Rawlicious

  Rawlicious

3092 Dundas St West

Toronto, ON

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8 out of 10

Raw Food

This is not the best raw restaurant ever. Still, I loved it. What it does have is an amazing location in the heart of the junction where a loyal clientele of people trying to healthy and happy come into the most sublime setting for a meal or a smoothie or a juice. The restaurant is a group of rooms winding from the front of the restaurant to the back, with a private room, different seating options (cushions at low tables for a lush eating experience) or high round tables café-style. Or more standard tables next to the middle room fireplace. So you can have an intimate dinner, a casual quick bite in the front window, or somewhere between the two. The other cool thing is it's an open-kitchen. Not a great design since the kitchen is the cash register area as well, but it's really nice to see the (non-)cooks putting the dishes together. So it's a beautiful space. Oh, there are all sorts of beautiful art work on the walls.

The juices? Great. the smoothies? Good. Mine had too much of an empty banana taste that I find happens with agave nectar and dates. So not as good as LIVE Organic Food Bar, but it's still very good. I also agree with the fact that here they don't have alcohol. Raw food seems a bit of a gimmick when you sell cocktails with alcohol. What about the whole "not polluting the body" thing?

So we've established they have good intentions here. My dining companion (who figures he doesn't like raw food) liked his smoothie a lot. He'd also liked Crudessence in Montreal. But then the Pad Thai came (pictured at the top). He didn't like that so much. It was really nothing like Pad Thai. It was actually still pretty good, but it wasn't pad thai. If you call a dish something and that's associated with certain flavours (sour lime, crunchy peanut, spicy sweet tomato and/or tamarind, slightly sweet egg) you need to live up to it. Mind you, Toronto does not have super Thai in the first place, but this version was just not pad thai. Just call it pasta and you'll be fine. I liked the creamy, nut-based sauce, though I asked for some kind of tomato hot sauce (ANYTHING!) to turn it into something that remotely resembled pad thai. I think the biggest problem was that there was way too much of the gloopy sauce. A lime please! Come on! Lime is even raw! Couldn't find any tamarind lying around? I'm being harsh, I know. Keep in mind that I like this place.

The springrolls were another Thai disappointment. There wasn't enough mint, they were soggy since there were marinated vegetables in there, and no crunch. the dipping sauce was even bland. Lack of lime again the problem, I think. In a restaurant specializing in nuts you'd hope they'd get the peanut sauce better.

Side salad? Excellent. Delicious agave-based vinaigrette that was sweet and a refreshing after the pad thai. If a raw restaurant can't do a salad well, though, there's a problem. That's kind of the meat and potatoes of raw food, so to speak.

Raw restaurants usually do amazing desserts. It's the perfect way to end a meal since it really fills you up with healthy fats. No sugar-laden carbs made of fluff and air. It works the same way cheese works but without the salt - you don't need a lot of it to be full. Also, eat too much, and you'll regret it. You do not want a second piece of cheesecake. Trust me.

The cheesecake was lovely. Lemon. Very fresh berry sauce, I think. Cheesecakes are always good in raw restaurants because soaked nuts taste deceptively like cheese from the slight fermentation. I mostly use cashew but macademia is very good. I forget what this one was made of.

The brownie? Well, I liked the vanilla icing since it tasted like pure sugar from the dates (but it lacked same depth that my smoothie had lacked, and for the same reason). The brownie itself should have been richer. Usually raw chocolate mousses are very rich and so this brownie (much denser than a mousse) could have used some more raw chocolate-y taste. Still it was funny to see the walnut pieces in it (they actually tasted a bit bitter) and know that the rest of brownie was made from nut too, but that stuff was ground fine so you don't think about it. Kind of like stuffing a chicken with an egg stuffing (sorry to all vegans for the imagery). It's weird but then you realize it's all raw so it's just a little joke to me. Probably no one else thinks that's a good one...

So I left here feeling so light and happy, and full. My body was giving me a pat on the back (up there with the chicken imagery, I know) and even if the dishes that I'd had weren't amazing, I would happily go back for another meal. I love zucchini noodles. I love big bowls of sauces made from nuts that replace the cream I can't have. I love knowing I'm eating something rich and a little sinful but it's so good for me nutritionally. Vegan food should be delicious, and this almost is. Take that, soy!

