Not So Pour Boy

If you are feeling strapped for cash, but not willing to venture of to the periphery of Toronto to imbibe at moderate prices, think Pour Boy for the poor boy. Located at Manning and Bloor, the Pour Boy Pub is a snug, two story, bar that offers Greenroom reminiscent fare, and prices well below the Bloor average.

The bar is hard to miss, decorated with a giant mural of Hendrix and Dylan; it brings some great colour to the Bloor landscape. Inside, the decor is hippie grandmother’s dining room meets new age Buddhist.

The servers are very friendly and attentive, when they can be, but when this place reaches capacity it can be difficult to wave down a server, regardless of the full bar on each floor. The issue I had with their ambience was the music— while the music was a fun mix of well, and not so well known oldies, it was painfully loud depending on the track.

Their daily beer special, Pour Boy Choice, will run you less than 12$ a pitcher, 4 $ a pint (typically something like Pabst or Amsterdam).  Their other beer selections will run you 13.25$ a pitcher. The selection isn’t prolific, typical Ontario beer fare, but they do have Blanche de Chambly and Sapporo on tap for those feeling adventurous.

Pour Boy’s food is also incredibly affordable, with healthy portioned mains averaging 7$. Whatever cuisine whets your appetite Pour Boy has something to sate it—from pan Asian standards, to polish perogies, with salads, sandwiches and burgers in between.  Their Pad Thai was possibly one of the best I’ve tasted in Toronto in recent years. Their salads aren’t whelming, and their sandwiches are easily recreated at home, but if you stick to bar standards (anything with cheese and/or fried), and the pan Asian dishes, you’ll really feel like you’re living gourmet on a dime.

SERVICE 4/5
AMBIENCE 3/5
PRESENTATION 3/5
TASTE 3½/5
PRICE $
HOURS 10:30 am- 2 am, kitchen open late
LOCATION, LOCATION 666 Manning Street
NOTEWORTHY

• EVENTS
• Sunday Afternoon: 4pm – 8pm – Open Mic
• Sunday Evenings: 9pm – 2am – DJ UpBeatz (Hip Hop, Funk, Soul and House)
• Monday Nights: 8pm – Quiz Night

6$ soup to feed six

The skies are darkening, the trees are shedding, and Torontonians have elected Rob Ford as mayor of Toronto. Now, I don’t want to alarm you by screaming that the sky is falling, but it may just be the apocalypse. It’s time to withdraw all your money from the bank, hoard it under your mattress, and start fortifying your apartment against the inevitable onslaught of zombies. Or, you could just curl up with a big homemade bowl of tomato soup, a grilled cheese sandwich, and accept that winter’s on its way.

TOE-MAY-TOE/TOE-MAH-TOW SOUP

INGRIDIENTS

• 1 large yellow onion (30¢)
• 1 garlic clove (20¢)
• 10 medium sized tomatoes (Just grab a one dollar bag from the discount vegetable section of your supermarket. It doesn’t matter if they are wrinkly or dappled, they’ll taste fine, I promise.) (1.75$)
• 3 cubes of bouillon (vegetable or chicken, to your taste) (75¢)
• 5 cups of water
• 1 bunch of fresh basil (Herbs are one place where splurging is totally kosher.) (1.50$)
• parmesan cheese for garnish (1.50$)
  

STEP 1 : peeling tomatoes

• Bring a pot, large enough to totally submerge all your tomatoes, of water to boil. Submerge all your tomatoes in the water. Let stand for 3 minutes.
• While your tomatoes are boiling prepare a cold-water bath for your tomatoes. Place the cold-water bath in the sink, under the tap.
• With a slotted spoon gather your tomatoes and submerge them in the cold water bath. To ensure the water stays cold leave the tap open on low.
• The tomato skin should now be easy to peel.
• Time to peel and core your tomatoes!
• Reserve on the side

STEP 2: Don’t cry!

