Barque Smokehouse

Sylvia and I had been walking for a while and therefore starving. We were on Roncesvalles ave (try to say that 5 times in a row) right beside High Park in Toronto and we found this little gem of a place. 

This restaurant is not too big, not too small, with around 40 seats. It has a nice feel to it, with picnic tables, a bar and some higher tables. Lots of wood in this place which makes it quite homey.

Popcorn!

On top of it, as soon as you sit down, you can eat! Eat what you ask? Well, the big arse bowl (more of a bucket) of paprika and cinnamon sprinkled popcorn. SO GOOD. I don't even care if someone else had their hands in there, it's too good! And, well, the bucket is full so I'm thinking no one has :p

Heaven in the form of a drink

We started by ordering drinks. Duh. Had the Barque Caesar and do I ever NOT regret getting it. One of the best drinks I've ever had. Seriously. And as most of you know, I've had quite my share of drinks, hehehe! On top of tasting great, it had this lovely pickled asparagus in there which added just a touch of brininess with a salty and spicy side to it. The star, OH, the star was of course the candied bacon rim. Holy bejesus. It was HEAVEN-IN-MY-MOUTH. I'm not even kidding. It was passed caramelization, it was freaking candied. Think how much bacon is oh-so-good and then multiply that by 100.

Burger

Brisket

As for food, I had the smoked Barque burger and Sylvia had the Barque brisket. Sylvia said this about her meal: 'it's the best thing in the world'. The bread was moist, light and fluffy, the horseradish and the mayo were great and the whole thing was just oh-so-good. The slaw was sweet enough and the fried onions were there to balance out the whole thing. And then, she tasted mine and she said holy shiz, I didn't think it could get better than my brisket. Oh but it did. Did I mention that I had candied smoked bacon in my hamburger as well? Oh yes I did! Plus aged cheddar, caramelized onions and bbq sauce. So, basically, heavenly. Obviously, the bacon made it great. The cheese was just salty enough to balance the sweet side of the bacon, the bun was airy and fluffy and the meat was perfectly cooked. The mayo was spicy and the pickle added a fresh touch to it all.The fries were homemade, crispy and well seasoned with a hint of paprika and cinnamon=so good!

As for the service, it was wonderful: the waitress even attempted to fix our slightly wobbly table. She had a smile on her face from start to finish.

And now, the scores!
Food: 8,5 (a 10 for the drink!)
Service: 8,5

So basically, the key word here is HEAVENLY. Go there and please PLEASE order the Caesar and the burger! You will not regret it, I assure you!

The Grenadier Restaurant

I decided to go see ze wife in Toronto over the weekend. Therefore this will be eating out in Toronto part deux! Ze wife went for a walk in High Park earlier this week and saw that there was a little restaurant hidden in there, so when I got there, she told me we were going to go eat breakfast there on saturday morning. We got there at around 12:30 that 'morning' and went into this eighty's ish restaurant that looked really old school but not in a good way. There are two sections in there: one where you go up to the counter and pick whatever you wanna eat and then sit down and then there is the sit-down, you-get-a-waitress part of the restaurant. We chose the second one. We passed by this tiny table with only bottles of ketchup on it on our way to our table. May I also mention the abundance of plastic plants, some even creeping onto our table, in this restaurant. Ah, the charm of it! And the OLD carpets... bah.

You see when you enter this restaurant, you realise it's run by all these little elves, no, students... that are barely 16 (some looked 13 or 14). Therefore, the service was bound to be so-so. The waitress came to our table with the really-too-old-menus-that-u-can-barely-read-anything on. They had a nice selection of breakfasty stuff like omelets and pancakes and what have you. I chose my 'usual', the biggest breakfast there is on the menu: sausage, bacon, ham, eggs, bread potatoes. It was not the best breakfast, by far. First, three eggs= too much. Why not two? I think two should be the magic number here. But no, every breakfast contained three eggs (MY breakfast, all the omelets,...). The maple syrup that came with the pancake was obviously not real maple syrup but I guess that was to be expected. Ze wife ate the pancake and said it was really dry. My potatoes were so-so and there were not nearly enough on my plate. I don't know, I get THREE eggs, can't I get TWO and more potatoes please? The ham was a bit dry too. All in all, not exceptional.

We all had desert after, I don't know why... we were already full :/ I had a cheesecake and it was nice but not as nice as many I've tasted before and the wife had the banana choco cake (which I found a tad too dry and too banana-y) and it was the same for her. (Rockaberry ROCKS!)

As for the service, we had many people coming to our table and at some point, we were confused; who is serving us again? We didn't get regular refills of water, and at some point, it seemed like all the servers were sitting in a corner, eating. It took us a while to find our server and ask her for the bill, took a while to GET the bill and then another while for her to show up so that we can tell we'd be paying interac. Not too satisfied of the service but again, these people were all learning. (you should have seen the busboy--who could not have been more then 13, trying to see how he could pick up about 12 glasses, 5 plates and cutlery without making more then 1 trip. hehehe. funny shtuff. He actually managed it in the end!)

So, for the scores:
Food: 5.7 (don't ask)
Service: 6

It was fun to go and the prices were good, but I won't go back.