My favourite Toronto food: savoury edition

Best Pho – Pho Hung

I love Pho Hung. Sitting on an inconspicuous corner on Spadina, the dining room is the best place in Toronto for people watching. It is always full of students, weirdos, people on first dates (is it written somewhere?), awkward families and solitary people like me. I adore how all the vegetarian options are listed on one page and I always look through all of them before deciding to have the pho. The soup is gently aromatic, lifted by the Vietnamese basil and lime that you squeeze in. A little sriracha goes well with the fried tofu. I could have this every weekend and be extraordinarily happy.

Best Ethiopian - Ethiopia House

Nothing like real Ethiopian food, sorely missed in Sydney. The simple dishes are the best, like the very smooth and punchy shiro just how I remembered it from Ethiopia. There are some really authentic flavours, but the injera is not sour like how it is made with teff (probably better catered to Canadian taste anyway). 

Best Banh Mi - Nguyen Huong

Forget Banh Mi Boys or any of the upmarket stuff, Nguyen Huong is where the action is at. If you arrive early enough in the morning, you actually see the lunch orders being made – a mountain of baguettes being filled by a conveyor belt of aunties, wrapped and dumped in huge garbage bags. “Large, tofu, chilli” is my usual order, as all excess words seem to result in eye-rolling from the aunties. Deep fried sweet treats also tempt every time from the cash register. The best $4 lunch in Toronto, hands down.

Best Subcontinental – Hopper Hut

Sadly, there is no truly edible curry downtown. Mediocre or overpriced are not good options. Thus I cherished the two visits we made to Hopper Hut all the way out in Scarberia, a scungy joint in a carpark full of unrecognisable foods. The hoppers with coconut sambal are just perfect. The menu is long and the few things we tried very tasty – eggplant curry, kothu roti, string hoppers.. perfect place to stuff one’s face with Lankan food.

Best Fried Food – Quinoa onion rings, Fresh

Ironically the best fried food in Toronto is in the healthy vegetarian chain Fresh. I first heard about the legendary quinoa onion rings from one of the consultants at TWH and later discovered why they are legendary. The batter has just the perfect blend of solid (you don’t want flaky onion ring batter, right?) and crispy (shatters with every crunch). The onion inside is just the right soft and is quite mild in flavour. You can choose your accompanying sauce, but garlic mayo wins every single time. I can never remember anything else I eat at Fresh (which incidentally has a wonderfully long vegetarian menu) because all I remember are these amazing onion rings.

Best Korean – Buk Chang Dong Soon Tofu

I love Korean food. There’s something about the intense chilli and strong salty flavours that really suit my palate, so I’ve spent a lot of time eating Korean food in my life. Koreatown in Toronto is pretty amazing with a dozen restaurants within a couple of blocks, but BCD Tofu is the clear winner. It’s easy to see why there’s always a line-up here – a simple formula done well (soft tofu stew is the whole menu), good solid flavours, generous servings and low prices (how can one go past $10 tax incl for dinner?). This is just the perfect comfort food for winter – warm, simmering, veggies, tasty grainy rice, just the right amount of spicy. You can choose the level of spice (plain, mild, regular or extra), the plain version used to be called white but got changed after complaints about racism, ha!

Best Japanese – Japango

Japango is a tiny hole-in-the-wall just off Dundas St. So many Japanese restaurants are owned by Chinese and Koreans, and many are so far removed from Japanese food that they have no real Japanese soul (cooked tuna sushi?) Toronto has its fair share of mediocre sushi places, but this place really prides on the freshest ingredients and excellent execution. Lunch specials are great value for this level of food.

Best Roti – Gandhi

There’s a lot of roti in Toronto, most of it Caribbean, but the favourite was clearly Gandhi on Queen St. There’s something about these rotis – not sure if it’s because the roti is freshly made or the curries taste like they’ve been made by your friend’s mum, but the dish comes together so well. Extra points for having more than 10 vegetarian options!

Best Ramen – Sansotei

Incidentally, the closest ramen house to my place was my favourite. It had the richest, most flavoursome soup of all the Toronto ramen houses I tried. A few of them had veggie broths, but on account of ramen I usually drink the porky broth and donate the slices of pork to my friends. I came here countless times, and usually got the black garlic edition.