• Coarsely chop your onion.
• Press your garlic.

STEP 3: Playing with fire

• In your biggest pot bring 2 tbs of olive oil to frying temperature.
• Add your onion and garlic and sauté until translucent.
• Add tomatoes, water, & bouillon.
• Turn stove top down to a simmer, and let simmer for thirty minutes.

STEP 4: Get your soup on!

• Get out your hand blender and puree to texture that pleases you. I like mine very homogenous.
• Add the basil, finely chopped.
• If you are inclined, feel free to add some milk or cream to taste, but this is not necessary.
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Serve into bowls and garnish with parmesan.

souper saver

A penny-wise way to have your soup and eat it too.

Now, a lot of people turn their nose up to uber-discounted, not so fresh, fruit and veg that gets put in the dollar bags and pushed to the back of the store. I know that wilted celery isn’t the most tempting, but please don’t turn your nose up just yet! Last-leg vegetables are great fodder for soup.

So, check out the dollar bin and make your soup a souper-saver!

Lil’ Bacci: a lil’ lacking

Lil’ Bacci was one of my favourite pizza places in Toronto. Bacci is still a great east end option; one of the few establishments that is both family and date friendly. However, it seems that this once great pizza haunt is on a downhill trajectory.

The restaurant is small, but not claustrophobic, the service is attentive, and the prices are moderate. Dinner for two will run you about 45$. What made Bacci affordable on a student budget was to avoid the wine, split a pizza (14-16$), and if you we’re really hungry, pair your half pizza with an appetizer or salad.

Unfortunately, the establishment’s manager ran off with a few thousand dollars, resulting in a huge staff turn over, from servers to chefs.  It seems their great dough recipe was lost in the shuffle. What was once one of the best thin crust pizza restaurants in Toronto, now serves mediocre artisan pizza. On my most recent visit the pizza’s consistency was appalling; on the outside it was dry and crunchy, while the inner parts of the pizza were undercooked resulting in flaccid pizza slices.

I ordered the Bufala pizza (a simple pizza: tomatoes, buffalo mozzarella, and basil), and found it under-sauced and over-cheesed.  I would of preferred shredded basil on the pizza, rather than whole leaf, that would have made for better flavour distribution.

Lil’ Bacci has never been amazing when they stray from their pizza forte. The lemon spinach gnocci was possibly the worst dish on their menu, but under new management it has been replaced by three traditional Italian pasta dishes, spaghetti and meatballs, gnocchi in tomato sauce with buffalo mozzarella, and fusili Primavera (around 17$ a plate). 17$ a plate for pasta seem exorbitant to me. Especially since pasta is one of the most cost and time effective dishes you can make.

I will, however, recommend Lil’ Bacci on the quality of their ingridients. Their Prosciutto was lean, with just a hint of fat, and had the perfect balance of dryness and wetness. It tasted like it was loving cured by an Italian nono. Bacci also has the best home preserved chilies in Toronto.

I recommend skipping dinner here, but keep an open mind regarding lunch. Lil’ Bacci has an excellent lunch special. You choose any soup or salad and pair it with any panino, pasta or pizza for 10$. They shrink the pizzas for this lunch special, but for 10$ you really can’t ask for more.

The bottom line: go there for the lunch special, enjoy the ambience, but don’t expect rave-worthy pizza.

SERVICE 3.5/5
AMBIANCE 4/5
PRESENTATION 3/5
TASTE 2.5/5
PRICE $$/$
HOURS Seven days a week 11:30 am- 10 pm
LOCATION, LOCATION 892 Queen Street East

Joyous Redemption

Joy’s a dinner disaster, but they shine when it comes to brunch.

Joy Bistro is an east side behemoth with two patios and two floors. I recommend, weather and warmth permitting, B side patio.  B side gets great sun, and has a warm Mediterranean ambience with its terracotta stucco walls and wooden patio furniture. In winter and rainy weather, Over Joy, their upstairs indoor option, is also a very good second. Over Joy is bright, elegant, and open, with a great view of Queen St. E.

