This one's in the same plaza as McGinnis Front Row. I think it may have changed names recently? Not sure. I vaguely remember a juice bar in that storefront, previously.
This place is Pakistani, I think: biryanis, UK-style curries, and shawarmas and the type. After yesterday's debacle, I actually asked, "what's good?", and when I said I wanted spicy food, I was steered to the chicken biryani. Foolishly, I got the combo with naan, but it's my fault I got rice with bread.
I wouldn't say it was very spicy, but it was pretty good. Anise, clove, bay (I think? I don't think it was curry leaves), maybe some cinnamon in the rice seasonings. It came with a spicy raita (in a shot glass!), which did make it more flavourful. The chicken was a drumstick, and was decent if unexciting. (Fun fact: drumsticks are now the cheapest part of the chicken, now that wings are so popular.)
The combo includes a drink, so I did get a bottle of mango juice. I think this is one of those places where it's impossible to get water not in a bottle (grr!); it also has no visible bathroom (nor, really, even a place for one to exist).
I had: chicken biryani, naan, mango juice
I paid: $8.48
Verdict:
Speed: Excellent: my food was ready as I finished paying. (Then again, this isn't hard: biryani is a casserole...)
Quality: Tasty. Vegetables would make this meal better, but again, it was my own damn fault that I got it with naan, not salad. (I also could've gotten it with fries, and then I'd be even more full than I am.)
Value: Pretty good. I mean, it's not exactly expensive ingredients: rice plus oil plus spices plus a chicken drumstick. But I don't feel ripped off at all; I'm quite full.
Would go back: Maybe. It was pretty crowded (there are very, very few tables), and I was there before noon. I don't know what it's like in the middle of lunchtime.
Tuesday 25 September 2012
Monday 24 September 2012
Waterloo Star
This is one of the numerous Chinese places in the plaza. I don't typically go to many of these, mostly because none of my Chinese colleagues have definitively told me, "this one is the right one".
I'd never been to this one before. It's pretty generic from the outside: formica tables, cheap chairs, a counter, nothing special on the walls. Pretty bare-bones.
It took a long time to get a menu, and even longer to successfully order; I think that the people who arrived after me (and got fed before me) likely ordered their usual when they arrived. I was a little annoyed, though, as it was a long wait.
I ordered "chicken with mushrooms" casserole. This basically was a soup/stew with a bunch of cut up chicken legs and thighs (bone-in, skin-on, quite a few pieces were just bone) in a brown stock that had a bunch of re-hydrated black mushrooms, a small amount of bok choy, and some glass noodles. The stock was meaty, but not especially flavourful, except maybe some star anise, and perhaps some clove or Sichuan pepper (I know they're different, but they both anesthetize the tongue). It was also served with a bowl of white rice.
This isn't a way I like to eat, and I really didn't care for this meal. It's very hard to eat chicken on bones without a place to put the bones (I just tossed them back in the stock), and the mushrooms weren't very appealing (sometimes, rehydrated mushrooms come out with a good tender texture, but much of this was stringy and inedible).
I suppose I should have gotten white people Chinese food (say, kung pao chicken, or the like, which was on the menu), but there were a lot of these casseroles going around to people, and I figured that I might be happy, as when I went to Waterloo SOGO a couple weeks back.
I've been told by European and Asian colleagues and friends that the preference that North Americans have for meat without bones is somehow juvenile, and indeed, I kind of think there's some validity to that. (Query: where on the body of a chicken is to be found the "nugget" or the "finger"?) But this meal really was hard to eat: each piece of chicken (and there were probably a couple dozen) had very little meat on it, and a bunch of bone. It also just wasn't that tasty.
I had: #51, Chicken and mushroom casserole
I paid: $13 including tax and tip
Verdict:
Speed: not acceptable, particularly given that I was on cup #2 of tea before my order was taken. I almost missed my 1:30
Quality: this just isn't food I enjoyed, but on top of that, I'm not convinced they're using very good ingredients. Chicken fatty, not meaty; mushrooms not edible even post-rehydration
Value: Not very good
Would go back: No.
I'd never been to this one before. It's pretty generic from the outside: formica tables, cheap chairs, a counter, nothing special on the walls. Pretty bare-bones.
