The Kennedy Public House
Posted on March 10, 2012 by TOFoodReviews Staff in Bloor West Village
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4 Stars
- Sharkey’s is no more! And thank God for that. I mean, I know the restaurant options in Bloor West Village are limited, but I really have no idea how that place hung on for as long as it did. With horrible service, brutal food, and staff that spent more time admiring themselves in the mirror than their customers, they created a place that was meant to be avoided. Yet somehow, it managed to exist on that corner for years.
So, imagine my surprise when I saw the beautiful sight of a building permit and brown construction paper covering their windows one day…
A few months later, The Kennedy Public House was born. And boy-oh-boy, this place is exactly what BWV needs. BWV is virtually void of restaurants serving great food. Ok, so there’s earth and Dr. Generosity, but other than that, your choices are pretty limited compared to the tons of options available to other Toronto neighbourhoods. That’s why seeing something as untraditional in BWV as The Kennedy is such a welcoming sight.
The Kennedy has a cool vibe that, if you know the neighbourhood, you wouldn’t expect to see there. It seems oddly out-of-place while at the same time seems oddly comfortable being there. With a laboriously nice interior space, the entire design is well-thought out and pleasant to be in. But surprisingly, The Kennedy isn’t just nice to look at; it also has exceptionally good food.
The Kennedy’s menu doesn’t serve your typical pub grub; it’s much more imaginative than that. Non-traditional items, like polenta burgers, calamari po’boy sandwiches, and pork belly casoulet easily compliment more traditional pub fare, like wings, macaroni and cheese, and thin crust pizzas. Their menu does a fantastic job of covering everyone while still remaining concise and well-thought out.
Working with a number of local businesses, the Kennedy also proudly sources bread and meats from places you’re probably familiar with, like Cobs bread and Wellington County Beef. Nice. I’ve always found that knowing where my food comes from somehow makes it taste better.
One other thing worth mentioning: The Kennedy has unisex bathrooms, which they’ve pulled off nicely. They’ve incorporated them into the place really well, that is, except for the hand-dryer. Their bathroom hand-dryer must be the loudest dam one in the entire free-world. If you happen to be sitting in the back-half of the restaurant, it might even ruin your experience. Hopefully they’ll turn to either cloth or paper towels, or they’ll just find one that is a hell of a lot quieter.
Keep in mind though, if you’re looking for a relaxing experience, this isn’t the place. With strollers and screaming babies during the day that makes it resemble a Montesorri school, and lineups and loud music in the evening that makes it resemble something at John and Adelaide, The Kennedy doesn’t provide a quiet and relaxing experience; what they do provide is a killer take on food you wouldn’t expect to find in a typical public house.
- Andre
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A Dark Horse
Posted on July 1, 2011 by TOFoodReviews Staff in Bloor West Village
3 stars
- The most common praise of Dark Horse is its patio; the most common complaint about Dark Horse is its lack of service on the patio…
If you’ve been to Bloor West Village, you know that there aren’t a lot of patios in the neighbourhood, and any patio that you do find is likely going to be small, cramped, and full of people. With the exception of the Firkin on Runnymede, Dark Horse has one of the biggest and best outdoor spaces in the village to drink pints, people watch or eat burgers and fries.
But, as many people have pointed out before me, the service can range anywhere from slow to crappy when you’re sitting out there. While you’re waiting, you may even be waiting so long for service that you’ll feel compelled to go inside and get your own drinks, which causes the server to give you attitude when she eventually gets to your table, which causes you to feel uncomfortable; you see the vicious circle taking shape here…
All-in-all, the food at Dark Horse isn’t half bad. Granted, they aren’t going to win any awards anytime soon, but for pub food that goes well with a few drinks, it’s pretty decent. While some of their food, like their calamari and their fries, are previously frozen and highly unimaginative, other items, like their Village Burger or their fish and chips, are clearly made in-house and truly tasty. They also serve a weekend brunch that is worth checking out, but expect to wait for a table; it fills up quickly with the neighbourhood locals.
All of the expected draft options are here…I think. Truth-be-told, the server never actually rattled off the draft list to us in the limited time she spent at our table. Luckily, there were a few beer-branded signs in the patio, which makes the process a little easier, but a lot less convenient.
