Acacia Fine Foods

I wish I had better pictures of the food here, but I was too rushed.  I promised my former coworker that I would meet up with her for an earlier lunch because she had to make sure that she would get home in time to let the baby sitter in the house.  But of course, with my luck, my meeting before lunch ran almost 45 minutes overtime.  So I quickly ordered food, and sat down to eat so we could catch up in the little time we had.

Acacia has lunch specials where for $5.99 you can get a drink, a chicken shwarma and fries.  The flavours of the shwarma were very good, and no fatty gristly pieces.  There were even crispy pieces of chicken, I guess from the vertical rotating grill!  The pita fillings were the typical hummus, tahini, lettuce, tomato, pickles, and radish/turnip pickles.  I believe they even make the pita on site.  Portion wise, it's not huge, but I thought it was a good size for me.  Seeing how busy this place gets, the shwarma is definitely fresh!

Chicken Shwarma

Acacia Fine Foods
1170 Burnhamthorpe Rd W.,
Unit 18
Mississauga, ON

905-232-8003

Sweet Note Desserts

I'm not sure why I waited until now to post about Sweet Note Desserts.  I have been there several times and each of those times I have said, this is really good.  The first time I went was because I had a dessert craving.  We had just left an Indian buffet in Brampton, I know, it was buffet and I wasn't full.  It was with the husband's coworkers.  They wanted to leave, so I left.  And yes, i'm sure a lot of you are surprised that I went to a buffet, because everyone knows I hate them.  But again, it wasn't my choice.  Anyways, we passed by Sweet Note Desserts and the sign was pretty cute, so we popped in.  We got a mango coconut milk custard (consistency similar to a panna cotta) to go.  The custard was so rich and smooth and flavourful.  The jar was small, and I kept eating, only to realize I didn't have my bites left to share with my husband.

The second time I went was after ramen.  A quick meal of ramen wasn't enough time to catch up with my friend that I hadn't seen in over one year.  I ordered their chestnut meringue.  For all you Asians out there, i'm sure you've had Maxim's overly hyped meringue desserts.  The ones that are overly airy and overly sweet and of course overly expensive?  Yup thats the one i'm talking about.  This one was so different.  The meringue was cooked perfectly, crisp, and sweet enough, with just a tiny bit of chew.  The chestnut filling reminded me of my childhood.  I used to hate the chestnut birthday cakes that my parents bought.  But I love them now for some strange reason.

This last time I went, I was told by a friend to try their soufflé. I ordered the vanilla soufflé with passion fruit sauce.  And my friend ordered the chocolate soufflé with chocolate sauce.  Both were very good.  The soufflé were light and airy.  I don't remember the chocolate sauce, but my passion fruit sauce was so good I could keep drinking it!

Souffles

I have never made reservations, but I have seen tables with the reserved sign on them.  And later on in the night it does get busy (partly because it's a small space).  Most people, once they see how busy it is, grab the dessert as take out and leave.


Sweet Note Desserts
Unit 61-63, 505 Highway 7 East,
Markham, ON
L3T 7T1
905-877-9338 (905-UR-SWEET)

Hours:  Monday, Wednesday, Thursday 2:00pm - 10:30pm
             Friday, Saturday, Sunday 2:00pm - 11:30pm
             Tuesday CLOSED

http://sweetnote.ca

B&B Cafe

I used to hate HK style cafes.  The food just never appealed to me.  I much rather preferred Western styled breakfasts.  But ever since returning from a visit to Hong Kong a couple of years ago, my opinion changed.  Partly due to the influence from the significant other.  He loves the breakfasts from the HK style cafes.  So we began to look for the simple breakfast meals that usually give you a good amount of food, for a relatively low cost.  You would think that this would be easy to find because most Chinese plazas have one of these.  But some the flavourings are off (don't ask me how, because the meals are so easy to make), some are expensive, and I don't know, maybe it's just the feel.

On one of our Saturday morning rituals now, yes our Saturdays are very predictable, a sign of old age? We came to B&B Cafe for our breakfast.  Their breakfast offerings are very typical of HK Style Cafes, a noodle in soup with some meat served with toast & eggs, and coffee or tea.  All of that for usually $5.

B&B Cafe Breakfast Menu

B&B Cafe All Day Menu

I ordered Breakfast D, toast & butter, eggs, macaroni & ham in soup.  And the husband ordered the Satay Meal, egg sandwich and satay beef in vermicelli in soup.   As I said it's nothing spectacular.  But it's good.  I would suggest not to order the egg sandwich here though.  The scrambled eggs came out a bit tough.  And I have to apologize, I forgot to take a picture of the satay beef on vermicelli in soup.

Egg Sandwich

Ham & Macaroni in Soup

Butter Toast & Eggs

We come back to this place when we want to be close to home for a quick HK style breakfast.  Again, it's nothing super good, but it's kind of like comfort food.  I guess it also helps when you get the vibe that it's a family run restaurant as well.  They also offer typical Chinese stir fry dishes, noodles, fried rice etc for lunch and dinner.  I have been meaning to check them out for lunch and dinner, but just haven't had a chance yet.

B&B Cafe
50 Bur Oak Ave,
Markham, ON
L6C 0A2

905-887-1068

Yuan Yuan

Dumplings are another one of my favourite foods.  I can never say no to good dumplings.  I used to have a favourite dumpling restaurant, as of until last weekend located in Commerce Gate.  But from that night on, I will never go back.  I found a cigarette filter in my bowl of soup noodles.  So now Yuan Yuan has moved up the ranks of my list of go to dumpling restaurants.