Best Pizza – Pizzeria Libretto, Queen Margherita 

I could not choose which one was the favourite. Pizzeria Libretto had the best, fluffiest, most chew-satisfying base ever - just look at that blister!

Queen Margarita had the best flavour combinations – mushroom and stinky cheese, come to mama

Best Thai – Sukhothai

I found Thai food in Toronto generally weak and unappealing, but Sukhothai had one major draw – deep fried tofu nuggets that resembled McDonald’s chicken McNuggets. These are just the most perfect morsel to start a meal – a light breading rendered golden and crispy from the deep fryer, soft tofu and a delectable garlic flavour. If only Maccas sold these...

Best breakfast

Growing up in Sydney instilled a healthy appreciation for brunch, especially on weekends. Sadly, this concept has caught on in North America but the coffee hasn’t arrived at the same time. How I dreamed of the perfect brunch place where great food and great coffee both reside, but mostly the food was great and the coffee mediocre. Never mind, several breakfast places were truly standout.

Souk Tabule

What a beautiful space this is, tastefully decorated with a real Middle Eastern feel. I wanted to try everything on their menu – but the souk platter was just the perfect way to try a few things. The falafel was so fluffy and crispy, almost rivalling my favouritest in the world at Jasmin’s. The labneh is rich and luscious, perfect alongside the salady bits and the flavoursome fuul.

Tavoos

We came on a cold winter’s day when Maha’s was closed. A modest Persian restaurant serving breakfast and lunch, I really loved the cosy décor and beautiful touches like the teatowel the bread was wrapped in. Where else can you get your eggs with haloumi, or with a sweet date, walnut & apricot base? Served with warm fresh Turkish bread and a little pot of red lentil stew. So amazingly tasty.

Insomnia

Two words. Home fries.

Dream: Music for codes and a seaweed baguette

This is a rather short but very strange dream.

I am the hospital pianist. What is a hospital pianist? I wonder to myself in the dream. Is it someone who plays the piano for the patients all day long? I contemplate whether this is a good job for me. At that moment I get called to the ICU and I have a rolling-wheels piano, just like the one at the Sinai ICU, which I push along.

When I arrive in the ICU I am told that there is a dying man who is about to be transferred to another hospital. To die perhaps? I am to supply the music for the trip, and so I sit down and start to play a Chopin nocturne - the Op. 9 no. 3 which is very merry and lighthearted. (much unlike the other two Op. 9 nocturnes) Some doctor comes up to the patient and starts discussing what will happen once he is transferred, and he is told that he is likely to die shortly after the transfer. The code status comes up in the discussion, and the doctor says rather empathically (almost like a show) I know that you want to have a natural death and not have life-prolonging interventions at the end of life. 

At that moment the patient sits bolt upright in bed and stares at the doctor. He looks away and catches my eye. I stop in the middle of a bar and wonder what sort of music to play for a code discussion. I play a few bars of the Flight of the Bumblebee and realise that sounds too clumsy! Then I return to the Chopin nocturnes, but start with Op 48. no. 1 in C minor. Much better, I think to myself. But then the patient starts to cry for the mood in the room turns sombre. The doctor rushes out of the room and the patient cries alone. I keep playing and spy out of the corner of my eye the doctor conversing with another doctor.

The patient and I are wheeled along the corridor and into the service lift. During the ride down the patient continues to cry, and I continue to play Chopin nocturnes (which one was next? I cannot remember) We reach the floor we want which is a giant fridge room. I am told that I must pick out some snacks for the ride for the patient, in case there is a delay and we get hungry. There are so many options that my eyes hurt. The patient points to a large basket of baguettes and I pull them down to show him. He selects a black baguette and holds onto it - it is a light black like charcoal, and sprinkled with speckles of seaweed.

What music should I play now, for the seaweed baguette? I wonder to myself, then I wake up. 

Three dreams - last days in Toronto

The blue beagle

This dream starts in a large holiday house. The kitchen looks out over a vast expanse of green which looks like a golf course, and the sea is glittering in the distance. There is a couple staying in the house with me, but I have my own separate wing on the other side of the house. I am running late for work and am picking through the kitchen to see what I can bring to eat.