Brunch seems to be quickly becoming the popular meal of the twenty something. It’s affordable, it’s plentiful, and at a decent hour leaving the rest of the day  open for whatever Sunday whims tickle you. And Joy Bistro is worthy of your precious early Sunday afternoon, especially if you can snag a sun soaked spot on B side by their fire pit.

At Joy brunch, coffee and tip will run you about 15$. The selection isn’t anything out of the ordinary, but they have a healthy selection of bennies (10-13$) and sandwiches (for the more lunch inclined 9$). And their Dutch oven pancakes will fill any belly (8$).  The coffee is unending, always a plus on a Sunday morning, although it is weak, and waving down a busy waitress can be difficult.

I recommend their Rowe Farms Steak and Eggs (14$). Rowe farms provide local, conscientiously farmed, meat, so you can rationalize the cost. It comes served with two eggs, any style, home fries and toast. I had my eggs poached, and they were perfectly runny. And the meat was done rare, like I asked for, although it was a touch on the cold side when it arrived at the table. The home fries were crispy, and they were interestingly seasoned. If you are watching your wallet this week they offer many traditional breakfast items for less than 10$.

Service is never spectacular, but that is mainly due to how crowded Joy Bistro is for brunch.

Ultimately, Joy Bistro succeeds when it focuses on simplicity and quality. The problem with Joy is that there is just too much, too many patios, too many rooms, and too many flavours. They seem to like juggling a lot, but when they concentrate on one thing, like good traditional brunch fare, they succeed.

SERVICE 3/5
AMBIANCE 4/5 (4/5 for B side patio, 3.5/5 for Over Joy)
PRESENTATION 3/5
TASTE 3.5/5
PRICE $$
HOURS Open seven days a week from 11:30am on. Dinner service begins at 5pm. Brunch is served from 8am-4pm on Saturdays and Sundays.
LOCATION, LOCATION 884 Queen Street East

Underwhelmed Instead of Overjoyed

Looking to satisfy that bourgeois bone on the east side, but not willing to pass Leslie Street? That’s how I felt recently; with the cold moving in I just wanted to pamper myself with a nice meal. From the outside Joy Bistro looks unaffordable to the average twenty something, but on closer examination their lunch and brunch menu are within the weekly budget, and even their dinnertime prix fixe won’t hurt your wallet too badly. However, after my experience there I would recommend Brunching at Joy and nothing else.

Their dinner prix fixe is typically priced around 30 and changes daily.  For a special night out 30 is manageable, but be wary– straying from the prix fixe and adding on extras, like wine and water, can lead you to a painful bill.

There are four elements that combine to make a memorable dining experience: service, ambience, presentation, and taste. Joy is lacking in all four categories. The ambience is warm, but nothing special, the service was slow and condescending, and the food was lacking.

The waiter was standoffish, to the point of being rude. He was simultaneously able to ignore our table and pressure us into tacking on extras that were outside the fixe. We ordered water and were presented with a bottle of sparkling without consultation. That may be practice in Europe; however, I find backdoor upsells like that distasteful.

At our server’s recommendation we strayed from the daily prix fixe. The seared wild fish with tempura shrimp, buttered savoy cabbage, and house made bacon was a disappointment.  While the slow cooked lamb shank with celeriac crushed potatoes, cellar vegetables and mint jus was simply mediocre. The fish was over done and the tempura was heavy, greasy, and cold. The accent of bacon added nothing, other than more grease, to the already too complicated dish. The lamb did not fall from the bone as a good lamb shank should, and worst of all it was over salted.

Perhaps this was a one-time flop—maybe Joy delivers for dinner on other nights, but I have not been inclined to find out. As for the budget? It went out the window. I ended up paying about 60 dollars for my mediocre meal.