Expect To Pay: $18-$35 (for main and a dessert to a juice, entrée, main, and dessert including tax and tip...and a happy soul)
Hours: Tues-Thu, Sun noon-9pm; Fri-Sat noon-10pm
416-519-7150

Concordia Sustainable Food Festival

http://www.mediafire.com/?kcp5ql2if6o6n5c

Here's the audio from a radio feature I did on the workshops and organizations at the Concordia Sustainable Food Festival last week (September 2010). It starts with talking about the food justice organizations and farms present and works its way into talking about the canning and taste-testing workshops I participated in, as well as an interview with Myrite Rotstein from TastyLife. Have you ever eaten baobab? Now I can say I have.

Enoteca Sociale

Enoteca Sociale

1288 Dundas West

Toronto, ON

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9 1/2 out of 10

Italian

Yes, 9 1/2, but that's only for the bread and pasta. Would that I could never eat anything besides these two things again. That's all that's necessary for happiness in life, I'm convinced - bread and pasta. In fact, if I'd passed out in my empty pasta bowl before the main course came my life would have been complete, except I wouldn't have gotten to try another half glass of exquisite Italian red. That's the other reason to come here - the wine list and nearly everything served by the half glass or glass.


This is the sister restaurant of Pizzeria Libretto on Ossington. Instead of pizza they do pasta. Sure they do meats and appetizers, but I don't care about those.

This place is going to be constantly packed. Apparently half the restaurant is given to those with reservations and the other half is left for neighbourhood foot traffic. So any given night you can get a table. Still, expect a wait, especially once the patio closes. Sit at the bar or at a table placed pretty close to your neighbour, and enjoy the trattoria experience. This is Italy. I never ate better than this in Italy. Never. Believe me, I tried.

So the thing is, I make a ton of pasta myself. I love my fresh pasta so much that after I'd made it for the first time I knew I could never go back to dried pasta, but I also thought I knew what good pasta was supposed to taste like. No, I was wrong, because Enoteca Sociale's pasta is what pasta is supposed to taste like. Their durum semolina is the most flavourful pasta-making miracle in Toronto. Better even than the pasta place at St. Lawrence Market. It's all about the flour/egg/oil combo and here they get it right. The thin, flat noodles of the pappardelle with braised rabbit were little bites of joy. The only mistake was that it came with a little bit of cheese (an unsalty parmiggiano I'd guess?) and I'd asked if there was cheese in the dish and they'd said no. But it's pasta. Of course there's cheese, and it's better for it. It makes something so simple into something sublime. The server begged to take the half-eaten dish back to the kitchen and get me a new one, but my main thought about that was that as much as I'd love another bowl of the heavenly stuff I couldn't possibly finish it and there was no way I was letting such a beautiful dish go to waste. There was a reason I'd eaten half a bowl of the stuff even though I can't digest cheese. Even taking leftovers is not the same. The cheese was perfect, anyway, and I think the rich wine cut through it nicely. It may have even been raw milk cheese because they have a lot of that on their cheese menu, and I didn't get sick. The rabbit gave a depth to the dish and brought out of the sweet flavour of the pasta itself. It was light, smooth, and every strand stayed separate. Better than a similar dish at Loire Restaurant on Harbord, but they're French, not Italian, so it's not their fault.

The other great thing here was the bread. It tasted like sourdough with a tangy flavour. Dipped in olive oil the earthiness of the cold-pressed fruit was heavenly with the tang. God forbid you eat this with butter. You could, but I'd be sad for you. It would be delicious, I know, but good quality olive oil is easier to find than good quality butter in Toronto.