Dark Horse’s problems are easily fixable; they just need a bit more staff. Trust me, sit back on the patio, have a pint, and watch them work. It’ll quickly become obvious that they’re understaffed. Another server or two during their busier times, and Dark Horse could be fantastic.
Truth be told, it’s just a pub, and a fairly average one at that. If you’re in a hurry, you may want to avoid this place, but if you’ve got some time to kill and want to soak up some sun on a patio, Dark Horse provides nicely.
- Andre
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earth Bloor West
Posted on June 1, 2011 by TOFoodReviews Staff in Bloor West Village
3 stars
- It might be a bit unfair to review earth so early into their existence, but I don’t feel too badly about it. Reason being, this isn’t their first restaurant opening. earth has two other locations, so its owners should be able to avoid the rookie mistakes that come with opening a new restaurant. But rather than focus on the facts that it smelled like a construction site, the floors and walls needed some minor finishing work, the staff were wandering about looking slightly confused and a little scared, and the place generally seemed like it probably wasn’t ready to open just yet, I’m going to put all that aside and focus on the rest of earth.
earth’s focus is on local stuff; that means they try to only serve products that are made close-to-home. Trouble is, I’m not exactly sure how far that close-to-home boundary extends to. I was told that it includes Ontario as a whole, but it could also go much further East or West; their Albacore tuna, for example, comes from BC and their mussels come from PEI. Other items don’t explicitly explain where they come from, like the Cornish hen. That’s the difficulty with going local though; right-off-the-bat you need to firmly establish your local boundaries. BC and PEI, after all, aren’t right around the corner. Why not Maine lobster? Maine is a lot closer and seems a lot more local to me than anywhere in BC.
I suppose my beef here is that if you want to focus on locally produced stuff, then why not do it right down to the last detail? Why have a couple of wines from Italy and the US when you could easily make a wine menu completely from Niagara Peninsula wines or even from West Coast British Columbia (since we haven’t yet established where that local line is drawn). I suppose the entire local concept is pretty hot right now, considering the whole farm-to-table trend, but those places are a bit more sincere by growing and sourcing everything onsite. To me, that’s what true local eating is all about: setting firm boundaries.
The main thing that caught me right away–even more so than the local-ness of stuff–was the truly reasonable prices. At my initial walk-in to the beautiful dining room, I expected to pay a bit more, but that wasn’t the case at all. Starters are around 11 bucks, entrees are around 22; at prices like that, it’s even kind of refreshing, considering how elegant both the dining room and bar spaces are. And the food is good too. The local carnivore flatbread, for example, had a perfectly cooked flatbread base with some delicious, good-quality meats. The baked Spring vegetable tart seemed a little strange served on raw spinach, but the contrast worked nicely together.
The dining room space is beautiful. 20 foot ceilings, elegant lighting, solid wooden tables. In terms of sheer ambience and sophistication, there’s nothing in Bloor West Village that can even come close to competing with earth.
Despite the wandering servers, we were lucky enough to have the only one that seemed focused. Even though the meddling manager kept needlessly hovering over us mere seconds each time before our server got there, we had fantastic service that pretty much made the entire experience better. If we had another server, I probably would have thought a lot less.
Truth be told, earth’s focus on local products seems to be more of a gimmick at this point rather than a passion. However despite that, it was a pretty good overall experience, opening jitters and stage fright aside. I think that once they work all the kinks out, there’ll be nothing in Bloor West Village–an area that is really hurting for some good restaurants to begin with–that can even come close to competing with earth.
- Andre
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Coffee Tree
Posted on January 5, 2011 by TOFoodReviews Staff in Bloor West Village
4 stars
- Coffee Tree has some seriously outstanding coffee. I guess they should. They tout themselves as being Toronto’s first onsite roastery–since 1988. Despite all that time, it’s not a colossal roasting operation. In fact, it’s a small machine in the front window of the shop, but that’s part of the appeal of this place: fair-trade coffee roasted onsite, in small batches, right in front of your eyes.
As it becomes available, Coffee Tree scrawls all of their different roasts and blends of contrasting kinds of beans on a chalkboard near the front entrance. Some of these blends and roasts change from time-to-time; others are Coffee Tree’s signatures. On any given day, you can find Casa Primi, Sensuous Morning, Tuscany, and Millionaire’s Mixture; some of their well-known signatures. Other days, you can find blends created exclusively for that week or month.
