+1 to both recommendations. Maple Yip is more formal and in my mind, more dinner, but the Old House is definitely lunchable. Their pan-fried beef bread sandwich dish is brilliant.

Also, not really quite a Chowhound sort of place, but there's a food court on the other side of Glen Watford Drive from the Old House that's totally hidden in the plaza but has a number of Chinese stalls inside (primarily HK). The first time I went in, it was packed to the brim and I mentally slapped myself for not knowing about the place until then. It's more quantity than quality but some of it is actually pretty good. The roasted meats shop has great char siu.

Just went to LTH tonight with the fam for the first time in a year or two. The place is still rocking it (and possibly might be even better than before). We got the usual: vegetable combo sizzler (lentils, chickpeas, cauliflower, potato, spinach), chicken tikka and chicken kebab rice sizzler, beef nihari, and whole wheat chapatti.

Beef nihari is still succulent, the meat cooked just right so that there's a gelatinousness to it. The combo sizzler was very well-seasoned and cooked. Unlike previous ventures when the vegetables were a bit overcooked, we didn't find that to be the case this time. The folks commented on how greatly improved this dish was compared to previous visits and my dad pretty much wolfed the whole thing down (saying a lot since he's nearly a carnivore). Chicken tikka was moist, and the chicken kebabs were delicious as usual (though that was probably the weakest thing on the table).

While I thought the dinner was a tad better than previous times, my parents thought that it was a vast improvement over a restaurant that has always been pretty good. From what we could gather from the staff, they hadn't changed chefs, but had learned to make some of their dishes more mild (which we all agreed ended up being better though we all love heat). And of course, the true litmus test: there were tons of Indian/Pakistani families waiting for tables. $48 with tax/tips.

Possibly! The box of alphonso mangoes that I bought are from a company called Alisha Mangoes, exported by Three Circles Exports of Mumbai, India. None of the mangoes have individual stickers, and they're all placed in a box with confetti. I went to another grocery store and they also only had this brand and sold it only by case.

Thanks for the heads up! After reading your post, I went down to Little India and picked up a box myself at BJ Supermarket. $26 for a case of 12. They only have 2 boxes left with shipments every Friday.

Also peeked into Kohinoor Foods just around the corner and they say they'll have the smaller Anwar Ratol mango from Pakistan in late May/early June. Just as sweet if not more so!

Mei Do at the mall on the southwest corner of Kennedy and Denison (beside the Shoppers Drug Mart) has been a staple in our family for years now. It's Hong Kong diner food, with specials that change every day. Usually $6 or so with a drink and a soup. The specials are only written in Chinese but you can ask them to translate. Fantastic deal and real homey. Can get really busy at lunch time.

The Drake Hotel is having an icelandic cuisine prix-fixe from March 21st to March 24th:
http://www.thedrakehotel.ca/blog/2013...

I'm not well versed in Sri Lankan food but isn't Hopper Hut more Tamil Sri Lankan than Sinhalese Sri Lankan? Not that I know the difference.

BlogTO has a write-up about best Sri Lankan but I don't know how much you should trust it: http://www.blogto.com/toronto/the_bes...

It's also called "pak boong" in Thai.

I agree with the love for Santouka - still the benchmark for ramen in the city.

1. Santouka
2. Sansotei
3. Raijin/Kinton
5. Kenzo/Ajisen/Momofuku (all kind of bad, but for different reasons, the first two being oily insufferable messes, the last for tasting like nothing)

Still haven't been to Ryoji or A-OK yet though. Has anyone tried Guu's lunch-time ramen? Where would that fit in here?

Oh my bad. Upon investigation again it was black sesame tofu ice cream. It's made by Kowloon Dairy from Hong Kong and distributed in Canada by King Tower Holdings Ltd.

The tofu soybean ice cream. Whoever invented it deserves a medal.

Does Owl of Minerva stay open 24 hours? The Koreatown and NYC locations do but check out the one at First Markham Place?

