Two new additions to the Queen W food scene

[rgruby]

Had dinner at Addis Ababa last night. The two sisters who run the place are putting out an Ethiopean cookbook, coming out Dec. 5. That's about all I know about it. There aren't very many of them in English, as far as I know - but if it will let you recreate the food at their restaurant, it will be a welcome addition. I suspect it may be self-published, but I don't really know. I'm supposed to be on their mailing list, so I'll hopefully have some more details in a week or two.

And, a new tapas place called Coca has opened up in the place formerly occupied by Gabby's at Queen and Euclid. This has me excited. Doubt I'll be able to check it out before the new year though. If anybody here can check it out, please fill us in.

Cheers,

Geoff Ruby

[estufarian]

Coca had a booth at the recent Food and Wine show. Picked up a copy of their menu which seems to be mainly tapas (more in the real meaning i.e. spanish style rather than the appetizers that are routinely offered in Toronto). They also serve some 'non-traditional' tapas (i.e. small plates) and a handful of mains. Just about everything under $20 except for a T-bone.

Same ownership as Czehoski (which I rate higher than most people - still think it one of the most exciting places in Toronto, although sometimes they fall off the high-wire) and some interesting items (several of which I've had at Czehoski).

Examples:

Quail stuffed with pork belly and figs

Wild white prawns in garlic

Horse tenderloin

The tapas side features 8 different olives, stuffed peppers, roasted beets, 8 different sliced meats/sausages (with assorted mustards) and various desserts - mostly variants on flans/custards.

[FlavoursGal]

Geoff, how's the food at Addis Ababa? I've been to Queen of Sheba (probably in the same vicinity), which I like better than The Ethiopian House. Have you been to either of these? If so, how does Addis Ababa compare?

It would be interesting to have an Ethiopian cookbook. I bought some berbere spices and some other interesting ingredients over a year ago from a little Ethiopian grocery that opened on Queen East (I think it was Queen East); I don't know if it's still open.

[rgruby]

Haven't been to Queen of Sheba in probably a decade. Ethiopean House maybe three or four years ago - but it does seem to be the one favoured by cabbies. So, I can't really compare.

To be honest, I find the food pretty similar at all of them. The menus between the three places are fairly similar, I think. The one thing that sets Addis Ababa apart is the coffee ceremony. They bring out the just roasted coffee beans and shake them around under your nose before bringing them back into the kitchen to make your coffee. The smell is intense, and wonderful - the whole restaurant can smell it. And, I'm not really a coffee guy. When the coffee comes out, they also bring a little thingey of frankinsense. I rarely order it because I'd be wired all night, but it is a nice little taste of Ethiopean hospitality.

You know, I just like the place because the two sisters who run the place are so charming. And now, the son of one of the sisters sometimes works the front of house. He's also learning to play guitar and is into Zep and Hendrix instead of hiphop. So I like him. They also stuck it out at that corner when it was not so nice. Now it's hipster central between the Gladstone and the Drake, and they're reaping some of the benefits - it seems to be consistently busy now. And, it's probably the closest Ethiopean place to my house.

Last visit they were putting teff (a grain from Ethiopia) in the injera. The injera was a little darker, a bit dry, and lacked the lemony tang the non-teff version has. I actually think I like the non-teff version better.

I've had injera with teff before, can't remember if the Ethiopia House might be one of the places that does.

That's about all I can think of off the top of my head.

Cheers,

Geoff Ruby

[FlavoursGal]

Thanks, Geoff. Actually, all of the Ethiopian restaurants do the coffee ceremony. It wouldn't be an authentic Ethiopian restaurant if it wasn't offered.

I actually prefer Queen of Sheba to Ethiopian House because they have a couple of great chicken dishes on the menu; if memory serves me correctly, Ethiopian House does not have chicken on the menu.

Love their stewed collard greens, too.

Edited November 28, 2006 by FlavoursGal (log)

[rgruby]

Well, there you go. I generally don't do the coffee ceremony, so I didn't know it was standard fare.

We did have a chicken dish at AA last visit - it seemed ok but I had a bit of a cold so I couldn't taste it as well as I would have liked. We tend to order the veggie sampler and kay and/or alicha watt, or sometimes lamb. Haven't ordered the raw beef dishes (kinda a beef tartar with Ethiopian spicing) in ages. Maybe 2 ages.

But, an underrated cuisine in my opinion. the gals at AA had talked about opening for breakfast/brunch with what sounded like completely different fare. That plan was apparently abandoned. Does anybody know of other Ethiopean places in town serving breakfast and/or brunch?

Cheers,

Geoff Ruby

[estufarian]

And, a new tapas place called Coca has opened up in the place formerly occupied by Gabby's at Queen and Euclid. This has me excited. Doubt I'll be able to check it out before the new year though. If anybody here can check it out, please fill us in.