As I walk past the dining table, I see a flash of blue near my feet. I bend down to see what it is, and it is an impossibly small dog, in an unnatural shade of bright blue (like Avatar). It is so small I pick it up with two fingers and wonder if it is the smallest dog I’ll ever see. I try to take a photo of it but the camera doesn’t focus. I try to find some place for the dog to run around in so I can see it again when I get home a mixing bowl perhaps or a glass oven tray? I look through the kitchen and all are see are gypsy-like ornate coloured glass bowls (would that confuse the dog?) or solid Tupperware (too claustrophobic?)

I turn around and find the dog still playing at my feet. I pick it up again to take a closer look at its dimensions – but I can’t pick it up with two fingers anymore, now it is about the size of the palm of my hand. I put the dog into a frying pan and it jumps straight over the edge. I walk into the other rooms looking for something to put it in, but every time I turn around the dog has doubled in size.

The couple come out of their room with champagne glasses.

Let’s drink a toast! The man says.

I explain I am running super late for work and am looking for somewhere to put the dog. By this time the dog has grown to the size of an average small dog and it is clearly a beagle, a bright blue beagle.

I go back into the kitchen and realise the sliding doors have been left open. The sun is streaming in through the doors and the waves are crashing loudly not too far from the door. The kitchen is filled with the salty aroma of the sea and fine granules of sand are now all over the kitchen floor. I look at the clock and it says 12:45 – how late am I? I wonder to myself.

I decide to leave and call out to the couple to look after the dog. It follows me to the door, comically growing with every step. It is now the size of a very large dog, maybe around 100 pounds or so.

How large is the blue beagle going to get before I get home?

Then I wake up.

The bust in Sweden

In this dream I am part of an elaborate plan – the details are really not clear to me, but there are lots of people involved and I am just a small cog in the wheel. My partner is a woman who looks not unlike Elsie, but she is a different breed – steely tough with a very serious face, she doesn’t joke around at all. We pick up a rental van and drive it to a prespecified place for modification. We stand outside the building and wait. Once the van comes out we get back on the road and this time we end up at a large ferry port, which looks like it feeds out to the sea but it really could be anywhere.

None of the dream takes place in the ferry, but in the next scene we are already at the destination. Everything looks distinctly foreign, and we are driving the van to a GPS address. The woman tells me that we will be meeting two men to exchange vans. I understand this as some type of transaction – and I start to feel afraid. The fear crawls under my skin and spreads throughout my veins like some type of poison. I ask her questions about the transaction but she does not have any answers.

Eventually I have the courage to ask her if I can leave. She says no. I explain to her that I never wanted to be part of all this, and perhaps it’s easier for me to not become involved any further, to leave before we give the van to the two men. After more discussion, she pulls the van up on the side of the road and I get out.

I walk along the edge of the road – it is a narrow winding mountain road with no pedestrian strip. I am simply walking so that I get away from the direction she is going on. I don’t try to hitchhike and no one stops to ask why I am walking in such a place. Eventually I get back to a town of some sort, and go into a house to ask for directions. A group of teenage boys are in the house and I sense some sort of hostility, but that rapidly resolves and they offer to help me. We walk into the town and they point out the bus I need to take to Tromso (I am in Sweden?) where I can change for a bus to Niagara falls.

We go into a supermarket labelled M and grab some food. All the food looks really strange to me, and I take a photo of a dessert pie topped with green noodles. As we are eating, the original woman and two other men come in and sit down at our table. The teenagers disappear and I am stuck with them. We discuss all sorts of things, but nothing pertaining to the crime that has occurred. I get up to surreptitiously creep out of the supermarket, but the other side of the supermarket has turned into an ICU and a nurse calls me over to see a patient with a platelet count of zero. Panicked with the desire to escape and not knowing how to respond to the nurse, I wake up.

The dark night with M

In this dream, it is extremely dark and sombre. M and I are on a road trip (except... we never went on a road trip together in real life) and we are on our way home. The back seat is strewn with bags and random stuff, as if we had been away for quite a long time.

He suggests that we stop at a restaurant for dinner, and I look at him in the dark somewhat confused. In all the time we had known each other, he never expressed any interest in food whatsoever. He would eat whatever was in front of him, not paying any attention to what it is or how it tastes. In any case we pull up outside a restaurant, the only building with lights on a very dark street. 