I wish Chowhound was like Reddit so I could upvote this comment.

That restaurant has been around for at least a decade, and probably more since I remember it from my teenage years. Along with the Taiwanese restaurant in the food court, these two might be my favourite most consistent go-to's in the area. They are great value and absolutely delicious. The pork chop rice at both are especially good, though I also love the shrimp fried rice at the food court restaurant (yes, do yourself the favour and get the spicy stuff).

Another good bet in the Metro Square plaza is Hunan Garden. At lunch time, it offers $4.99 lunch specials that includes a soup or soya bean drink. The best dish is the "Farmer's Stir Fry" (農家小炒) which has hot chili green peppers and pork. Another great dish is their spicy beef (辣子牛肉). White rice tastes best I find, but their salted fish and chicken fried rice also goes well (and costs $3.99 since the rice cost $1 already anyways). The dinner menu is an entirely different ball game and you can spend a lot of time figuring out what you want with what (there's a stir fried 3-types of mushroom dish that's a delight, and I've been finding the vegetable/tofu soup to be surprisingly fortifying in the winter cold, but I don't know how you'd get that to go). You should just bring the other people to sit down instead. You won't regret the food. Or the $7 pitchers of beer.

Other great things in the area, let's see. Dayali as recommended by Chris N-S in the Globe has really improved since it first opened last fall (@ Gibson/Warden) though it's not really a take-out kind of place and the lines are ATROCIOUS (like worse than Grand Electric). You could get some stuff at Keung's Delight in the T&T Plaza but their most famous dish, the pork bone soup (no similarity to the Korean kamjatang) would be hard to transport home. Aside from that, I'd maybe look into the food court plaza at Silver Star Blvd and Steeles (south of Steeles, east side, in the plaza south of No Frills) where there's a number of Cantonese food court places duking it out. Good value, good taste. If Dong Yi is still open (not sure if it JUST closed up), get their curry beef brisket.

There aren't really that many other places that I'd consider good enough value or delicious enough to purposely get takeout from in the area. The other places are more sit down, plus the nature of the food makes it more difficult to get to go...

edited to add: If you go later at night (I think after 10?), you can get some delicious "Happy Hour" food at Sam Woo (not the formal one but the one closer to the McD's).

You might want to check this thread out:
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/860342

My personal feeling on the matter is that Toronto probably has some of the best Cantonese Chinese in North America, though that might not be helpful since all the good stuff is in Scarborough/Markham/Richmond Hill. I like Maple Yip for dinner but you can only really get a feel for it when you have multiple people so that you can order multiple dishes.

I haven't had the Orval yet, but I recently tried the Gulden Draak and the Nostradamus, both Belgian Strong Darks. Would you place Orval in a similar category taste-wise? I wasn't wild about either of the GD or Nostradamus - tastes too much like coke for me...

Just wanted to comment that Orval is currently at the LCBO.
http://lcbo.com/lcbo-ear/lcbo/product...

Last time I was at Rowe Farms on Roncesvalles Ave, there was a samples booth set up selling organic tortillas (both corn and flour). The sample person and I both agreed the flour one was actually fairly good. Don't remember the name of the brand but you can get it in the fridge on the left side when you enter the store FYI.

Our family went on the 2nd day that it opened (about 3 months ago) and found that like your experience, service and dish quality was all over the place. We tried ordering the duck but it was all sold out (at 7:30PM, seriously). The water boiled fish in oil was okay, while the tofu with crab fat was strangely almost soupy (though I did enjoy it). Service was slow but apologetic. The manager talked to us for a while about some of the issues that they were facing and apologised profusely for how slow things were (it was a 2+ hour dinner for 3 people). He also gave us a discount which was nice.

Like you, we also got the VIP card but haven't been back yet. We're giving it a bit more time to sort out all the problems before we go back.