Cheers,

Geoff Ruby

←

Visited Coca last night. It's actually two separate restaurants - a tapas bar at street level and a dining room upstairs. The tapas place (both bar and booths) is open every day and the restaurant only Thur/Fri/Sat. Different menus too.

Obviously (as it was a Monday) we were in the tapas bar (more correctly in a booth - the bar stools are pretty high and we were more interested in the food anyway).

The menu has two halves - cold and hot tapas. There's an olive bar - about 8 different types. We tried the licorice which were pretty good. Of the cold tapas, the standout was the quail eggs stuffed with truffled aioli and smoked pork belly. The flavours were tremendous, but the dish was a little too cold for my liking - I would have preferred it at room temperature. And it matched perfectly with a 60 ml (2 oz) serving of a fino sherry. Incidentally, they have about a dozen selections each of red and white wines available by the 2 or 4 or 6 oz serving with other wines by the bottle. For me the best trawling area was the Cocas section, after which the menu is named. Think of a very thin crust pizza with creative toppings. Crispy,crunchy, chewy, savoury - and a big advantage over pizza in that they aren't smothered in tomatoes which, for me, nearly always dominate the flavour of 'real' pizza. There are a few larger dishes (more like large appetizers than mains). The best here was a large quail stuffed with smoked pork belly and figs. But close behind was a mushroom paella served with a goat cheese (?milk) foam. I loved the textures and flavours of the mushrooms - which are of course in season. A wild white prawn dish was lifted by vanilla olive oil and included great bread to sop up the sauce. On the menu were a couple of horsemeat dishes - but this visit I stuck to the more conventional.

Total bill for 2 was around $100 before tax and tip, but including 3 wines each (8oz per person). Pretty fair for what we had.

Service was friendly and accommodating with good knowledge of the dishes but a lesser knowledge of the wines. And the wines by the glass were pretty safe. The sherries seem to be the best buy.

As with all of the 'tapas' places in Toronto (including the small plate dishes erroneously called tapas), such as Lee, JKWB, Cava, Kultura the dishes come out 'at the chef's pleasure' rather than in a designed sequence. Coca is a bit cheaper than all the others. I certainly prefer it to Cava. It doesn't have the buzz/beautiful people of Kultura (probably my favourite of the group) but is much cheaper. Lee is noisier with worse service but better food, but so-so wine selection - and again much more expensive. And I'm not a JKWB fan anyway (although I do think they have a great winelist) - the food at JKWB has not been good on recent visits - which, come to think of it, are no longer that recent for exactly that reason.

Absolutely I'll return - and probably try the upstairs resto next, but on a Monday certainly, Coca is a welcome addition. The main issue in that area is parking.

[rgruby]

Going to bump this up because ...

Habitat has closed and is opening as the Satori (I think) Supper Club. The sign on the door said Nov 22nd opening (ie yesterday). Don't know if that happened.

San has changed hands and/or management.

And the Gypsy Co-op space is being reborn as The Legend Wine Bar and Grill. they also look close to being ready to open, if they haven't already.

And that's just the block between Tecumseth & Niagara!

Cheers,

Geoff Ruby

[jenc]

Thanks for the update Geoff!!

[rgruby]

Well, Legend lasted all of four months or so - closed early April. I don't think I so much as saw anybody going in or out of there.

Butler's Pantry, right beside it, is also closing. Loved their patio, but that's about it.

Cheers,

Geoff

[jenc]

Went to Satori, found it okay. Food was okay - went to a party where they had set menu. Nothing to fault 'em on. Would go back to try if I were i the area.

[rgruby]

A new Thai place is going in the Butler's pantry space.

So, there's what, four Thai places within a couple of blocks?

And Kei, the Malaysian place at Shaw, has been closed for renos for a while now. Looks like it will be a restaurant when it reopens (they're still a long ways off), but whether it will be Kei remains to be seen.

Cheers,

geoff

[rgruby]

Seoul City has just closed, Queen and Euclid. A new Thai place is opening in its place. That's about 10 or fifteen doors down from the former Butler's Pantry location mentioned above.

Maybe another one can open up in the Legend/ Gypsy Co-op location and we can have three Thai locations within about a hundred feet of each other.

Cheers,

Geoff

[rgruby]

Going to bump this up because ...

Habitat has closed and is opening as the Satori (I think) Supper Club. The sign on the door said Nov 22nd opening (ie yesterday). Don't know if that happened.

San has changed hands and/or management.

And the Gypsy Co-op space is being reborn as The Legend Wine Bar and Grill. they also look close to being ready to open, if they haven't already.

And that's just the block between Tecumseth & Niagara!

Cheers,

Geoff Ruby

←

Well, Legend is being reborn as the Dog's Bollocks pub - looks like it's pretty close to being ready.