It took a long time to get a menu, and even longer to successfully order; I think that the people who arrived after me (and got fed before me) likely ordered their usual when they arrived. I was a little annoyed, though, as it was a long wait.
I ordered "chicken with mushrooms" casserole. This basically was a soup/stew with a bunch of cut up chicken legs and thighs (bone-in, skin-on, quite a few pieces were just bone) in a brown stock that had a bunch of re-hydrated black mushrooms, a small amount of bok choy, and some glass noodles. The stock was meaty, but not especially flavourful, except maybe some star anise, and perhaps some clove or Sichuan pepper (I know they're different, but they both anesthetize the tongue). It was also served with a bowl of white rice.
This isn't a way I like to eat, and I really didn't care for this meal. It's very hard to eat chicken on bones without a place to put the bones (I just tossed them back in the stock), and the mushrooms weren't very appealing (sometimes, rehydrated mushrooms come out with a good tender texture, but much of this was stringy and inedible).
I suppose I should have gotten white people Chinese food (say, kung pao chicken, or the like, which was on the menu), but there were a lot of these casseroles going around to people, and I figured that I might be happy, as when I went to Waterloo SOGO a couple weeks back.
I've been told by European and Asian colleagues and friends that the preference that North Americans have for meat without bones is somehow juvenile, and indeed, I kind of think there's some validity to that. (Query: where on the body of a chicken is to be found the "nugget" or the "finger"?) But this meal really was hard to eat: each piece of chicken (and there were probably a couple dozen) had very little meat on it, and a bunch of bone. It also just wasn't that tasty.
I had: #51, Chicken and mushroom casserole
I paid: $13 including tax and tip
Verdict:
Speed: not acceptable, particularly given that I was on cup #2 of tea before my order was taken. I almost missed my 1:30
Quality: this just isn't food I enjoyed, but on top of that, I'm not convinced they're using very good ingredients. Chicken fatty, not meaty; mushrooms not edible even post-rehydration
Value: Not very good
Would go back: No.
Thursday 20 September 2012
Three other lunches
This turns out to be a bad week for this blog: I had lunch Tuesday at the Grad House on campus, Wednesday at Bread Heads in downtown Kitchener, and today at the University Club. Tomorrow we have our annual Cheriton Symposium, where we celebrate all the ways that David Cheriton's gift to the School has improved our research, and that will also have a dinner.
We'll resume normal service next week...unless you folk want reviews of non-plaza restaurants. Let me know.
We'll resume normal service next week...unless you folk want reviews of non-plaza restaurants. Let me know.
Monday 17 September 2012
Chen's
This is the place in the plaza right next to Mongolian. I feel old to remember when it was a computer store, Back When.
I've been getting food from there for quite a while, though it's not exactly exciting. Perhaps it's better if one doesn't get white people Chinese food, but regardless, I did get General Tso's chicken with rice. (Yes, I do know that that dish has a surprisingly complicated history. And yes, I realize that what's in Canadian restaurants bears only the most vague resemblance to what's in China. And fortune cookies are Japanese.)
Overall, it was a little less crunchy than it should've been, but the sauce is properly garlicky/gingery/spicy. The book cited before says that General Tso's in the US typically includes broccoli ("white people love broccoli"), but this one had green pepper instead.
This isn't great food, but I guess it's lunch. I had really terrific food in some of the places in Slovenia. And now I am home.
I had: General Tso's chicken and rice
I paid: $7.90
Verdict:
Speed: Surprisingly fast. I was reading something on my phone, and my food appeared way faster than I expected
Quality: Not bad; at least it's flavourful, but the chicken isn't great, and wasn't yummy.
Value: It's pretty cheap, and there are other comparably cheap things on the menu. It feels like a big lunch.
Would go back: Yeah, probably? I'm jetlagged, and wanted someplace I didn't have to walk far to get to. But this ain't great.
I've been getting food from there for quite a while, though it's not exactly exciting. Perhaps it's better if one doesn't get white people Chinese food, but regardless, I did get General Tso's chicken with rice. (Yes, I do know that that dish has a surprisingly complicated history. And yes, I realize that what's in Canadian restaurants bears only the most vague resemblance to what's in China. And fortune cookies are Japanese.)
