Yum Yum in my TUM.

I attended The Toronto Underground Market aka TUM for the first time this year. I personally felt prior to going that it wasn’t really worth it since you have to pay $25 just for entrance and then still pay for everything you want to eat…but I also felt kind of obligated to attend this sort of thing as a “foodie”. I still kinda feel like it was a bit of a rip off after honestly.

There were a handful of vendors probably around 15~20, but none that really served anything that really appealed to me. A lot of them were burger/sandwich/taco kind of food which I wasn’t too interested in, and some of the vendors I have already eaten at before or seen at previous festivals.

The interior was pretty neat! Kinda industrial themed.

We got both sweet and savoury waffles to start since we weren’t feeling very hungry when it was only 5:30pm..

I really liked the artwork they had for their signs. And here’s Adrienne turning around perfectly and candidly for my picture : )

Buttermilk fried chicken droool

Chicken was amazing, but the bread was kinda hard and scratched the roof of my mouth : (

Doing what we do best – camwhore while we digest.

Red velvet ice cream sandwich with BACON BITS inside the ice cream! It was kind of cool but at times mine had way too much bacon which was quite salty. Also very artistic shot that we prepared hehe.

The ice cream sandwich was super frozen that we had to stand outside and wait for it to melt down…hence more pictures.

Babi & Co. which was my favourite of the night and the only one that I thought was really worth the money.

Babi on a bun which was love! I really like the bun they used, don’t know what it’s called in English but something like Silver…something Bun? This was really savoury I would totally eat another one.

Not very like me but I bought beer! I was so excited about it because it was ‘Watermelon Beer’ and I thought it would be like fruli…but I was majorly let down because it just tasted like beer : ‘ (

My high-low dress super matched the hipster crowd at TUM. Everyone was in boat shoes/loafers, coloured jeans or shorts, maxi and high/low skirts!

Before we left Adrienne got Arancini which is a stuffed risotto ball. Have never heard of this before but I tried a little bit cause I was really full from my beer : /

 

I can’t say I’d really recommend this event to people because I didn’t think it was worth the money…If you’re going with a large group of friends I guess it may be more worth it because you can try just a teensy bit of everything. I won’t be going next year for sure unless they give me some food tickets along with my entrance fee purchase…OR they decide to invite me as media : ) which I’ll be down for haha. I think they really needed more vendors are possibly more variety? There wasn’t really anything that was interesting and different sold at any of the vendors. The most “fancy” thing they had was a quail egg burger – and I realized later I’ve eaten quail egg before anyway!

It was also more of a chill/ loungey event more than a packed food festival kind of night. I think if there were more people / crowds it would’ve felt more live and my excitement would’ve been higher lol.

Nomming at SongCook’s Authentic Korean Restaurant

I’ve been getting quite lazy with blogging,  I must admit. It’s just after work all I want to do is pretty much nothing lol. Even when my friend Beatrice suggested for us to have dinner at SongCook’s I didn’t even look up what was good to eat there on Urbanspoon : O!! Usually I’m the type of person that likes to look through the whole menu and people’s reviews & tips, and already sort of have in mind what I want to eat before arriving.  What we were most excited about at SongCook’s when we arrived was that they had traditional floor seating!!!! Never have we been this excited to sit on the floor lolol. But we read that it had heated flooring and it would feel much more authentic, so we even asked the waiter to get us a new table (we were originally at regular tables).

We couldn’t feel the floor being heated though : / but maybe because the weather was warm.

Something else that’s pretty cool about SongCook’s is that they serve a huge variety of types of rice. They have a whole array of rice cookers just to provide this! But we didn’t end up ordering it because rice is additional.

We got their Jajangmyun which was recommended on foursquare and by our waiter so we gave it a shot. I think it’s the best jajangmyun I’ve had – I’ve had one at Nakwon before and I didn’t like it at all.. This one is really creamy.

We actually got one of their ‘jajang combos’ where you get half of a regular serving of jajangmyun and then half of another noodle/rice dish – we chose the ChamPong which is spicy seafood noodles. Nothing really spectacular but I really want to try the non-soup version of the champong, it looked really good in the menu.