The bread was not fluff bread, but it wasn't dense. The edges were crisp and the insides moist and pillowy when you chewed. I actually stopped the server and asked, "Excuse me, do you KNOW how good this bread is?" She packed three extra pieces in my to-go container of leftover cornish hen. I remember nothing about the cornish hen except that it was okay. I think the skin was under-crisp. I didn't care. I was still luxuriating in the memory of sourdough and semolina. I didn't need or want another piece, but just sitting there appreciating what I had just had was enough. It did remind me of a busy street on a Friday night in Milan, but that's only because I didn't make it that far south in Italy. This is not Northern Italian cuisine (Milan), though they do have wines here from all regions. Actually, their wines are offerings you won't find many other places. They're all exceptional examples of regional varietals. Have you ever had a gialla? A friulano? Not what you expect. I didn't order them but just the sight of them on the menu pulled me back to an afternoon in a wine shop (In Italy 'enoteca' can mean wine bar or shop or both. Usually a shop will have a bar where they may serve samples) in Pavia (south of Milan) where the owner opened a bottle of a local bottle of watery stuff while we listened to Andrea Bocelli and Celine Dion, as well as other Italian standards. I'm sure the bottles here were of much higher quality.

I think I love this place because it's so very much Italian without any Toronto pretension. It's casual but with incredible service - so fast and efficient, but courteous and professional. It's affordable but with exquisite wines by the glass. There's a tasting menu but you could just get a simple pasta with a contorno (side dish) of squash with thyme, honey and butter (so rustic and autumnal) for a simple meal after work. It's more likely you'll end with some cheese (fresh local or specialty imported stored in the restaurant's own cheese cave at optimal temperatures, served on platters according to your own selections) from the enormous cheese menu than with one of the simple three desserts. A meal doesn't have to end sweet. At least not every day of the week. You're going to want to come here often, so at some point you'll not want chocolate. At that point you'll switch to cheese to add the final layer of the meal to your top of your stomach, like a layer of insulation against hunger. Now that's Italy. This is a reason to love Toronto.

416-534-1200
www.sociale.ca 

Guru Lukshmi

Guru Lukshmi

2555 Erin Centre Blvd. #3

Mississauga, ON

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9 out of 10

Best South Indian I've ever had.

My brother and I drove to Mississauga (from Toronto, not Montreal) to a little a strip mall by Erin Mills to experience this restaurant. Maybe Brampton has better (I have no idea) but Little India on Gerrard does not. Udupi Palace, for example, is good, but this place is better. It tastes fresher, there are more options (not always a good thing, but in this case it was), you can customize according to taste, and there are items I haven't seen anywhere else.

Most places, "South Indian" is synonymous with dosa - the thin crepe-like wrap made of slightly fermented lentils. That's all well and good, but with Indian food it's never about one thing. Dosa is also about the rasam, the coconut chutney, the coriander chutney, the sambar, and for me, the idli. You come to Guru Lukshmi for all these things, and the first thing on the list is not the dosas themselves, as wonderful as those are here.

Best things about this restaurant, in order:
1. The coconut chutney. Unbelievably fresh and sweet. Not metallic and dry. SO good for you and you just want to eat it with a spoon.
2. The rasam.

Sweet and sour tomato-tamarind soup. I've had lots of rasam before but never has the tamarind stood out like this. It was a little mouth-puckering instead of just oily tomato soup.

3. The dosa itself. Choose from paper-thin dosa, steamed thicker dosa, no oil, a little oil, regular amount of oil, your chili heat preference, and of course, two menu pages worth of fillings. Everything is there from the classic masala dosa stuffed with masala-spiced potatoes (masala is just a spice blend that depends on the chef. It really just means "spice blend") to all kinds of chilies or even chocolate...hmm...I wonder if they could put those together for me? Anyway, in mine I could taste the fenugreek and fennel seed. Oh, and the cumin. Whole cumin seed. If you've never seen one of these dosas before, here's another picture:

They can be rolled up into a burrito-like wrap or just folded over like a very large omelet (top of post). Here it didn't really matter because everyone was eating traditionally - with the right hand only. The left is used to wash yourself (well, traditionally. Probably not in Canada. Hygiene is a little different here). But try eating this messy thing with just one hand! You kind of need to break off pieces. Mine was helpfully sliced into four wraps, making it easy to lift one quarter at a time, but I don't think this was quite what is normally done. The folded over ones (from what I saw) need to be opened and the fillings swept to the side. Then you break off pieces of the crispy parts of the dosa and use them as utensils to pick up pieces of the fillings. This works fine when it's a potato, or a soft mash of some kind, but when it's pieces of things it gets tricky. Makes sense that so many dishes are soft mashes in Indian cooking since they've got to pick them up somehow. Still, no matter what you do, it gets messy. I marveled at how it seemed easy to everyone else in the restaurant (we were the only Caucasians. A good sign except I feel like I'm intruding without an invitation). It's probably like chopsticks where it just takes a little practice. Maybe it's also not great for me since I'm left-handed and I kept trying to reach with my left hand, only to stop myself. There is a sink in the open area of the restaurant to wash your hands even. That way you don't create a line to get into the bathroom just to maintain hand hygeine. Very smart.

