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Saturday, November 12, 2011

olde yorke fish & chips

We used to think that Olde Yorke fish & chips were likely to be the best fish & chips we would ever find in Toronto. Just look at the facts on the ground:


1) Awesome staff. Knowledgeable, friendly, attentive, you couldn't ask for more, & even if you did, they would probably try their best to find a way to accommodate it


2) Chips are pretty good, not incredible or anything, but pretty good is more than good enough for fish & chips. Like Simon & Garfunkel, there's a reason it's not called "chips & fish" 

3) A wide variety of fish including haddock, which is really the only fish you need when it comes to fish & chips unless you're some kind of deviant, not wishing to sound judgemental or anything, we've nothing against two consenting adults eating cod or halibut just as long as they do it behind closed doors & don't keep trying to force it on our children


Anyway, we used to think that Olde Yorke fish & chips were likely to be the best fish & chips we would ever find in Toronto, but the green reed which bends in the wind is stronger than the mighty oak which breaks in the storm & once we went here we quickly realised that, like the music of Oasis, while Olde York fish & chips would always hold a place in our hearts, it was close to impossible for us to imagine any circumstance under which we would ever go back there.


Turns out we wrong (although not about Oasis). Tonight was one of those evenings where lacking the wherewithal to make a reservation, we couldn't settle on a suitable place to eat. Our brief love affair with Off the Hook had come to a tumultuous end one evening a few weeks earlier when frustrated by the lack of service we had done the march out without paying & now we were too scared to show our faces again, so instead we sought refuge in Olde Yorke's tender embrace. 


We got a table a little faster than normal, perhaps because we arrived after 8pm & what with the average age of the clientele skewing considerably higher than a lot of our usual spots. The decor is authentically tacky & overall an air of relaxed familiarity pervades. However, it has always been our firm belief that relaxed familiarity is a dangerous thing; once people get too relaxed they start nipping to the shops in their slippers & from there, we are only a hair's breadth from complete anarchy. Fortunately, before society had a chance to collapse completely, our haddock arrived.








































L is not going to sit here & tell you that the fish was anything other than deep fried flaky perfection. J on the other hand, is a cruel mistress & although she too thoroughly enjoyed the fish, she was struck by how the batter, which she had previously thought so incredibly highly of, was noticeably thicker & ever so slightly more greasy than that at Off The Hook. While L would concede that she has a point, he remains unconvinced that ever so slightly greasy thick & crispy batter is a negative when it comes to fish & chips. In fact, L is such a fan of this style of batter that he is willing to make the ultimate sacrifice, Toronto Public Health permitting, & have the good people at Olde Yorke deep fry his entire body, preserving him in their delicious batter, a la Han Solo at the end of Empire. In further tribute to a beloved film series from his childhood, L would respectfully request his body be displayed at City Hall, as presently Toronto's closest equivalent to Jabba's palace.


Olde Yorke Fish & Chips on Urbanspoon



Sunday, November 6, 2011

la societe bistro

La Societe Bistro stands in the space formerly occupied by Dynasty Chinese Cuisine in Yorkville. Visiting Dynasty was always somewhat bittersweet for L. As a child, he had experienced a traditional Northern English upbringing & one of the many prejudices he was inadvertently indoctrinated with was that the Chinese are an inscrutable people whose cuisine is a thing to be feared. Obviously he's over all that now, but the sight of happy Sunday lunchtime families with young children expertly wielding chopsticks & casually wolfing down siu mai with gay abandon would always make him enormously resentful. Why aren't these little brats trembling in their seats, jutting out their lower lips as they fix their tear filled eyes on the pork buns & refusing to eat? Just who the hell do they think they are? 


Anyway, this isn't supposed to be the forum for L's fantasies of class resentment fueled infanticide, so lets just say that Dynasty has relocated round the corner & is still Toronto's finest dim sum this side of Lai Wah Heen, & following an extensive renovation La Societe Bistro has opened in its stead. It would be churlish of us to deny that they had done an amazing job in transforming the place from its formally slightly stuffy Chinese banqueting room into a Vegas style facsimile of a European style bistro. Never let it be said though that we are lacking in churl, we are positively entrenched in churl, & the end result of La Societe's makeover is a place that is impressive but horribly soulless. Kind of like the Matrix, only instead of sticking a tube in your head & farming your body for its electrolytes, they charge you $26 for a tuna salad.      













      


























In keeping with the general theme of the place, the latte looked good but tasted merely adequate, rating somewhere around the level of Aroma espresso bar. While L has sipped on many an inadequate latte in his life, he cannot help but feel that if La Societe is genuine in its mission statement as found on its website to "transport you to another time & place" the place they had in mind was probably not the new food court at the Eaton Centre. 

Thankfully the croque madame was a big improvement. While not fit to share a billing with the one from Bonjour Brioche it could certainly hold its own with say Le Petitie Dejeuner. While L very much enjoyed the springy lightly toasted brioche, all the other components were pleasant if unremarkable. Pick of the litter were the frites which were wonderfully buttery in an all too rare way for skinny fries.







































Sadly for J, her eggs benedict florentine was a crushing disappointment. She was less of a fan of the brioche than L, but worse still, the ham & the sauce were bland approaching flavourless. The whole thing rested atop a bed of potato hash that didn't seem to quite know what it was doing there & J could quite happily have done without. Our server, who was slick & attentive throughout, had politely warned J off a couple of other dishes she had almost ordered, assuring her with a conspirational tap of his authentically Gallic proboscis that the eggs benny was the smart choice, an idea which in retrospect we find unutterably flabbergasting.


Overall, if we were a single woman about town with a high paying job & no particular fondness for food looking for a place to catch up with the girls to debate which Sex & The City character we each most resembled, La Societe would be an option we suppose. A glowing recommendation, in anyone's language.


La Société Bistro on Urbanspoon