Sartori has been shuttered, but apparently it's already bean leased. If they don't redo the deor, could be open pretty quickly. I'll try and keep you posted.

Cheers,

Geoff

[rgruby]

A new Thai place is going in the Butler's pantry space.

So, there's what, four Thai places within a couple of blocks?

And Kei, the Malaysian place at Shaw, has been closed for renos for a while now. Looks like it will be a restaurant when it reopens (they're still a long ways off), but whether it will be Kei remains to be seen.

Cheers,

geoff

←

Oddfellows has opened in Kei's place. Apparently run by the same folks - but it looks very different. One long communal table and a weird "oven" that hangs from the ceiling. I haven't had a look at the menu yet.

Cheers,

geoff

[rgruby]

Going to bump this up because ...

Sartori has been shuttered, but apparently it's already bean leased. If they don't redo the deor, could be open pretty quickly. I'll try and keep you posted.

Cheers,

Geoff

←

Vdara opened today in the old Satori/ Habitat/ Future bakery space at Queen and Tecumseth.

the chefs have done time at Centro, Tutta Bene, Greens, Chez Panisse maybe as well? The little blurb they had posted said it would be "upper bohemian" cuisine and lunch would be more of a soup and sandwich type menu.

I did take a quick look at the menu - can't recall much offhand - other than a few things had cutesy names - like "trust me veg" - that you couldn't actually tell what the dish was.

Cheers,

geoff

[rgruby]

Update:

In the last month or so one of the Thai places has changed to an Indian/ Nepali place.

The drug bar beside the bank at Queen and Bathurst has morphed into the Tota Lounge. Menu looks to be pub grub (nachos/wings/burgers) and North-American Italian. Across the road, the former Queenshead pub is going to be a Timmy's. Not sure if it's open or not yet.

And, La Hacienda has shuttered. I'm going to miss that old dive. A bit.

Bungalow Cafe on King has also closed - kinda in the 'hood so I thought I'd mention it.

Cheers,

Geoff

[rgruby]

Update:

And, La Hacienda has shuttered. I'm going to miss that old dive. A bit.

Cheers,

Geoff

←

Well, I spoke too soon - LaHa appears to still be open. Walked by a few days ago and it looked like they had started ripping it apart. So I assumed they were done. My bad.

Not sure if they did any redecorating or not. regardless, they're still open.

Cheers,

Geoff

[CoffeeAddict]

I've been to Vdara in the old Habitat space and it's pretty good.

They have some pretty good fare for very reasonable prices.

Now has a pretty good summation

http://www.nowtoronto.com/food/venue.cfm?v=5159

Chef likes to source stuff locally when he can but it isn't a "locavore" joint.

I've had the prosciutto and the carpaccio and both were done quite well. Marinade wasn't too heavy handed on the duck and the prosciutto was good but not memorable but to be honest I wasn't paying that much attention to it.

Boar and bison stew was fantastic. Basically a red wine pot roast in style but done very well. Very tender meat.

Barney beef ribs were not particularly fantastic or bad... just good. Sides were a bit of a letdown as they were a bit boring.

It sounds like I'm being heavy handed in the critique but I do think this is a great place for the price point. With all but one main at less than $18 and a very fairly priced wine list I think this place should do well.

[rgruby]

Update:

In the last month or so one of the Thai places has changed to an Indian/ Nepali place.

Cheers,

Geoff

←

Well, that didn't last long. the Nepali place has changed to a pan-Asian place.

Cheers,

Geoff

[rgruby]

Well, I started this topic talking about eating at Addis Ababa and Coca opening.

Had dinner on Sunday at Addis Ababa - they've redone the space since I last visited. It feels more open and I think they've probably added a few tables as well by moving the bar to the back of the room.

And Coca has butcher paper up over the windows.

Cheers,

Geoff

[rgruby]

The Bungalow Cafe space on King near Strachan appears to be the new location of Young Thailand's return to the core.

Cheers,

Geoff

[rgruby]

The Bungalow Cafe space on King near Strachan appears to be the new location of Young Thailand's return to the core.

Cheers,

Geoff

←

It's now open.

Coca appears not to be reopening any time soon. They had a sign up for a bit saying under new management etc. A different sign now says the lease has been terminated by the landlord.

Cheers,

Geoff

[rgruby]

Looks like the former Coca space is turning into an outpost of Milagro's (upscale-ish Mexican).

Cheers,

Geoff

[rgruby]

Apalla has opened in the Indus Junction space. Looks more like your standard curry house. They have a lunch buffet. Will try and check it out in the next couple of weeks.

It appears that Jalapeno at King and Tecumseth is gone. I've passed by a few times in the last couple weeks and it hasn't looked open.

Cheers,

Geoff