Just came back from a trip to SE Asia and was blown away by the regional variations of Hainanese Chicken I had. I'm wondering where I can find some of that here in the GTA?

I'm familiar with the Cantonese-style (with the mashed ginger/green onion/oil dip), but am looking for something more similar to Singapore's Boon Tong Kee with its spicy sauce and "oily" ginger rice (mind-blowing), as well as any Thai restaurants that make khao mun gai.

It seems like the most-discussed places on this forum are Lion City in Mississauga (Singaporean), Hawkerbar on Ossington (Australian-Singaporean), and Bagahon (Singaporean). Any other good places?

Thanks in advance!

Thanks penang_rojak! My family and I are flying to Southeast Asia tomorrow and getting this information now before we leave is very helpful!

Wow! Thanks a lot for all of this info. My friend lives in Culver City and since all of the things I wanted to see were south of the Santa Monica Mountains, I figured it would be a little onerous to drive into the SGV just for food (though if it were my car, I'd probably do it lol). I'm also originally from Toronto's suburbs so I know something about decent Chinese food and didn't feel the pressing need to eat cuisines that I'm familiar with (though Taiwanese is not necessarily ubiquitous at home).

The Indonesian and all the Peruvian recs sound delicious and will be included next time I'm around. I tried Mo-Chica a year ago when it was still at its Mercado Paloma location and the ceviche that I had there was stupendous.

I find that hipsters are more fun to dismiss than downtown types. ;)

I just got back from a long weekend in LA, stuffing my face (as usual) at a bunch of your restaurants. In chronological order, with further details below:

Thursday night: Father's Office
Friday breakfast: Bob's Coffee & Donuts
Friday lunch: Loteria Grill, Singapore's Banana Leaf, Short Cake/Single Origin
Friday dinner: Bottega Louie
Saturday lunch: Cafe Brasil
Saturday dinner: Soot Bull Jeep
Saturday late-night: Tacos Leo
Sunday lunch: Pa Ord Noodle
Sunday dinner: Best Fish Taco in Ensenada

Of the bunch, I think the only food that I didn't enjoy at all were the fish tacos at BFTiE. I wish I had gone to Yoshinoya or Versailles Cuban or something, anything, instead. What a profound disappointment, and a terrible way to end my trip to LA! Regardless, it was generally a solid trip food-wise.

THURSDAY
I arrived on Thursday night, prepped to eat. After drinks at the Los Angeles Brewing Company in downtown (incl. a free one, check their twitter @ labrewingco), we went to Father's Office in Culver City for dinner. I'd just had Umami Burger's namesake for the first time a few weeks earlier in SF, and to be honest, I think I prefer Umami's to Father's Office's burger. The medium-rare was undercooked, and the meat as a result, rather than slightly crumbly, was almost mushy in a raw meat way. The arugula was a good touch for cutting through the intensity of the cheeses and the caramelized onion though. Glad that they cut the bread in half so that it was much easier to eat. The fries and aioli were also good but nothing special to write home about. At $15 for the burger & fries, and $6 for my Racer 5 though, I don't feel like it was a good use of either my caloric or monetary budgets. Plus the place is a scene and even though I'm a 20-something, it was a little much.

FRIDAY
On Friday morning, I wandered over to the Grove because I had a Craig Ferguson taping to go to at CBS later that afternoon. I had intended to caffeine up with a CHer-recommended Aunt Nancy's Shakerato at Short Cake/Single Origin but I couldn't find the stall so I decided to go to Bob's Coffee and Donuts instead. There were a fair number of patrons sitting around chatting with coffees already and a small line waiting to order. I got a sublime sugar doughnut and a small coffee with cream. The doughnut reminded me of all the great things that I love about pastries, soft yet chewy, sweet but not excessive, satiating but not overly-filling. And for $1, not about to break the bank! The coffee (American Blend) was very old-school tasting, almost the type that you'd get at a pre-second wave Italian cafe. The closest I can describe it to is the coffee you can find at Zabar's in NYC.