I had the vegetable spring dosa with chettinad ($9) that you couldn't really get without oil even though it's supposed to be lower-fat. What they really mean is the insides have more vegetables and less oil, but it's still pretty sticky. The chettinad was a blend of red chilies, herbs and spices combined with crisp cabbage (I think) and some other crunchy vegetables that I had a hard time of stopping myself to loo9k at. I didn't find too hot at all, but I eat hot sauce by the spoonful. Every time I go for Indian I have to be very insistent that I actually want it spicy. I love the flavourful burn, and here the heat didn't overpower anything for me. Hurray!

So there are some limitations to the dosa selection, but there are two entire pages of options. Everything from onion to coriander, cumin, vegetable curry-stuffed, cheese, ghee (clarified butter), tomato, greens in gravy (I imagine like saag? Though they have another saag dosa with feta), chana dal (like chickpeas) and all kinds of different chili peppers ground or fried and stuffed in the various dosa shells. Two exceptional things you can get are chocolate dosas (with nutella - I think rarely found in Indian restaurants...but a brilliant innovation. If crepes can do it, so can dosa. Maybe that should be their motto. Just no ham and cheese, please. Gross).

4. The idli.

These are just fermented rice and lentil flying saucers that are steamed. I never think they're anything special, which is why I keep ordering them wherever I go. I want to find a place where they have a flavour and I can figure out why they're on South Indian menus in the first place. Indian food is all about spice (not necessarily heat) and more importantly, about flavour, so these things are generally horribly bland by comparison. Here they're a little more interesting, but I think it's because of the accompanying sides. You dip these guys in the sambhar or the aforementioned heavenly coconut chutney. The sambhar is kind of a soup whose contents vary from restaurant to restaurant, cook to cook, like spice blends. Usually it's tomato-based and is garnished with coriander. It was okay, but the interesting thing on this plate that I'd never seen before was the idli powder (top right corner of photo). The powder was like a concentrated form of the idli ithemselves. There was a real, slightly nutty flavour. Very savoury and like fine pebbles to be crunched. You eat them and you think "Oh! THAT'S what idli are supposed to taste like." But when they get steamed they lose some of that quality and the chutneys come to the rescue. I think of idli as Indian pasta. In the world of pasta there's really good kinds that have real flavour from the egg and durum semolina or high quality flour, and then there are generic boxed pastas from the supermarket that gets eaten by the pound. It's like inhaling air, but it's still beloved by so many people. It's a staple. Other people might try it for the first time and wonder why we'd put something so tasteless in our mouths. I'm sure hordes of foreign exchange students go through that when they come to Canada and buy the cheapest thing in the grocery store - pasta. Normally this flavourless confusion is me with idli, but not here. Here I get it a little.

Something else I'd never seen before was a page of options for the jain and swaninarayan communites. I didn't even know there was one or what that was. All those options are without garlic and onion. They're two religious communities that obviously are large enough to be catered to at a great restaurant. This would also be great for anyone with onion or garlic allergies or intolerances.

I wish I could have tried the South Indian desserts. They're hard to find, but as it stood my stomach was full (and happy). So another time perhaps I'll try the payasam. Though, maybe not, since it's like rice pudding (made with milk) and would knock me on my lactose-intolerant bum for awhile. That bum would like to stay un-sat on more often.

Mylys Restaurant

Mylys Restaurant

738 Jarry East

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8 out of 10

Vietnamese

In search of Pho', I went to Mylys. I'm immediately interested in any Vietnamese restaurant that calls itself "healthy" because it means that maybe, just maybe, they don't use MSG. Their sign also said they had sushi, though, which doesn't bode well for an authentic Vietnamese restaurant, in my opinion. It's "bring your own wine", though, so that's definitely healthy, right? Can you bring just one glass of red? Who would even ask that? Certainly not a Quebecer.