Overall, it was a little less crunchy than it should've been, but the sauce is properly garlicky/gingery/spicy. The book cited before says that General Tso's in the US typically includes broccoli ("white people love broccoli"), but this one had green pepper instead.
This isn't great food, but I guess it's lunch. I had really terrific food in some of the places in Slovenia. And now I am home.
I had: General Tso's chicken and rice
I paid: $7.90
Verdict:
Speed: Surprisingly fast. I was reading something on my phone, and my food appeared way faster than I expected
Quality: Not bad; at least it's flavourful, but the chicken isn't great, and wasn't yummy.
Value: It's pretty cheap, and there are other comparably cheap things on the menu. It feels like a big lunch.
Would go back: Yeah, probably? I'm jetlagged, and wanted someplace I didn't have to walk far to get to. But this ain't great.
Thursday 6 September 2012
Kismet
It's a Bengali place, but I think the food still largely fits the UK curry pattern. Today's lunch was the "fairly hot" chicken pathia, which wikipedia tells me is a UK curry, not from the subcontinent.
Regardless, it's tasty, but not exciting: it's sour, sweet and hot, but also kind of thin: I think it's primarily a tomato-based curry, but there's nothing to it other than just five hunks of (fairly dry) chicken breast floating in a sea of sauce: no potatoes or other veggies, say. I had it with garlic naan, which I do like, but I kind of wish there were more to pick up with the bread!
This place has existed for quite a while, and is a spinoff of a no-longer-controlled-by-them restaurant on Phillip Street (my lunch companion suggested that we should actually draw a map of which restaurants share origins with which other ones).
Having gone many times, I can note that I really should just stop getting the lunch curries: a tastier lunch, for example, is the mulligatawny with a handful of onion bhajia, say. I'm not sure why I always get curry with garlic naan.
I had: chicken pathia with garlic naan
I paid: Well, I didn't; my companion did. But I think he paid $24 for his lunch and mine, and he had a lassi
Verdict:
Speed: Good, and it usually is. We had a lot to talk about, but the food probably arrived within 8 minutes or so.
Quality: Not bad, but not brilliant. I'd prefer it if their meat curries were more veggie-heavy; it otherwise feels kind of like a few hunks of meat in soup.
Value: I don't think it's great, honestly: the cost of putting together the various curry sauces isn't that high, as they don't include expensive ingredients. And there's not a lot of meat in the meat curries, either. That's part of why I don't go all that often.
Would go back: I go roughly every few months, and I expect that'll continue.
Regardless, it's tasty, but not exciting: it's sour, sweet and hot, but also kind of thin: I think it's primarily a tomato-based curry, but there's nothing to it other than just five hunks of (fairly dry) chicken breast floating in a sea of sauce: no potatoes or other veggies, say. I had it with garlic naan, which I do like, but I kind of wish there were more to pick up with the bread!
This place has existed for quite a while, and is a spinoff of a no-longer-controlled-by-them restaurant on Phillip Street (my lunch companion suggested that we should actually draw a map of which restaurants share origins with which other ones).
Having gone many times, I can note that I really should just stop getting the lunch curries: a tastier lunch, for example, is the mulligatawny with a handful of onion bhajia, say. I'm not sure why I always get curry with garlic naan.
I had: chicken pathia with garlic naan
I paid: Well, I didn't; my companion did. But I think he paid $24 for his lunch and mine, and he had a lassi
Verdict:
Speed: Good, and it usually is. We had a lot to talk about, but the food probably arrived within 8 minutes or so.
Quality: Not bad, but not brilliant. I'd prefer it if their meat curries were more veggie-heavy; it otherwise feels kind of like a few hunks of meat in soup.
Value: I don't think it's great, honestly: the cost of putting together the various curry sauces isn't that high, as they don't include expensive ingredients. And there's not a lot of meat in the meat curries, either. That's part of why I don't go all that often.
Would go back: I go roughly every few months, and I expect that'll continue.
Tuesday 4 September 2012
Admin note
Gosh. I seem to have been reddit'd. Huh. Can I just note how depressing it is that probably more people will read this blog than the vast majority of my papers. *sigh*
I'll likely not post here most Wednesdays, as work at home on those days. And this Thursday, I leave for a week in Europe, so we'll have a disruption then as well.