I went back to the Grove for lunch later, getting the chicken mole poblano and chicken tinga tacos at Loteria Grill. They were both delicious - the first a silky concoction of chicken, mole, and diced white onions. The chicken tinga had less of an impact on me, though it was by no means bad. Slightly pricey at $3.50 given that taco trucks are a dollar. At Singapore's Banana Leaf, I ordered the chicken curry with rice and sat across from a sassy old Indonesian lady who had travelled up from San Diego to visit her kids. She had ordered the beef rendang which she thought was a little bland (she asked for salt) and the colour of the sauce seemed too red and not brown enough (in my uneducated eyes). She suggested that I check out a place called Ramayani further west on Westwood Blvd. My own curry was good enough but a little soupy. The employees were very pleasant and if I were in the area again, I'd like to try the laksa or the mie goreng. A little expensive ($10.xx incl. tax) for fast food-ish al fresco dining. As a treat, I got the Aunt Nancy's Shakerato which was incredible - not too sweet yet just sweet enough, coffee flavours pronounced but not dizzying, creamy yet not unhealthy-tasting. Possibly one of the best coffee-based iced drink I've had in the past few years. I just wish the cup had been larger....

Dinner at Bottega Louie's elbow-people-in-the-face/free-for-all space was great. I ordered the trenne pasta at our waitress' suggestion, and was pleasantly greeted with a slightly seared (not the right term) pasta with succulent chunks of rib eye and kale along with a tomato sauce and shaved parmesan. My friends were both impressed by their calamari appetizer to the point they scrounged up all the crumbs even though one of them doesn't even like squid all that much. For about the same price as Father's Office ($16 w/o tax or tip), this was a substantially better meal in a much more beautiful space.

SATURDAY
At Cafe Brasil's Venice Blvd location, I ordered the Skinless Boneless Chicken Breast plate which came up with fried plantains, rice, black beans, salsa, and a vegetable soup. Everything was good, though I think the secret ingredient winner in all of this was the hot sauce that came with the table. It was the typical Brazilian hot sauce, the liquidy one that is both sour and piquant and a mesmerizing addition to rice. The chicken was slightly dry but the soup and hot sauce compensated. The fried plantains were appropriately moist on the inside and crispy on the outside. My friends enjoyed their breakfasts as well but thought that the "fresh squeezed" passionfruit juice may have had sugar added. I noticed that they also have feijoada, which I'd like to try their version some day. I thought it was well-priced ($12) given how full I was by the end.

After doing some exploring in downtown (Pete's Cafe at W 4th/S Main has Horny Devil Belgian Ale!!!), we got dinner at Soot Bull Jeep in Koreatown. The options were down to Hamji Park for gamjatang, So Kong Dong for soon dubu, and Soot Bull Jeep for charcoal BBQ, having removed Park's given how expensive it was. We decided on the last, and ordered beef galbi, as well as spicy pork bulgogi. My friend, who isn't a huge fan of pork, surprised me by saying that she preferred the pork more, while I preferred the galbi more. The charcoal was nice, lending the meat a smoky charred character. Service was good (unlike some other reports), though that might have been the result of them thinking I was Korean. The banchan was decent, though I was surprised by the kimchi in water, which I thought was more of a winter kimchi??? The meal cost as much as I expected it to, $50 w/o tip for the 2 of us. I would go back, though I'd like to see if Park's is well and above beyond Soot Bull Jeep.

Late-night dinner at Tacos Leo after partying in WeHo was brilliant. I got 6 tacos - 3 al pastor, 1 carnitas, 1 carne asada, 1 pollo. Got there about 1AM, and there was already a line. I enjoyed the pastor the most. Sublime, just sublime. You guys are all lucky to have something so great so close to you and for so cheap too.