I look around for my handbag, not really knowing what it looks like. Then he points to the backseat and asks me to take a big paper bag and a smaller plastic bag into the restaurant. I struggle with the paper bag as it is heavy with something rolling around in it. The plastic bag is easy enough, with a few small paper wrapped packages inside. 

Suddenly the door opens and a gush of cold wind rushes in. I look around and realise all the doors are open - how is that possible? I think to myself. I grab the bags and get out of the car. Even the boot is open. I try to shut the passenger door and it doesn't budge. The darkness creeps up on me and my spine is tingling with fear. I cannot see M anymore - has he disappeared into the darkness? Then I wake up. 

Dream: The piano in the river

This dream is set in Hawaii – it’s not really obvious how it is so, but I know it. I am under a very large tree, perhaps a banyan tree with all its roots draping languidly, providing a great big shade. The tree is set on volcanic lava rock, a black flowing sheet frozen in time. I sit on the black rock with two other girls and we are watching the river drift by.

A part of the tree is just in front of us, and we don’t cross to the other side of the branches where we would have a full view of the river. Suddenly one of the girls stands up and says that she wants to see the river. I stand up too, but the third girl stops us both, saying it is dangerous. They both sit back down but I venture past the thicket of branches right in front of us. Just a few metres away, I am at the edge of the water. I can hear their voices calling out to me, but I step into the river with no hesitation.

As the water rushes past, I start to swim. I am acutely aware of all the joints in my body moving in the pattern that they are supposed to. The river is flowing fast, but I swim effortlessly, as though I am swimming in a pool with no current at all. Soon I reach the middle of the river where the water is very still. Looking back, I can see the shoreline with the huge banyan tree, but it is a fair way away now and I feel a little afraid. The currents that I swam through seem so impossibly strong now that I am in the still centre of the river.

I see a black object bobbing in the river, a little way away. I swim towards it and within a few minutes I see it is a piano. A black, short upright, a very practical style – probably a Kawai or a Toyota. Only the Japanese make these unadorned, functional pianos without the scrolls and ornaments of European pianos. I open the lid and press the keys, but they are totally waterlogged and no sound comes out. I lift the lid and look inside, and the strings lay there quietly as if they are sleeping. I try to watch the hammers as I press the keys again, but I begin to lose my balance in the water and I have to give it up.

What does it mean? I wonder to myself. How does a piano get to be floating in the middle of the river?

All of a sudden, a thought enters my mind that I must go to look for P, because I have been away for a very long time. I look all around me, but the banyan tree is no longer obvious. The shoreline is full of trees, and none of them look like the tree. I start to swim towards the shore anyway, and within a few strokes I am caught in the tide. It wraps violently around me, and dunks my head under the surface. Just as I start to gag, a wave lifts me up and dumps me again. I fall hard on my face, my eyes fill with water and I lose my vision. My arms and legs struggle to keep me afloat, but the waves are utterly relentless. Lost in despair, I wake up.

Dream: a "snowmobile" and pet therapy

This dream starts next to a large, deep lake. It is twilight and the season is deep winter – the lake is frozen and all around us, the trees are shimmering.

There is a group of us, maybe 5 or 6 people, no-one that I recognise. We arrange ourselves in pairs onto snowmobile like things, except they are not quite snowmobiles. I don’t know enough about them to really know the difference, but I know it’s not quite right.

As we set out onto the lake we make barely any noise at all, gliding into the last of the light. I look behind me and see two parallel tracks, like skiing tracks. I realise that there is no steering device on the “snowmobile”, and but it seems to have a planned track, turning this way and that. We get to the other side of the large lake and with a small unceremonious clunk, enter the track at the mouth of the forest.

It is darker in the forest, the light rapidly fading. I see the trees blurring by but not much else. The “snowmobile” takes an increasingly complex imaginary track, until we get to a small crevice under a hill. It is so small that we would have gone straight past, but with an almost imperceptible sinking motion, the snow below us gives way and we dip close enough to get into the crevice.

The tunnel is totally dark, and it takes a while for my eyes to adjust. It is only then that I realise we have lost the other “snowmobilers”, and I wonder if we are lost. Even inside the tunnel, the “snowmobile” knows its way. Suddenly I see a shadow up ahead and my heart starts racing.