After I've fully eaten the plaza, I might start posting reviews of other food around here, but for the time being, we'll stick to the original mission.
I'll likely not post here most Wednesdays, as work at home on those days. And this Thursday, I leave for a week in Europe, so we'll have a disruption then as well.
After I've fully eaten the plaza, I might start posting reviews of other food around here, but for the time being, we'll stick to the original mission.
Waterloo SOGO
This is a new place in the plaza; it's in the space that used to be Iron Chef.
My understanding is that this is connected to an existing place in a NW Waterloo neighbourhood I don't go to much.
I asked, and they're serving food from Shanxi (or maybe Shaanxi; I guess they're next to each other); I'm sure I can't hear the difference between those words.
I had a bowl of cold steamed rice noodles with cucumber in a sauce that tasted of rice vinegar, sesame, soy, cilantro and scallion, and had a handful of roasted soybeans. It was also pretty spicy. And quite tasty. Cold noodles are refreshing.
I also had a crepe; they make them filled with egg, scallion, a salty brown sauce, and crunchy pieces of what is probably deep-fried crepe batter. (This is kind of like the postmodern pancakes at Shopsin's, in NYC.) This was less exciting; it vaguely reminded me of the taste and experience of eating takoyaki in Japan, but without the yummy pieces of octopus.
Still, this is a welcome place to add to the plaza: it's Chinese food that isn't from the standard menu that we always see. Seems quite busy, but today is the first day of Orientation, and so everyone's back on campus. There were very few people speaking English at the restaurant.
I had: A bowl of cold noodles and a Chinese crepe
I paid: $10, including tax and tip
Verdict:
Speed: Pretty good. They sat me at the bar (which made me somewhat wistful, because I remember the previous tenants), and brought me the noodles first, and then a few minutes later, the cook, who was right in front of me, finished making my crepe and handed it to me.
Quality: This was good food. There are other cold noodle dishes I like more (I think I prefer peanut sauces to this more vinegar-y sauce), but it was refreshing. The crepe was messy to eat, but I enjoyed it.
Value: I kind of wasn't sure if I needed more food than the bowl of noodles. They have lots of small things on the menu (congee, etc.), but I decided I'd get both the noodles and the crepe. That wasn't a cheap lunch, in the end, but I think it might have been okay with just one or the other.
Would go back: Yes. I just wonder if it'll get slammed once school starts in earnest next week.
My understanding is that this is connected to an existing place in a NW Waterloo neighbourhood I don't go to much.
I asked, and they're serving food from Shanxi (or maybe Shaanxi; I guess they're next to each other); I'm sure I can't hear the difference between those words.
I had a bowl of cold steamed rice noodles with cucumber in a sauce that tasted of rice vinegar, sesame, soy, cilantro and scallion, and had a handful of roasted soybeans. It was also pretty spicy. And quite tasty. Cold noodles are refreshing.
I also had a crepe; they make them filled with egg, scallion, a salty brown sauce, and crunchy pieces of what is probably deep-fried crepe batter. (This is kind of like the postmodern pancakes at Shopsin's, in NYC.) This was less exciting; it vaguely reminded me of the taste and experience of eating takoyaki in Japan, but without the yummy pieces of octopus.
Still, this is a welcome place to add to the plaza: it's Chinese food that isn't from the standard menu that we always see. Seems quite busy, but today is the first day of Orientation, and so everyone's back on campus. There were very few people speaking English at the restaurant.
I had: A bowl of cold noodles and a Chinese crepe
I paid: $10, including tax and tip
Verdict:
Speed: Pretty good. They sat me at the bar (which made me somewhat wistful, because I remember the previous tenants), and brought me the noodles first, and then a few minutes later, the cook, who was right in front of me, finished making my crepe and handed it to me.
Quality: This was good food. There are other cold noodle dishes I like more (I think I prefer peanut sauces to this more vinegar-y sauce), but it was refreshing. The crepe was messy to eat, but I enjoyed it.
Value: I kind of wasn't sure if I needed more food than the bowl of noodles. They have lots of small things on the menu (congee, etc.), but I decided I'd get both the noodles and the crepe. That wasn't a cheap lunch, in the end, but I think it might have been okay with just one or the other.
Would go back: Yes. I just wonder if it'll get slammed once school starts in earnest next week.
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