SUNDAY
A hang-overy morning later, we went for noodles at Pa Ord Noodle in Thai Town. I had originally wanted to go to Pailin, but it's closed on Sundays, so we settled for Pa Ord. Small space, but efficiently-run and fairly-fast seating. While waiting, we got the sugarcane/coconut juice/coconut flesh "smoothie" from its plaza next-door neighbour which was good, though I preferred the sample without the coconut flesh. Once seated, we shared a medium-spicy papaya salad and I got the #1 tom yum noodle soup while my friend got the pad kee mao. Let me just say that this was definitely the spiciest meal I've had in YEARS. I regularly eat Thai, Szechuan, and Korean, but this was unbelievably spicy. My friend resorted to picking out little pepper flecks, while I tried in vain to swallow my noodles smothered in hot chilis. It was kind of ridiculous, though I guess that's one way of making you not as hungry! The soup flavour (what I could taste of it at least) was not bursting with the hot or sour as I know it, but had a very mild sourness to it. The dish also had some Thai char siu, bean sprouts, beef balls (not beef tendon), clumped ground pork, and liver. If it wasn't so spicy I think I would've loved it, but as it was, I couldn't even eat it without taking forced water/drink breaks. From what I could taste of my friend's pad kee mao, the noodles were just bursting with flavour and 'wok air'. I ordered a hibiscus drink afterwards to settle my upset stomach, and though good, it had sugar added. I'd like to explore the menu more, asking definitely for the not-spicy option.

Afterwards, we got fish and shrimp tacos at the Best Fish Taco in Ensenada, which was the most disappointing meal of my trip. Like the methods of preparation, none of the ingredients seemed to meld together in its final incarnation. While I liked the fish more than the shrimp, they both tasted really sloppy and the result of just clumping random ingredients together. The fish didn't have any of the creaminess or smoothness of other fish tacos I've had, and I didn't enjoy the batter that came with it, nor the tortilla that it was placed on (too crunchy). The shredded lettuce tasted old, and the cream didn't make it any better. The tamarind drink that I got was not all that hot either. The only redeeming thing about the place was that the horchata was good. My friend said that she thought they made it with pumpkin seeds like her mom does. Sadly, the owner is kind of a riot and super nice, so it makes me a little sad to have to speak so unfavourably about the place.

Anyways, as usual I had a fun time exploring LA's budget culinary scene. Looking forward next time to exploring more of the Peruvian mom and pop restaurants (are there any?), as well as all the great Chinese restaurants out in the SGV. Thanks to everyone for their insights. They helped me pick and enjoy the meals I had!

Plus you get the benefit of being really close to Oakland Chinatown and the incredible pairing of the Trappist followed by Spices!3.

That's incredible.

Is there a general consensus of the best egg tarts in the SF Bay?

Yank Sing and the Slanted Door are not exactly next door either, nor did OP specify walking distance only. Plus, given the fact that the aforementioned are $$ rather than $, I'd say that Burma Superstar is a better fit in terms of decor and atmosphere than some of the other Burmese suggestions (though not necessarily food-wise depending on one's tastes).

Surprised that nobody's mentioned Burma Superstar yet. There are several locations (North Oakland, Inner Richmond in SF, and Alameda) but do know that the place does get fairly busy so either eat early/late and avoid prime evenings.

http://www.burmasuperstar.com/locatio...

Alas, I don't have any particular recommendations for North American-seafood here in the city. My initial post was more of a gut reaction to the suggestion that visitors should stand in line for a restaurant that's expensive and not particularly good. There are just too many other good restaurants around for me to justify recommending it to others, but of course, there are many people who do love it. In the end, I think it really depends on whether you think the food is going to pay off all the costs you incur.

Chai Thai Noodle on International Blvd has the dish you're talking about. They have it as an appetizer (think it was $7-8). It was good but it was my first time with the dish and I haven't had it since so I have no basis for comparison sorry!

I dunno about Swan's. Definitely overrated, and given the length of the line, way not worth the effort either.