Lastly, we couldn’t resist getting Kalbi since it was only like $8.99 or so. Really large serving size and was tasty – but not as fatty as I would like it to be : /

Overall, I think this is a great place to try since they have a lot of dishes that your regular Korean restaurants like Nakwon and Owl of Minerva don’t serve (one of them that I also want to try is the ‘Amry Stew’ it reminds me of what they eat on Family Outing); and you get to experience sitting at the floor tables!!! Which is exciting for people like me that haven’t been to Korea. ALSO, they have karaoke nights on Fridays lol. We didn’t stick around though when we found out no one was really singing except one guy which I think is an employee.

If you have foursquare, be sure to check in because on your first check-in you get a free coke!! And screenshot that for next time haha.



 

 

I planted a tree!

This past weekend I went tree planting!! It’s sort of something that has been on my not very serious bucket list. I’ve always been interested in attending a tree planting event, but it’s definitely not a ‘must do before I die’ kind of thing. The organization that I’m volunteering with now Mon Sheong, participated in a tree planting event at Miliken Park led by Trees Across Toronto, so I finally got my chance to do it!

I brought along a couple of my friends too. I feel like the people I volunteer with must think they are my entourage or something now because for social events I keep bringing them LOL.

There was an expected number of around 100 volunteers with about 45 from Mon Sheong but there ended up being over 400 volunteers altogether. The park was filled with people! We also started kind of late so we only managed to plant 2 trees altogether.  I think other than the shortage of trees to go around, the trees were also small in size so digging the hole didn’t take much time.   Nancy was dead set on planting a pine tree she went off on her own to scavenge us one. I went to look for her and I see her walking back like boss with a pine tree in hand <3   We mainly wanted the pine tree because it would make us cooler than everyone else with regular trees (no idea what type)…and cause Nancy said they last longer. LOL longevity is a major factor.

Here’s me obviously very hard at work that I didn’t even notice the picture being taken. And majorly representing Stussy.

Pictures are kind of pink because of Nancy’s iPhone case.. : ‘ (

With my entourage – Horace, Alvin and Nancy.

I don’t know why but we were all super excited about tree planting. We had lots of fun digging, making jokes about “hoes”, picking out gloves lol, and getting excited over how the trees were cute and looked like the trees from Charlie Brown Christmas ..okay maybe this last one was just Nancy and I.  But that is where our tree got its name – Charlie Brown, or affectionately known to us as CB. I even kinda touched a worm to give it to CB’s soil…cause it will help right???

CB and I.

Our artistic earthly shot of CB featuring Horace as the hand model.

And us all again. I think we all thought CB would be in the picture…but he got cut off.. Alvin looks super proud lolol.

Finally! The result of our hard work and dedication

We actually planted another (non-pine) tree after and we did that in like 1 minute – no love. Although we did find an earwig-like thing and we threw it away cause I think they are bad for plants? Actually we probably only did that so the earwig would be farther away from CB <3   I think Horace flung it into another tree though…hehe.

Lastly a group picture at the end with everyone from Mon Sheong. I don’t know why I always end up smack in the middle of group shots…I never try to be but always am : / I feel kind of bad for doing that.

Maybe tree planting is therapeutic (actually I have no idea what I am talking about) because we had breakfast prior to tree planting and did not feel hungry at all for the rest of the day. All we had after was bubble tea, and then a frosty : S

I would love to go tree planting again. I kind of wanted to dig a bigger hole….and like plant larger sized trees? And obviously get to use a HOE. lol kidding.

 

My new favourite Italian Restaurant – Farro

Farro is my new favourite Italian restaurant in town and it gets major bonus points for being uptown!! My friend Nancy gave me a list of restaurants to pick from  to visit, and I picked Farro (thinking it was downtown) solely because it had a 90% rating on Urbanspoon. And to my surprise, it is actually located in Vaughan.  Which makes it so much more accessible to me and my fellow uptown-ers. I like going downtown to eat because there are sooo many different restaurants, but driving and parking is SUCH a hassle. And being the person that isn’t even the driver, I already feel the pain.