SERVICE 2/5
AMBIANCE 3/5
PRESENTATION 3/5
TASTE 2/5
PRICE $$$$

HOURS Open seven days a week from 11:30am on. Dinner service begins at 5pm. Brunch is served from 8am-4pm on Saturdays and Sundays.

25$ Day for 2 East of the Don River

I know Leslieville can seem a million miles away when you live in the downtown core, but hop a Queen street car, or hop on your bike for an affordable day of fun and fresh air.

Begin your day by sipping coffee on Te Aro’s spacious patio, it’s a perfect place to soak in the sun and do some people watching (2$). When warm and energized it’s time to head over to Leslieville fantastic Value Village. Try on some outlandish outfits, and poke around their back case for great jewelry and camera finds (0$).

Now it’s time to pick up picnic ingredients.Leslieville is rife with scrumptious odds and ends and they can all be found within a two-block radius.

Try the Leslieville Cheese Market, Rowe Farms, and the Brick Street Breads for delicious locally sourced picnic ingredients (10$ approx). One thing you shouldn’t forget is the wine. You can pick up a local Ontario bottle at Wine Rack. If you’re skeptical about Ontario wine, you really shouldn’t be. In fact, you may even be surprised by how Ontario wines have matured over the past decade (10$).

Now that your pic-a-nick basket is filled with goodies,and you’re warmed to the core with shopping and coffee sipping, it’s time to head to the day’s ultimate destination: the Leslie Spit. The Leslie Spit is one of Toronto’s best kept secrets. It’s a 5 kilometer peninsula that jets out from the bottom of Leslie Street. The Spit was built out of recycled industrial waste that has now been reclaimed by the earth. So, expect to see rusted rebar jungles, species of local flowers that haven’t been seen in the GTA in over 40 years, as well as rare butterflies and bird species that had at one time abandoned Toronto.

Did I forget to mention that the Leslie Spit has perhaps one of the most stunning views in Toronto? So, enjoy the breath taking Toronto views, and find a nice rock on which to enjoy your picnic as the sun sets behind our fair city.

Wine Rack 731 Queen Street East
Leslieville Cheese Market 891 Queen Street East
Value Village 924 Queen St East
Brick Street Breads 255 Logan Ave
Rowe Farms 912 Queen St East
Te Aro 983 Queen St East

Saag that doesn’t sag

Sauté onions, chillies, garlic, and ginger until translucent.

A quick and dirty meal that strays from the traditional saag, but doesn’t leave your taste buds wanting. This saag recipe can be made to suit the palate of meat eaters, or the chicken can easily be substituted with either paneer or Yves’ Veggie Tenders.

 

Ingredients
– Enough oil to coat the bottom of two pans (2 tbs approx)
– 1 large yellow onion
– 4 cloves of garlic
– 2 green chilies
– 1 tbs turmeric
– 4 tbs curry powder
–

cardamon adds a wonderfully sweet aroma to the dish, but make sure to remove the pods before serving. The pods themselves are bitter when bitten into.

10 cardamom pods
– 1 tsp cloves
– 2 tbs ground coriander
– 1 tbs red chilly powder
– 1 inch piece of ginger
– salt (to taste)
– 1 can crushed tomatoes
– 3 bunches of spinach (washed and chopped)
– 2 ½ pounds of chicken breast OR 2 packages of Yves’ Veggie Tenders
– 3 cups of plain yoghurt

 

Let’s git cookin’

1. Cut the chicken into bite sized strips or leave the breasts whole for a sexier looking dish. Fry the chicken, real or

Yves' veggie chicken tenders make a great chicken substitute.