Regardless of what you choose, this coffee is superb, roasted perfectly, and balanced. Sip it slowly, and you’ll definitely find complexity. There’s the perfect blend of sweet and savoury and none of the unpleasant bitterness you’d expect from other coffee shop brews.
But it ain’t all coffee at Coffee Tree. They’ve got a surprisingly detailed food menu, considering it’s a coffee joint. From breakfast, lunch, and dinner, to French toast, sandwiches, and empanadas, they’ve got something for whatever time of day you go. They’ve also got a chilled dessert fridge featuring in-house made desserts, which includes what they call–and I’m inclined to agree–the World’s Best Carrot cake. If you’re there, give it an unregrettable try.
The shop layout is the typical long narrow space of most Toronto street-level businesses, and unfortunately, their furniture and decorating ideas aren’t much of a help. Despite having unforgettable coffee, the space makes the experience of drinking it feel closed off. They do, however, support local art by featuring a local artist’s work on their walls for sale, and that certainly is a plus, but when I was there, the art wasn’t something I was particularly captivated by; but I’m told it changes. All this place really needs a little reno, and it would be near perfect, or at least get 5 stars in my review.
Despite the poor decor choice, they still roast some brilliant coffee. Even if you’re not in the neighbourhood, it’s worth the trip.
- Andre
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Sweet Flour Bake Shop
Posted on December 22, 2010 by TOFoodReviews Staff in Bloor West Village
4 stars
- Sweet Flour bakeshop is a tremendously original idea. It’s a custom bakeshop in Bloor West Village that revolves primarily around the cookie. Their website lays out their philosophy best: there is nothing quite like a cookie just out of the oven. That cookie, just out of the oven, and the experience that goes along with its creation, is exactly what Sweet Flour is all about. I say ‘revolves primarily around the cookie’ because although your perfect cookie is their goal, they don’t stop at cookies. Everything from homemade granola to muffin tops and ice cream sandwiches to gingerbread is there for you to claim and customize as your own. For me, Sweet Flour delivers the experience of one of my best-remembered childhood memories: watching cookies bake through the oven window and patiently waiting for them to cool just enough to eat.
So what exactly does it mean to ‘customize’ cookies? At Sweet Flour, it means you’re in charge of what’s getting made. It all starts by picking what you want to bake. You can choose muffin or cookie batter, and from a couple variations of either of those, but your best bet is probably the classic cookie. It’s perfectly sweet with hint of vanilla and butter. From there you decide what you want in the cookie; trust me, it won’t be an easy decision to make. There are tons of different treats ranging from chunks of chocolate to crunchy nuts to soft dried fruits. You get a choice of two. Then they mix it, form it, and bake it ultra fast. Your cookie is perfectly hot and baked and in your hands in about two minutes.
Sweet Flour doesn’t just stop at custom cookies. They also cater parties with baked goods, bake and decorate custom cookies for events, do cookiegram deliveries, and even package their cookies into kid’s loot bags.
One thing is made perfectly clear from the minute you walk in until the minute you step out the door; these people care about quality. Everything in use seems fresh and high grade. From the glass bottled locally source milk to the fair-trade coffee to those incredible cookie ingredients, all of it seems to be bought with both quality and you in mind. A rare outlook nowadays when everything seems to be about the bottom line.
The aspect about Sweet Flour I immediately noticed is that their space has expansion written all over it. I’m sure this is the only one, but the layout, decorating, even the logo, all of it made it feel strangely familiar, like I was somehow used to it. This place definitely screams franchise, and I wouldn’t be shocked to eventually see one downtown, at the mall, even at the airport. While that certainly isn’t a bad thing for the business, I personally felt as though it sort of takes away from the connection to my childhood feeling.
I know there are a couple more places in Toronto that do the same sort of custom cookie experience that Sweet Flour does, but I’m not sure who did it first. The only thing I can say is that I’ve been to Sweet Flour twice, and both times it was a pretty good experience from start to finish. However, although the cookie does come out hot, fresh, and made to order, it did cost almost 8 bucks for two of them and a glass of milk. Seems a little steep to me, but as a treat, it’s nearly perfect.
- Andre
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