There weren’t many reviews on Urbanspoon nor Foursquare so we really just had to choose based on our opinion on what would be yummy and worth the price.

We got some complimentary bread to start of course.

For our appetizer, we debated for so long between mussels or scallops (which we love but is oh so pricey), and ended up choosing the Steamed Mussels with White wine, tomato sauce and a hint of perond because it seemed like it would be a much larger portion. At the time I was also very into mussels because I had really delicious ones at Oyster Boy.  Compared to Oyster Boy the mussels at Farro were much better in size and taste. But Oyster Boy’s soup base was much much more rich and tasty. I think Farro gave a very decent serving size for it’s price of only $12.95. And with it’s large shells, they even took care to give us a bowl to place the empty shells and to switch bowls when the shells were piling up.  The complimentary bread was also very useful for dipping into the soup

For mains we decided to share Gnocchi Gorgonzola with basil pesto, sundried tomatoes and spinach.  Gnocchi has become my new favourite type of pasta. I just love the chewy texture of it, kinda like mochi! The creamy pesto sauce was very delicious and not too overbearing. This is a must try if you love creamy kind of sauces for pasta : )

We also shared a pizza – Quattro Stagioni with Prosciutto Cotto, Artichokes, Mushrooms, Olives, Tomato Sauce & Mozzarella.  It’s the first time I’ve ever had artichokes on pizza :  / I’m not a big fan of it normally but it was bearable actually on the pizza. Gave a sour kind of taste especially since there were olives too. It was good, but the gnocchi was much better.

Here’s  us !! No I am not wearing all white ….just the flash made my yellow shirt turn white, and I had a white tablecloth on my lap too..

We ended up even splurging a little to get dessert too. My favourite kind of cake is Tiramisu so I had to get it since we’re at an Italian restaurant.  It was pretty strong on the coffee tasting side but was quite light and fluffy like how I like it.  I generally like the kind of tiramisu that has lots of thin layers more though.  The one at Le Cafe Michi is really good : 3

Rock Climbing at True North and …Sushi

Just earlier this year, I joined the Exec team of Mon Sheong Youth Group for the Marketing Coordinator position. It’s my plan to gain some experience in the Marketing field if I ever want to switch into that path instead of Accounting in the future, and to meet more people / have more activities to attend. So far I have been helping brainstorm and promote events for the youth group and testing my limited photoshop skills with making posters. But it’s fun to have something new to do!

The first social event I attended was our Rock Climbing event at True North Climbing. Honestly, when I found out our first event was rock climbing I wasn’t too keen on going. I was actually planning to not go because I’m afraid of heights, especially falling from high places. But I knew as an exec and a new one at that, I should go and at least appear. So I decided to ask some friends (Nancy, Isaac & Alvin) if they would like to go too, since I figured it would at least be more fun if my own friends were there. Not that I’m not friends with the other members, just that I only met them for only a couple weeks / a month, so we aren’t that close.

And I am SO glad I went. Especially with my friends that came. My goal was just to not embarrass myself too much, and try to finish climbing one wall. I’ve never climbed before except wall climbing once in Gr. 8 and from my memory I only climbed halfway before getting scared lol. It also wasn’t even a tall wall..  However, my friends were so determined and enthusiastic about it all that it sort of rubbed onto me.  I’m not sure if I just got more brave, or more determined, or hate to quit, but I surprised myself a lot there..and in the good way.  I didn’t expect to actually be able to climb successfully, I didn’t even think I would be able to tie my own harness without help -_- usually I’m really bad with instructions and making knots..etc but somehow I had no problem with it.  I like to think I grew up : ‘ )

The biggest climbing challenge I had was climbing up this crevice like wall… When I saw it, I did not for a second even consider climbing it…it just looked way out of my level. But my friends slowly one by one decided to give it a shot, and I felt like I didn’t want to be such a party pooper and not even give it a try. And I also wanted the satisfaction of accomplishing it. I had A LOT of trouble with it. I think I spent like 5-10 mins on there being stuck at various spots. It’s a wall that doesn’t have much for you to step on, and the advice was to use your back/legs on the actual wall to help boost yourself up…..but I think my leg strength wasn’t enough + probably because I’m short I couldn’t really get a good position that would give me good grip on the wall : /

After lots of whining of not knowing what to do and wanting to give up, I sucked it up and did it. My friends’ encouragement and patience really helped. Thanks guys : D !!!

