Hibiscus

Speaking of delicious Toronto food, Hibiscus is the most under-rated restaurant I know. It's tucked away on Augusta in Kensington, and I'm always looking for an excuse to get their vegan buckwheat pancakes with homemade double chocolate ice cream and bananas. Amazing. The owner is a self-taught chef, and he comes up with a new delicious soup every day featuring whatever is around at the market. They have a great lunch combo in which you get about 7 different kinds of salads (lentils, broccoli, beets, quinoa), a mug of soup, and this gluten-free cracker/rice bread. Eaten at 3 pm it's enough for lunch and dinner all in one go.

Fresh vs. Fressen

I was talking with someone today about two popular vegan* restaurants in Toronto, Fresh and Fressen. Fresh has been around for ages, and I really appreciate what they've done to popularize healthy, nutritious, good vegetarian food. You can bring most meat-eaters to Fresh, and they won't notice anything missing. Fresh is pretty good, and does some things really really well (sweet potato fries anyone?). I do find, though, that everything tastes pretty similar; it all has this "Fresh" taste, which is ok, but gets kind of boring.

Fressen on the other hand is one of my favourite restaurants in the city. What they lack in generally-being-on-top-of-the-situation, they make up for with interesting food that tastes like it's fresh from the dirt without actually tasting like there's parts of dirt still in it. And I love the sharing menu. Usually, being pseudo-vegan I don't get to try anyone else's dish, but here, everyone gets a little taste of everything. The reason I don't go to Fressen more often is because it feels out of the student budget. In fact, I'd be more inclined to grab dinner at Fresh, but how much cheaper is it really? Let's find out. Typically at Fressen you order 1-2 dishes per person. For dinner for 2, I pretty much always get 3 dishes. For 4, it's usually 6.

Average main course at Fresh: $11
+ tax and 15% tip: $14.29

All dishes at Fressen: $9
* 1.5 dishes/person: $13.50
+ tax and 15% tip: $17.54

Total difference: $3.25

Hm. So $15 is more than I would spend on a regular meal out because I'm cheap and I would rather cook, but if I were going to spend $15, I would much rather shell out the extra $3.25 for the deliciousness that is Fressen, even if $3.25 does equal several chickpea doubles, or a couple cups of coffee.

The only problem, of course, is that the dessert at Fressen is irresistible, so you are unlikely to get out of there for under $20.


*Fresh does serve some cheese and such

Soy Milk Panna Cotta with Crushed Blackberries and Vanilla Muscat Sauce

Well, it's been a rather long time, hasn't it? (Just who I am asking, I don't know). In all fairness, I have been pretty busy with my love, the Hot Yam!, but that's no excuse! I have been reminded about my failure to keep up with this thing by many people...I am ashamed!

This next recipe I made a little while ago when I was visiting the parents and had access to free (for me) dessert wine. I have to say, it was decent, a solid 7/10, but not outstanding. I was so excited to make it because it looks so beautiful, but I should have known better when I saw "agar" in the recipe.

Now "panna cotta" translates as "cooked cream" and is typically made with cream, milk, sugar, and gelatin. In other words, it's not particularly vegan. To make the dairy and gelatin-free version, I mixed together soy milk, sugar, and vanilla, added some agar, and poured the whole lot into ramekins. I've always found agar strangely more gelatinous than gelatin. It's also a little disconcerting to eat the stuff we grow yeast on in biology class. However, it does an amazing job of setting things, and when I removed the panna cotta from the fridge an hour later, they looked frighteningly perfect, and definitely non-vegan.

Next, I made two sauces. The first was basically crushed blackberries, stewed slightly so the juices started to thicken. The second was some parentally-donated dessert wine, pear jam (should've been apricot), and some vanilla. Yum.

In the end, it was pretty good, and really straightforward, but give me a brownie or a lemon square any day.