O perfil de mckayl70

Yuck, yuck, yuck!

Shopsy’s Deli on Richmond West is proof that you really can’t go home again.

I was really excited to find this Shopsy’s when I visited Toronto over Christmas. I really wanted proper North American deli food and I remembered how good Shopsy’s was when I lived in Toronto growing up….

First, it was a devil of a job to find the place. It is in the PATH system under the Sheraton hotel and a Shopsy’s sign points to a doorway. On entering, I found myself, my husband and our 2 small children in a bar. We walked back out, we walked around and came back to the same door. A woman at the bar told us that you had to walk through the bar to get to Shopsy’s.

We were greeted (I use the term loosely) by a waitress who clearly had no joy in her life. My husband and I ordered hot dogs and potato salad and the kids had chicken fingers. I have to say that I have never had anything so tasteless in my life. I’m not making this up – the potato salad didn’t taste of anything, not even potatoes. The hot dog wasn’t great and it certainly wasn’t what I remembered.

For what it’s worth, the kids enjoyed their meals.

To top off our visit, our bored waitress didn’t give us the opportunity to order coffee or bring the kids the dessert they were entitled to with their children’s menu order – she simply presented us with the bill as soon as the plates were cleared away.

Definitely one to miss!

I visited Babylon this week with a group of 7 people. The restaurant is lovely and the food was great.
We had a set menu which I thought was very reasonable given the location, Babylon’s reputation and the wonderful gardens (I was pleased to step out onto the terrace and see the flamingos below!).
The service was very friendly but incredibly slow. We waited 45 minutes to receive our starters and then there was a 30 minute break between the starters and the main course.
My poor rating relates only to the slow service. It detracted from the lovely surroundings, good company and food to have my boss shooting me looks from the other end of the table and eventually saying to me “If the food is not here in the next 5 minutes we’re leaving”.

What a wonderful hotel!
It is an old abbey in the middle of the forest in Rambouillet. When I visited last year I was attending a very serious and highly charged executive committee meeting for work. Inside the meeting room things were quite tense but outside the snow came down and when we retired to the common areas with their huge fires and the dining room with the wonderful food, all of the tension melted away. It was a perfect picture postcard scene with the cold and snow outside and a roaring fire in the lounge.
The only downside would be that if you have a bedroom anywhere near the large fireplaces, your room and clothing stored there will smell of smoke.

Maybe my kids were too young (2 and 4) to fully enjoy the Hamleys experience or maybe we just went on a bad day, but I was really disappointed and the kids, although they had an okay time, weren’t exactly delirious with pleasure.

We stuck to the girls, boys and pre-school floors and there weren’t that many interactive experiences for the kids or toys for them to try out.

I did buy my daughter a few things for her birthday and opted to have them “gift wrapped”. The sale clerk ripped the tape with her teeth (ew!) and quite honestly, I would have done a better job at home.

I thought I was just being cynical because I’m Canadian so used to the whole department toy store experience on a bigger scale. My husband, who’s English, said he used to go as a kid and remembered it being a lot better. I guess it just depends whose eyes the experience is seen through!

I had dinner here with a friend after she heard rave reviews from colleagues. Maybe they were having an off-night, but our experience was distinctly underwhelming.

If I wanted to be naive I could say that our waiter had an unfortunate facial tic. Being a cynic, it’s my belief that he didn’t agree with our choice of wine. Upon hearing what we wanted his face contorted into hideous disapproval. Granted we weren’t ordering the most expensive bottle of wine on the menu, but it was by no means the cheapest.

My starter of goat’s cheese bruschetta was stone cold. Am I just a heathen and it’s supposed to be cold? Any other time I’ve had bruschetta it’s been warm. Even if it was meant to be served cold, it didn’t work. My friend didn’t rate her pumpkin soup either.

The main of salmon with lentils was okay, but my dessert of summer fruits with mascarpone didn’t work at all - there were 4 small pieces of fruit floating in a sea of juice with less than a teaspoonful of mascarpone.

The interior of the restaurant is a mixed bag. The rustic tiles are gorgeous but the back wall of the restaurant is taken up with a cliched and tacky mural.

I had really been looking forward to dinner at Cantina del Ponte, but was so disappointed I won’t be returning in a hurry.

North Americans love Sunday brunch, the leisurely dining experience between breakfast and lunch and nobody does brunch better than the Hot House Cafe in Toronto.

For a start, it’s in the St Lawrence Market which is an attraction in itself.

Next is the food. It’s $17.95 per head and you can choose from traditional breakfast foods or opt for carvery roast beef, a dizzying array of fresh salads, seafood, fresh baked muffins and waffles or signature dishes such as lasagne or chicken with bourbon BBQ sauce.

Finally, they have live jazz to accompany your gorge fest. I know that the all you can eat buffet is an invitation rather than a challenge, but with such wonderful food available it’s too difficult not to try a little bit of everything!

The Sunday Brunch menu is available between 9:30am and 3:00pm and booking is not only advisable but necessary.

A friend of mine recommend this pub/restaurant to me, saying that she had a really good meal there.

My husband and I pitched up one weeknight evening and our entrance was like something out of an old Western. Had there been music or a piano playing, it would have stopped immediately on our entrance. Everyone within eye-line of the door turned to look at us and we could feel eyes burning into us as we took a table in the farthest corner of the room.

As we settled with a drink, our conversation was interrupted by the people playing pool, most of whom weren’t wearing shirts (and it wasn’t a warm evening) were swearing loudly and frequently and were talking about random acts of violence.

We had already placed our food order by that point so had no choice but to grin and bear it.

The food was the saving grace of the evening. It arrived promptly, was served with a smile and was delicious. I had a steak which was a good 2 inches thick and was cooked exactly as I had ordered.

We probably won’t go back just to see if we visited on an off-night. The atmosphere of impending carnage has put us off, despite the fact that the food was so good.

This is a chain restaurant found in malls throughout the UK.

The food is very good with toasted paninis, speciality sandwiches and a range of pastas on offer. It’s an ideal place to stop for lunch while out shopping, even if it is in a rather odd, undefined space in the middle of The Royals shopping centre.

They have plenty of highchairs and a kids menu which represents good value.

It used to be fairly unpleasant, especially when you were trying to have lunch with small children, as it seemed to be frequented by every smoker in Southend. And before smokers start jumping and down I’m a smoker too, but I don’t like my young children spending time in a smoky environment. It was really, really bad at Cafe Giardino! Since the smoking ban came in it’s absolutely fine.