And here are my amazing friends as well. Seriously, without them I would have never climbed that crevice-y wall.

         

The proper way to climb is to use your legs instead of your arms, because supposedly you’ll tire yourself out very fast. I think I kind of used my arms to make up for where my legs lacked in ..(thanks dragonboat practice).  Anyway, we all had a lot of fun. Every one of them was complimenting me on bringing them to such a fun event, and how it was an amazing day. And it really was. But I think what made it so good was everyone’s spirit as cheesy as that sounds lol. I’d love to go back again….just not any time too soon. I don’t feel exactly like going through all that difficulty just yet as my muscles are still recovering. 

After all that climbing, we wanted nothing more than to eat. And of course what do my friends and I love to eat? Sushi!!! We went to Gal’s Sushi, which is quite generic but I have actually never ordered a la carte from them. I always get a bento, korean food, or udon. I do love their tempura udon (but I think they have recently started to cheap out on the tempura).   With the 4 of us we decided we could get a sushi boat kind of thing : )

Got the Gal’s Special roll – shrimp, salmon, avocado, fish roe & philadelphia cheese wrapped with soybean paper and topped with potato bits.  Honestly when I saw that it looked like it was wrapped with a lettuce like thing I was not loving it, but it actually tastes really good. It’s savoury from all the ingredients like cheese and avocado yet still really fresh tasting. Definitely try this one out if you want to try one of their special rolls.

We decided on a sashimi platter in the end beause we like sashimi more than sushi…and that meant we could order more food : 3

And we also tried the Cloud roll. I think it is savoury but a little TOO savoury. It’s made of crab meat, red snapper, fish roe, green onion and creamy garlic sauce.

 

 

We ended our day with board games LOL. My friend introduced us to a new board game (well new to us) called King of Tokyo which is pretty cool. I think the characters are drawn kinda cutely for monsters. It’s a fun game that is not super competitive so it’s great for just some light hearted board gaming that won’t lead to grudges : )

GOT Exhibition and Kingyo Izakaya

Last month or so I went to the Game of Thrones Exhibition that was in Toronto the weekend before the new season premiered. It wasn’t as big or grand as I expected, but it was still cool to see a lot of the costumes, banners and props. AND of course take a picture on the legendary throne.

They also had this archery game which is supposed to simulate the “wildfire at blackwater bay” scene. I got 3/5 stars which meant I can be a bannerman! LOL  Adrienne got 4 which equaled a lord.  If you only get 1 star the caption says ‘even cowards can serve at the wall’. So jokes yet relevant.

We expected to stay much longer at the exhibition, but I think we actually finished everything within an hour : / There really isn’t too much to see and you can’t really take pictures with things since it’s just all props on display…and often in glass cases. I honestly couldn’t even remember or recognize  most of the stuff .__.

For dinner we went to Kingyo Izakaya.  One major tip from me – book a reservation by phone.  I was lazy and decided to book one just online..and they didn’t really follow through to confirm whether I received it or not. I tried calling and they made it sound like I didn’t get a reservation and couldn’t even tell me if it was fully booked enough so that they wouldn’t take walk ins. However, when I arrived I found out they were fully booked and couldn’t take any walk-ins..BUT I did actually have a reservation. Whoever answered the phone failed on all levels, I’m so glad I decided to be thick skinned and still question my reservation.