Yves’, in the oil until for 3-4 minutes, until golden brown and set aside.
2. In a deep pot heat enough oil to coat the bottom and add the ginger, garlic, onions, and chilies.
3. When onions are translucent add turmeric, curry powder, cardamom pods, cloves, and ground coriander. Fry for another minute—do not allow to burn. If necessary add a little extra oil.
4. Add spinach.
5. Add can of tomatoes & salt.
6. Let simmer for 30 minutes until spinach becomes soft enough to be broken easily by the back of the spoon.
7. Remove from stove and let cool.
8. Pick out the cardamom pods.
9. With a handheld blender blend the mixture; keep it a little chunky, you don’t want it too soupy!
10. Stir in 2 cups of yogurt.

Cut down on costs and preparation time by using frozen spinach.

11. Add chicken. If you have decided on the sexier full breasts you will need to let them simmer on low until cooked through. Time depends on thickness of the breast.
12. Stir and place back on stovetop on low heat. Let cook on low for 20 minutes.
13. Serve on top of basmati rice, or accompanied by naan, or roti, with a dollop of yoghurt on top and sprinkled with chilly powder. & remember to salt to taste!

 

It's fast, it's healthy, it's delicious: it's saag that doesn't sag!

 

No more tears!

There’s enough to cry about in this life, like spilt milk, but you don’t need to cry over onions. Here are a couple techniques to avoid the saline task of peeling and cutting onions.

• Freeze your onion for 25 minutes prior to cutting.
• Soak your onion in cold water, and peel while submerged, let the onion soak in the water for half an hour, dry and chop. Some people like to cut the onion under water, I do not suggest this method—you might cut yourself rather than the onion.
• Hold a piece of wheat bread in your mouth while chopping. Change the bread if it begins to get soggy.
• Wear a mask and snorkel.

In Motion: let’s swap

Moving can be taxing, and not just on your back, knees, friends, but also on your wallet. When I was younger and living in the annex it was easy to find furniture. With the neighborhood’s high student turnover there was always a set of drawers, an armoire, or a desk sitting out on the curb looking to be adopted. It was so easy to revitalize the pieces; all I needed was spray paint, some screws, and maybe a few new knobs and tops available for next to nothing in Kensington Market. But, when I moved away from the annex, it became harder to find free furniture. The dearth of free furniture wasn’t helped by the fact that I was not moving on traditional moving dates (September and May first).

So, over the years I’ve bought ikea furniture and resold it in an effort to escape the shackles of storage lockers. But, this is costly and requires me to truck up north only to get lost in the labyrinth of Swedishness. And no matter how focused you are at Ikea, you always end up leaving with a bill that is double what you were expecting. The answer, in the future, is no, you don’t need that primary coloured potato peeler, and no, heart shaped ice cubes are not as imperative to your quality of life as you may think.

Don’t fear! There’s an alternative to both waiting anxiously for furniture to be abandoned curbside and to overspending on Swedish finery.

U of T has a great program called Swap Shop. They are basically  a furniture recycling centre. Rather than abandoning your furniture on the side of the road hoping that maybe it will be adopted, you are welcome, and encouraged, to bring it to Swap Shop. Your dejected furnishings will be fitted with a new and loving home, and you’re free to browse the Swap Shop selection for a new piece more fitting to your home.

While the Swap Shop may seem like a thrifty paradise, there are some limitations. First of all, the hours are scant. The Swap Shop is open only once a week, and for only two hours. This means you have to plan your day around your furniture adoption excursion. The second issue is that U of T departments get dibs on furniture before personal furniture claims can be made. So, don’t get too attached too early. You can put a claim on an item, but you need to let it sit in Swap Shop for at least two weeks before you can take it home, and if someone from a department claims it, then it’s so sad too bad.  Thirdly, it is only open to members of the U of T community. This can be easily navigated around by coercing a U of T friend.

Swap Shop is open every Wednesday from noon until 2pm, and located on 487 Spadina Avenue, basement level (South Borden building). The main entrance is off of Russell Street but another entrance is located within the main foyer of the building.

Do you know any other great Toronto swaps? Let me know! E-mail me at andapinch@gmail.com.