Tuesday, June 28, 2011

NXNE Take it to the Street!!



This is the second in a 2 part series from the NXNE festival.

I love events to say the least. Unintentionally I was involved in a second one on the same day. After getting out of a NXNE show at the Mod Club I found I was right in the middle of Taste of Little Italy. On College between Bathurst and Ossington there is a large street party that went all weekend. All of the restaurants and other venders pull out their patio and spill into the street. Go for a walk and have some fun. There were many band everywhere and lots of old people dancing.

I got some samosas and it came with a "secret sauce" which was tomato base and amazing. The meat was nice and moist which sometimes gets baked out in samosas.

Where was also some spaducci which is some juicy lamb on a small skewer. You add a little salt and cook it on a special charcoal grill that is exactly the width of the meat on the stick. Amazing little snack right off the grill.

We then stopped at Duff's on College for some beers and to people watch.

Check it out again next year and also check out Taste of the Danforth in August.

Cheers.

Thursday, June 23, 2011

NXNE Portuguese Edition


Long time coming but I have set it out here.

This is the first installment of my NXNE food tour. For those who don't know NXNE is a music festival in Toronto called North By Northeast and ran last weekend with over 700 bands from across the world playing in small venues all over Toronto. If you can you should get a wristband which gets you into everything and just giver' for the week/weekend.

Churrasqueiras. They are the primary restaurant in little Portugal. They are also delicious. It is a style of cooking rotisserie chicken and is a staple of the Portuguese diet and I went to a place on Dundas just West of Dufferin called Ribeirinha Da Dundas. Between 2 shows we needed a fairly quick dinner and we decided to check it out.

I will be trying more places like this. It was quick and it was amazing and the meal was as follows;

1/2 chicken: Juicy and cooked very well with a little bit of a chrispy skin. This was the grilled chicken and not the rotisserie (that would have take 30 mins longer and we did not have the time).

Salad: Pretty standard but huge and very fresh garden salad.

Potatoes: Cooked into little balls that were a little bit crispy on the outside and soft on the inside with a little bit of balsamic drizzled over top.

All in all there was too much food for me to handle and I will be checking out some more of these restaurants as I love the style of food.

Eat it up!!