I've been going all over the city in search of the best beef broth for pho' with Pho Lien the winner so far. After a meal here, I was impressed, but I still give the crown to Pho Lien.

Here the broth was rich without being greasy. The colour was good, so it was properly strained, and I could taste the star anise. My only real complaint is that I asked for raw meat and by the time the bowl got to me it was all cooked. It came really fast and the distance between the kitchen and my table was not that great (plus the restaurant wasn't really busy), but the previously raw meat had all shriveled up a bit by the time it hit my table. I did have the mixed bowl of well-done meat and raw, so you see the unfurled well-done stuff on top in the picture above. When the quality check came from the server ("How is everything?) I said it was good but explained that I really liked raw beef. He was very apologetic and said I should ask for it on the side so I could add it myself. What a novel concept. I don't know how I feel about it, though, because if the broth isn't piping hot I'd be worried about contamination. And then if you only add a bit of meat to the bowl at a time, by the time you get to the end your broth will definitely be cooler (not hot enough to kill off any bacteria on the meat). So basically you can never have an entire bowl of soup without being very concerned about contamination.

Hmm...well, takeout is 10% off from Monday-Saturday 4pm-10pm. If only I didn't live a good 50 minutes from this restaurant...

Oh, the spring rolls ($3 for 2) were disappointing. The peanut sauce was pretty much just processed peanuts (no pieces), which is better than adding a lot of fake things with ingredients you can't pronounce (aka preservatives/additives), but it wasn't very complex or rich. Just thick and oily. The crab stick in them was a bit weird and the shrimp was tasteless.

One added bonus of this place is you can get a mini-Pho' soup for $1.75, or if you can never decide if you want the pho' combo or the bun combo, or another combo, you can get the mini-Pho' as part of the ridiculously well-priced $12.50 lunch or dinner deal that comes with 2 imperial rolls, two grilled chicken (I assume skewers?), 1 beef (skewer, again?), rice or vermicellli and a cookie and tea. That's basically bun without the fish sauce to pour over it all. Or maybe it comes with that too? Anyway, you'll be VERY full. The best deals are the pho', though. A large for $6.75 was huge. $7.75 for the extra-large just seems like overkill. $8.95 for raw and well-done flank beef, and the well-done was pretty okay taste-wise, if you like chewy things.

Expect To Pay: $7.50-$15 to be completely stuffed
Hours: Mon-Sat 11am-10pm
514-279-1111

Chez Anas

Chez Anas

552 Rue de l'Église 

Verdun, Montreal, QC

This is not a review. This is a call to arms...well, in terms of restaurant-going. I walked in here and walked myself up to the owner and asked,

"Excusez-moi, est-ce qu'il y a terrasse en haut?" Is there a patio above?

You see, I was across the street about to go into Parisa for some Iranian food when I turned around and saw this cabana of a terrasse. If this were the middle of a desert I'd assume it was a mirage, but no, this is Verdun. There are no oases (plural of oasis...) in Verdun.

...And yet, there is a second story straw and umbrella-topped patio. It belongs to a French-ish, Fusion-ish restaurant called Chez Anas. It's owned by one man, Anas, who is reputed to be very artist-friendly (and in general, not just to the the bohemian type). His menu is all home-made and the only online complaint I've seen is that it's a bit expensive for what it is. Soups, salads and sandwiches for lunch, and chicken, game and pasta for supper. Emphasis on the game (rabbit, bison), also apparently. If I remember correctly it's fusion-ish because of some of the sauces, such as some Thai-inspired pasta sauces and some Spanish tapas-like offerings. The rest seemed pretty standard French (duck leg and snails, even). You can assume that pan sauces get reduced and there's butter involved, especially in the menu items that end with an accent aigu. There's even a very Quebec tarte a sucre (sugar pie...diabetic nightmare but Quebecois dreams are made of these...). It's BYOB, so at least when you pay $30 for a home-made meal you're really getting your money's worth. Who's going to make their own snails? 