The actual reason that I wanted to try Yuan Yuan was not for it's dumplings but for their Tian Jin pancakes.  It used to be hard to find places that make them, but as it turns out even T&T makes them now.  I guess it's due to the influx of people from China immigrating here.

Our table of 4 order the beef noodle (which is a must according to my husband), tomato & pork soup noodle (which arrived at the table looking different than other restaurants), steamed vegetable buns, fried dumplings, a vegetable dish and of course the Tian Jin pancake.  The beef noodle was quite good, just enough flavour in the beef, and was tender, but the broth was lacking the beef sauce flavour.  So i'm not quite sure where the colour in the broth was from.

Beef Noodle

Tomato & Pork soup noodle was very good and light.  I love tomato based broths so I don't think it could be bad.  In a way the broth was kind of refreshing, even though it was hot.  The one thing I've noticed is that there weren't many chicken or fish dishes.  Do people in China consume mostly pork and occasionally beef?

Tomato & Pork Soup Noodle

The steamed vegetable buns were a lot better than I was expecting.  I think I would order these buns again next time I'm eating there.  There was good flavour, good amount of filling and the bun layer had that slightly chewy consistency which I love in steamed buns.

Steamed Vegetable Buns

The fried dumplings, I believe we ordered the pork and leek filled ones.  Flavour was pretty good.  I was expecting the fried dumpling to be more similar to the pan fried dumplings, but these came out more deep fried.  Deep fried anything is always good!  Just need to be careful eating them.  They're SUPER hot!

Fried Dumplings

The vegetable dish, we didn't expected ALL the veggies to be deep fried and then tossed in a sauce.  I guess this is the exception to my rule where deep fried everything tastes good.  It was way too oily!  I wish I remembered which number this dish was so I would never order this again.

Fried Veggies

Last dish (although i'm certain we ordered steamed dumplings too, but I can't seem to locate the pictures, so I might be wrong?), was the Tian Jin pancake.  It was a challenge to order this dish because on the menu it's not name Tian Jin pancake.  Again, my memory fails me, and I can't remember what it's called.  And of course, there's a huge language barrier between the 4 of us and the wait staff at the restaurant.  None of us speak Mandarin.  So I Googled and found the picture of what the pancake looks like and the waitress figured out what it was.  I really liked this pancake, and would definitely order it again!  Other places give the option of the deep fried dough fritter or deep fried chip like things.  But here, it only comes with the deep fried dough fritter.

Tian Jin Pancake

Overall I would come back to this restaurant again to try their other foods.  A lot of the dishes have names that I don't remember ever seeing before.  So it would be an interesting food experience :)

Yuan Yuan
9425 Leslie St.
Richmond Hill, ON
L4B 3N7
905-237-8877

Bonne Journee

This was another quick stop partly to kill time, and partly because it was a new bakery that opened, or so I thought.  I just noticed on their FB page that they opened in 2012!  In the back of my mind I always want to look for that croissant, especially since this is supposed to be a French bakery!  By the time we got to Bonne Journee, I guess it was somewhat late in bakery time, it was really only around 2pm, but they were already sold out of many of their items.  I grabbed the last croissant, and the husband wanted this dessert that was like a cross between a tiramisu and a Napoleon.

Again, I was disappointed with the croissant.  While it looked very proper, it lacked the butter flavour and was bready.  The pastry/cake was very moist, but very sweet, but not much flavour other than that.  At the cash, they had shortbread cookies for $1.  So I grabbed one too.  It was a good size, however, it was quite hard for a shortbread cookie, and again, not much butter flavour.  Very disappointed in this little French bakery.

Pastry & Shortbread Cookie

Croissant

Bonne Journee

1576 Queen St. E.,

Toronto, ON

M4L 1E7

647-722-4809

Hours:  Tuesday - Saturday 9:00am - 7:00pm

             Sunday 9:00am - 5:00pm

https://www.facebook.com/bonnejourneeinc

Patisserie la Cigogne

The more I look, the harder I think it will be for me to find a really really good croissant.  And i'm not talking about just in Toronto.  It's always either too bready, not enough butter flavour, or too crispy.  Is it really that hard to make a good croissant?  Maybe one day, when I have finally mastered the art of bread baking, that I will give the croissant a try.  In the meanwhile, my hunt will have to continue.

I randomly found Patisserie la Cigogne through Google and decided to pop in to satisfy my croissant craving.  And because it was late in the day, their plain butter croissants were sold out.  So I bought a Pain au Chocolat (for the hubby), and an Almond croissant for me.

The Pain au Chocolate I was told was good.  That was the extent I heard about it.  The Almond croissant had enough butter flavour in the croissant portion of it, but the almond filling I thought was a little too sweet.  It's just a matter of personal preference i'm sure.  There was a lot of the almond filling, which I guess could be considering good bang for the buck.  Also to note, the almond filling did not have an overly heavy almond extract flavour.  So if it wasn't so sweet it would have been quite good.

Pain au Chocolat and Almond Croissant

Patisserie la Cigogne
1626 Bayview Ave.,
Toronto, ON
M4G 3B7
416-487-1234
http://patisserielacigogne.com

Hours: Monday - Thursday 7:30am - 7:00p,
            Friday 7:30am - 8:00pm
            Saturday 8:00am - 8:00pm
            Sunday 8:00am - 7:00pm