Is it a ghost? I ask my partner “snowmobiler”, who has been quiet up to this point.

Oh yes, there are many in this tunnel. She replies.

Feeling a little scared now, but committed to the sense of inevitability, I try to take in whatever little details I can make out in the darkness. Soon I start seeing skeletons, lots and lots of them, at first they seem realistic (like the anatomy ones) then they become increasingly comic until they are hardly anything more than a cartoon.

Is this an amusement park? I wonder.

Then the “snowmobile” suddenly stops and we get out in the darkness. The other girl silently leads me to a rock which she presses – a special hidden door opens and we go behind it into another tunnel which is lit. Further along, the corridor starts to twist and bend and I soon lose all sense of direction. We come to a collection of rooms which look identical from the outside – beige, laminated, no handle. From the dozens of rooms she confidently selects one, and pushes it open.

We step into an apartment, warm and cosy like someone’s home. As we walk throughout the apartment a large brown dog (maybe a groodle?) comes up to me and tries to get close. I start patting the dog and playing with it, and it seems to be quite happy.

Suddenly a lady appears in the room, though we haven’t heard any footsteps warning of her approach. She is friendly to the other girl who calls her “aunty”, and she smiles at me and then at the dog. She comes over and pats the dog as well, who is happy with the attention. Then she turns to me and says, did you know that dog therapy is a proven form of treatment for cancer?

Then my alarm goes off and I wake up.

Toronto: Memories of winter

Winter started with a snowstorm which slowed the downtown traffic to a crawl. University Ave could not be seen any more under the stripes of white, grey and black. Slush was at all the curbs, threatening to send you on a wild slip-spin adventure. I dug out my Sorels which I had inherited from the universe via Toronto Western Hospital, and wore them every day (sometimes they were so warm my feet would sweat). I bought a $20 parka from Value Village and wore it religiously, initially with layers like I am used to in winter, but finally realising that even a T-shirt with this parka on was too warm. Amongst other thrift shop bargains I found a $3 woollen scarf in my favourite lost beige colour (A had a jumper in this shade that I would steal from him and wear again ad again). So that was my winter wardrobe, and surprisingly just like the rest of my minimalism experiment, it is fine just to wear the same things again and again.

As December progressed, the light became more and more lost. I would go to work in the dark, and most days also go home in the dark. Looking out the window during the day, a uniform blanket of grey would greet me. I felt depressed by the weather. At the same time I worked an insane block of 17 days with just one day off (including 4 24-hour calls). Around this time I felt like everything was unravelling, like a loose thread pulled so hard that the yarn of your knitted sweater just starts to disintegrate. Each day I got up feeling a little worse than the last, and I was afraid that the slip would not abate. During this time I was so thankful for the small things that kept my head above water – a little music here and there, some nice food, P who stepped in and became a steadfast support. But still, I worried about the strain that struggled to be contained within me, and about the darkness that threatened to take over my life. Thankfully this time passed when the physical hardship of that horrible work arrangement passed. I started to speak to people about seasonal affective disorder and found that even Canadians often felt affected by the weather.

I had a wonderful 5 day mini block off over new years. One day I went out with friend #1 and her sister to Hardwood for cross country skiing. It was so wonderful to be out in the snowy forest with fresh snow falling gently. I gave up and snow-walked my way to a rambling path where I could enjoy the beauty of nature alone. I made a snowman at the junction of a path, paused to chat with a few people, and ultimately snow-walked back to the chalet where the hot chocolate had never tasted so delicious. Another day I went to piano quintets (Mozart, Dvorak and a little Schumann) but we were so bad the pianist left in disgust (poor girl, it must be so hard on the soul to be so serious). We had tea and regrouped as a string quartet, and enjoyed a little Beethoven. We enjoyed playing so much that we forgot to eat lunch.

On New Years eve, I had all my friends over for a couch party, knowing this would be my only new years in Toronto. We started out mashing at #3’s house, then migrated to my place for endless rounds of food. We made our own dumplings and savoured them though the skins were inedibly thick and chewy. A chocolate and ginger cake and a pineapple upside down cake set each other off well. Then we made glutinous rice dumplings which turned out much better than expected. We celebrated the new year with some expensive champagne and continued talking into the morning, napping in various corners of the house. The next day the party finished after lunch with a chocolate fondue, and we went to EE’s house to pick up her piano, the best welcome to 2017 present.