Chez Anas
Where: 552 Rue de l'Église
Expect To Pay: $10-$17 for lunch, $20-$35 for dinner, including tax and tip (It's BYOB)
514-769-0658

Tehran Restaurant

Tehran Restaurant

5065 Boulevard de Maisonneuve West

Montreal, QC

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6 1/2 out of 10

I biked past this place for a whole summer and never went once, despite looking it up and finding it had decent reviews. It just doesn't look like much from the outside but inside it's a giant dining room. when I went for lunch it was empty. Over the course of an hour and a half only one couple came in and one man ordered take-out (both were possibly Iranian, though).

The prices are pretty good, the servings are ample, and the food is again, pretty good, so there's no reason this place shouldn't be doing well. It's got nothing on Parisa in terms of quality and taste but it's maybe more convenient located across the street from Vendome metro.

A meal starts with the noodle, spinach, mint and lentil soup. the same one that started the meal at Parisa. The mint looks soup and tastes like nothing, I can't find a piece of spinach to save my life, but the yogurt is deliciously tangy and the lentils are fresh. the fried onions on the side look strangely breaded, so add crunch until they get soggy, but don't really have any of the delicious fried onion taste I'm used to from Indian cooking.

The fried onions show up on the side of the eggplant appetizer ($6 for the appetizer, $16 for the same thing served as a main course). It's a simple purée of tomato, egg and herb. I can't find the egg, though, and it's over processed so the texture is lost. There's no smoky flavour and the tomato overwhelms (maybe canned tomatoes?). The onions are piled high on the sides of the dish because they'd taste like nothing if you mixed them in. Really it was just too tomato-y but I love eggplant so much and it really wasn't bad. It just wasn't amazing. The pita bread you ate it with was cold (refrigerated), though, and the raw onion and little plastic packages of butter that came with them at the beginning didn't really help them shine.

Then a strange thing happened. I had ordered the chicken in a tomato sauce ($14) that came with barberrie rice. Out comes this platter of rice, enough for a large family. It's completely beautiful, arrange with so much barberrie (the small, red currant-like dried fruit) in layers with basmati and saffron rice. Then a second plate with this enormous chicken breast, again, enough for a large family. I am not a large family. I think I at about 5 bites of each. Not that it wasn't good, but it was just a LOT of food and the soup had really been delicious and thick and not lemony enough, but very oily and filling with chickpeas and beans. Really I could have stopped after soup.

The chicken basically fell apart when I touched it with my fork. I was so excited! Then, somehow, it was tough!!! How does this happen? The strands were falling apart in the pool of orange but it was overly chewy. I don't understand. After leaving it in the tomato sauce in my fridge for a couple days it relaxed a little and the rigor mortis eased off, but at the restaurant I was baffled. The tomato sauce was boring and fatty since it contained the juices of the chicken. If I'd come here before the pomegranate walnut sauce at Parisa I would have liked it more. The price was amazing though since the soup comes with that giant chicken and platter of rice.

The kebabs are generally what people judge any Middle Eastern restaurant by, and these are okay. Much better than fast food. They're marinated and pretty tender, but just fine. the Jooge Sulanti is a beef and chicken skewer for $22.50 and is a giant platter of rice with one skewer on each side to save having that extra dish. There's no sauce to get in the way.  Just the chicken kebab and rice (including soup) is $18. The beef kebab had a strong aftertaste of dried garlic powder and it was too chewy, but if you like a tougher steak you will like it. It's a fair bit of meat anyway.

The chicken skewer was wonderful! It was SO tender and a little lemony and a little oily. It was very homestyle comfort food-y. the tomato on the side is to be squeezed over the rice but it isn't really charred very well, making it difficult to squeeze.

Then you get tea at the end. Traditional Iranian tea with sugar cubes on the side. Unfortunately the cubes had been sitting in the air-conditioned restaurant about 3 months too long and decided not to dissolve. How can you blame them?

