enough so we embark on a French pastry shop journey. Equipped with a sneaky camera (well, …

Sugar, part 3

From a culinary perspective, sugar is a very important ingredient so understanding how it reacts while being heated, melted, dissolved, etc is very crucial. One of the most integral parts of this is an understanding of what happens in a simple sugar and water solution. In this case, the sugar molecules have a tendency to …

Sugar, part 2

There are several different types of sugars, all with various qualities and sweetness levels. Different sugars give different impressions of sweetness with sucrose being the longest to be detected on the tongue and the most lingering of the bunch. By comparison, fructose registers quickly and strongly but it also fades very quickly. But before we …

Sugar week, Part 1

I thought it would be neat to explore a new topic every week and learn something new, so this week we’re going to talk about sugar. We’ll get into history, uses, the nature of sugars and its varieties. Sugar is the generalised term used for a class of sweet flavoured substances composed of carbon, hydrogen …