Toronto: Memories of fall

The weather was unusual this fall. Initially around Thanksgiving we had a few cold days and Richmond Hill even had some snow. Then it warmed up again and we had a few weeks of nice weather before it got properly cold. So my dad was lucky that it was warm-ish for most of his visit.

One day we went up to Algonquin, a pretty long roadtrip but one of the most spectacular I have ever taken. In October, the leaves turn incredibly vibrant shades of red and yellow. We missed the peak of the reds but the orange and yellow were just as amazing. The drive there was beautiful, with whole swathes of colour lighting up the highway. We stopped at the Bethune house and felt inspired by his spirit. The drive through Huntsville to the trans-Algonquin way was surreal, the colours felt like they were out of this world. When I had visited with P we had just gone to a few areas, so this time we tried to visit a few more. We ended up having lunch by a tranquil lake, and we had the whole place to ourselves for about 3s0 minutes before someone else showed up. Pure magic, to soak up the sunshine, watching the water gently lapping at the shore, the trees in the distance lit up like fire. We made our own banh mi style sandwiches with pumpkin, tomato and boiled egg. It felt just perfect. After lunch we drove around some more and did a short walk through the forest. We were tired as we started heading back, but the sun setting low also gave us a different perspective on the leaves. Nearly running out of petrol between Bancroft and Peterborough was not fun though!

E was here briefly on her honeymoon. We spent Thanksgiving weekend together at #1’s brother’s place, and the day after we went apple picking which was so much fun. We wandered through the orchards stuffing ourselves with different varieties of apples, and of course went home with huge bags of apples.

Then dad went on his own to Montreal/Quebec on a Chinese bus tour, and had a good time. He went to Niagara falls too, 23 years after the last time he was on the US side. When I wasn’t working we went to different places in Toronto – leaf rolling in High park was particularly fun, and Scarborough bluffs was really beautiful. Before long his visit was over, and we settled into a slightly more dreary November.

Through summer and fall, my music fun activities really started to pick up. I had moved here with no music, having once made a scrapbook but then annoyingly lost it. I started out playing the Beethoven spring sonata with #3, then we moved onto playing other things like the Bach double concerto, some Mozart violin sonatas… and finally one day we decided to play a trio with her brother, who I had met when my laptop died in August. We started the doofus trio, mashing all the music that we could find, like the Mendelssohn piano trios. One time when my dad was here, he came for a little “concert” where we played and laughed. We each played a violin solo – I played the Romance in F, #3 played the Accolay concerto and her brother the Praeludium & Allegro (what a virtuostic performance!) We also mashed the butterfly lovers, and I think my dad had a really great time. Another time he came to hear just #3 and me play – she played the Swan, air on G and Vocalise on cello, then I played the spring sonata, and finally we did some piano duets. This is just a little snapshot of everything we have done, but it has been some phenomenal fun.

The last weekend in November, I went to Quebec City for a long weekend. I flew out post call into the magic snowy world – I somehow arrived on the first day of snow! I stayed in a cute little house slightly out of town owned by an eccentric man Maxime who had a map of all the people who had airbnb’ed in his house. I went for long drives in the snow out to the country, and went for a snowy walk near Montmorency falls. I felt like I was in another world. I spent a day wandering through old Quebec city, a charming little town with a European feel. Ate a ridiculous amount of poutine. It felt wonderful travelling again and exploring.

A few weeks later, I went to New York city just before it got too cold. For Australians it is strange to fly an hour and be in another country, but America is so close here that you can feel it everywhere. Getting in from Newark, surrounded by people listening to awful noise (“music”) and shouting at each other on the train, I felt distinctly that I had left the gentle Canadia for a more crazy country. New York is big, crowded and rushed. People stare if you dawdle, and push past as if they had better things to do than be held up by a lost soul. I met with friend #3 and we trawled the city eating here and there, poking our head into places. I visited MoMA, a place that I had dreamt about since I was a teenager, and was awed by the collections all under one roof. The most striking piece for me was a naked woman sitting contemplatively, peering into a mirror in which she was black and white, and somewhat distorted. Isn’t this how we see ourselves?