So this restaurant is more casual than Parisa. It's definitely not trying to be a fancy restaurant. All the sauces are simple, the spices are simple ("soma" - a mixture of spices - is offered instead of salt, though I think it's made of mostly salt anyway). That's how the server told me it was spelled but I can't find too much info on it. Help? So come here if you want a lot of food for a small price, and get one of the chicken dishes. they also specialize in comforting stews such as Ghormeh Sabzi ($14) - a beef and vegetable stew with kidney beans and basmati and saffron rice. You'll be full for two days. On Thursday you can get the lamb shank special served with traditional fava beans and dill rice. If their chicken is any indication it'll be fall off the bones tender but you'll bizarrely have to chew it like jerky.

I want more flavours, more complexity, not just sustenance. Kind of like buying a ham and cheese sandwich at the grocery store. It'll never be more than ham and cheese, and you'll know you could have done it yourself at home for less money...but you didn't. There's the added part about this being "exotic" food that generally North Americans don't cook in their own homes. There's nothing hard about it, but come here once first, and find out what it's supposed to taste like with simple ingredients. then go to Parisa and learn how to make it gourmet. Then make it at home and go back to Parisa for special occasions and here to Tehran Restaurant when you don't have the heart too cook simple food at home and are about to buy a sandwich from the grocery store. This is much better than a sandwich from the grocery store or a kebab from Basha. I'm embarrassed to even make that comparison.

Hours: 11:30am-11:30pm, daily
Expect To Pay: $18-$30 including tax, tip and a full meal with soup
514-488-0400

Lola Rosa

Lola Rosa Vegetarian Bistro

545 Milton

Montreal, QC

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7 1/2 out of 10

I'm convinced this is the best, most affordable restaurant around McGill. It serves real food using good quality products and a whole lot of care. The owner has no idea who I am but I think he's about the best restaurant owner ever. Good guy, down to earth, reasonable and efficient, but also laid back enough to create a casual vibe in the resto. You can tell he's in the business because he loves it. He respects every customer and I assume he respects every employee the same way.

Then there's the food. You know, I'm not really blown away by it, but I blame this on my lactose-intolerance. When you skip the cheese on the burrito you miss out on a complete, savoury dimension of an otherwise hot and sticky mess called a burrito ($11), nachos ($12, or $7 for half), lasagna ($12), polenta ($11 - cornmeal topped with ratatouille, cheese and salsa) or a quesadilla ($11). Then there are the ragouts, the chili ($11) where more tomato takes over and runs amok without being tempered by cooling cheese. When mozzarella isn't involved, there's feta to pick up the torch, as it does in the tomato pie ($12) or the Tunisian ragout ($11) of cabbage, tomatoes (again), bulgur, chickpeas and roasted almonds. Fortunately there remain a few good cheese-less options. The curry ($11.50) is made with coconut milk, sweet potatoes, carrots, peas, raisins, and chickpeas, and come winter it's the kind of thing you crave. In summer, however, you're better off sticking with the hemp burger ($11.50). Skip the "Veggie Burger" ($9.50), the only thing not made in-house. The hemp burger is a Lola Rosa creation. A patty of mostly tofu and hemp seeds gets slathered with barbecue sauce and melted brie, to give you sweet and spicy flavours from the sauce, and a melty, oozing, tongue-cooling brie on a surprisingly convincing patty. I'm really tough on veggie burgers, but when you dress them up this pretty it's hard not to like them. Kind of like dousing your broccoli in cheese sauce. I hear kids are more likely to eat it when it's served like that. What do I know about kids? They're all crazy to me. Maybe it's just cheese that makes everything better. They certainly seem to think so here at Lola Rosa, and for the food they make, they're probably right. I wish there were a few more vegan options, and I wish everything wasn't tomato-based, but to be honest, one of the best thing I've had here was the salad ($11, or $7 for half). Black bean burrito was fine, but nothing to write home about, but the salad?

The salad was wonderful. I'm not the type to dance a jig over a salad, but good quality, fresh romaine lettuce was the base for chickpeas, amazingly freshly grated carrots, a few pieces of green pepper, tons of green onion, pickled hot peppers (the only questionable addition), crisp purple cabbage wonderful kalamata olives and two slices of sweet orange for garnish. This was all well and good, but the salad dressing made the dish. Maple syrup, balsamic vinegar, and a delicious grainy dijon mustard. It's true, I'm a little obsessed with dijon, but the dressing wasn't too sweet, it wasn't too vinegar-y, and it wasn't too oily. You could taste it on every bite and for awhile I was convinced it was raspberry, that's how fruity the balsamic was. Maybe they should do more with balsamic and less with cheese.