We ordered quite a few dishes but my favourite dish of the night has got to be the Mr. Sada’s Sea Urchin Shooter which is made of shiso, stick yamaimo yam, yuzu orange, egg yolk, and sea urchin.  It is prettty price at $7.80 for one shot, but I have always wanted to eat something that is a one-shot / one-bite dish.  I have always seen a lot of the ‘one spoon dishes’ on Japanese shows and they always say it’s so delicious that my opinion of these one bite dishes is that they must have packed a lot of flavour in that small size.

 The chef told us it could be eaten either with a spoon, or mixed together and taken like a shot. I mixed it because I thought that way all the ingredients could be combined and I could taste everything at once. I really liked this dish because it was very delicate and refreshing. The uni also was very fresh and light flavoured – nothing fishy tasting.

Adrienne picked the Negi-Toro Gunkan which is Kingyo gunkan style chopped tuna & Green onion sushi. It was very delicious and the tuna super fresh as well. Something I really like about Kingyo Izakaya is that other than the food being tasty, their plating is very intricate and beautifully laid out!  I have an obsession with intricate layers and mixes of ingredients, and plating from watching too much Top Chef.  Plating just makes the dish more appealing : )

We couldn’t not have Karage while at an izakaya, now could we? I genuinely prefer the fried chicken at Guu Izakaya more, but they definitely gave huge pieces of chicken. It was very juicy too!

One of my favourite sushi/sashimi other than Salmon is Saba so I picked the Shime Saba Battera – Vinegar cured mackerel battera box sushi.

  I cannot eat saba alone without any garnishing, but I absolutely love eating it with green onions / ginger..etc. I was intrigued by this dish because of the box sushi style -I’ve known of it’s existence but never actually ordered it. I think this dish is great for saba lovers, but for those that aren’t too keen on saba it may be a bit too fishy tasting.  The only thing bad about this dish is the saba kept falling off my rice or it kept breaking in half when I tried to pick it up..

Another staple for me at izakayas, is Kimchi Udon. My favourite still is also the one at Guu. I find the one at Guu to be much more creamy and rich, but the texture of the udon at Kingyo was quite nice – it was firm.

I feel like kimchi udon is something that I can totally make at home, so someday hopefully soon I will give it a shot! And post my results lol.

Overall I think the prices at Kingyo are around $1-2 more than their counterparts at Guu…so in a way I guess Guu is still the best since the flavours are around the same, and it is cheaper.

Nomming with Whitney – Five Guys Burgers and Fries

The  burger trend has been going on for a long time but I never usually get the chance to try these burger joints out. Probably because they’re not really place to sit down and chat with friends, and it’s not something a lot of my friends are that interested in. Most of my friends, like me, love Japanese food…hence all the Japanese restaurants I go to. Out of all the trending burger joints, I’ve only visited Shake Shack in New York, until now that is.

Near my workplace in Mississauga is a Five Guys Burger and Fries.  And a couple weeks ago, I finally convinced my co-workers to go with me for lunch : 3  After much researching online (Urbanspoon and Foursquare weren’t very useful because the ratings were all over the place), I decided on the Little Cheeseburger.  I added on quite a lot of toppings though, cause it’s free!! That’s one thing I like about Five Guys is you can order something basic and add on as much as you want – for a cheap price. I even went out of my normal comfort zone and added jalapeño peppers, which added a nice spicy kick to it.  Quality and taste wise, the burger I had at Shake Shack was much better from everything like the bun to the patty. But I guess Five Guys is more of a fast food joint than ‘gourmet burger’.

With my co-workers, we shared a bag full of Cajun Fries.  It’s a really huge serving, a whole paper bag full! However, taste and texture wise the fries weren’t that spectacular. I’ve definitely had better fries, but the Cajun powder does make it a bit better since it adds flavour.

I wouldn’t mind returning to Five Guys for lunch when at work, but if in Toronto I would definitely rather try out some other burger restaurants. The ones on top of my list are  Burger Priest (of course) and Holy Chuck. From seeing pictures and descriptions from other bloggers, I think Holy Chuck seems to be the best.