Then there's dessert. They do have a vegan chocolate cake ($4) but it's dry and certainly not the best in the world. if you're not vegan or lactose-intolerant you're going to want to go with the key lime pie ($4.75) or the cheesecake ($4.75) if you like pineapple. The really nice thing about the menu is it tells you right there what's vegan, vegetarian or can be made vegan (unfortunately that usually just means leaving out the trouble-making ingredient, thus making the dish less complete, kind of like cutting off a hand. You probably need that hand.



Expect To Pay: $12.50-$19 including tax and tip
Hours: Mon-Thurs 11:30am-9:30pm, Fri 11:30am-10pm, Sat noon-10pm, Sun noon-9:30pm
514-287-9337

Burritoville

2055 rue Bishop

Montreal, QC

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7 out of 10

This messy, gooey thing is a Burritoville taco. You'd think I'd get the burrito at Burritoville but you can't get three different kinds of those for less than $11 tax in. They have almost the same fillings (add brown rice - not the most intense of flavour additions) so for $3.50 a piece they're the best way to figure out which burrito to buy next time.

Things of Note: The tomato salsas are half canned tomatoes and half fresh, the green tomatillo salsa would be incredible if it were fresh but it's all canned, though you can find the most amazing tomatillos right now at the Plateau and Mile End Farmers' Markets. The tacos are the only things served on corn tortillas and everything else is wheat, so if you've got a gluten problem go with the delicious corn version. You can sample the three types of corn tortilla chips they serve with salsa at the cash, or spend money to try some with their nachos. The cheese is probiotic "raw" cheese so if you're lactose-intolerant you will either feel less sick or not at all sick depending on how sensitive you are. You can also replace the cheese with guacamole or sweet potato at no extra charge in the burritos, tacos and quesadillas. I don't know what they'd say if you said you wanted the nachos without cheese but with sweet potato. You'd probably get away with a guac substitute.

When they write "garlic" as the second ingredient in the "original" taco and burrito they mean it. That's a whole lot of vampire-fighting kick. I personally thought it was delicious, though, because any strong flavour in a taco is better than smooth, bland mush. The three tacos all tasted kind of similar but the sweet potato version does stand out a little more because of its sweetness (remember you can add sweet potato to any of the others, though). Combined with the apples, raisins and optional cheese, it was a bit too salty-sweet. So "stand out" is not necessarily a good thing. It could have used a bit more 'hot', which is where the big bottle of hot sauce in the restaurant comes in. If only there was lime, this would be great.

The three-bean chili version (pictured above) is supposed to come with onions, carrots, celery, peppers and mushrooms in addition to kidney, pinto, and black beans, but everything got a little too puréed to really tell it apart. Still, I have faith that that the taco was better for including these healthful items (kind of like you're better off for having eating that salad with your duck confit or that one piece of lettuce on your hamburger), adding flavour through vegetables instead of excess salt.

You can bump up your taco ($3.50), burrito ($7) or quesadilla ($7-$8.50) to a combo ($10-$11.50) including a side (chips and salsa, a beautiful sprout salad, a quinoa salad, passable guacamole, or a soup of the day. Sometimes there's no soup, but when you're already melting that's okay), and guacamole. You can also keep bumping to that very Montreal term - a trio ($12.50-$14) - by adding a homemade lemonade (regular or raspberry) or a santa cruz soda or a 2nd side. McAuslan beer is also available, or red wine. The only menu items I'm not covering are the roasted vegetable quesadilla and the spinach quesadilla because they don't seem much like quesadillas to me. They're just protein-less bean replacements, so they kind of just seem like wraps with hot sauce. If you don't want beans, though, these quesadillas are an option.

For dessert there are homemade cookies. These are lovely. They're not the best in the world, but the ginger tastes like actual ginger and the lemon tastes like lemon. All is right in the world.

Expect To Pay: $11-$15 including tax and tip
Hours: Mon-Sat 11am-11pm
514-286-2776