Peterson's first stop this season is for a peameal bacon sandwich at this Toronto favorite. Peameal bacon, which is back bacon rolled in cornmeal, gets its name from an earlier version of the preparation, when the meat was rolled in ground peas for preservation purposes.
At this unassuming Dundas West joint, you can get a meal that will fill you up (and then some) without breaking the bank. Chef Jerome Robinson’s fried chicken sammies are next level when it comes to flavour and size.
It’s worth saving room for dessert; chef patissier Raffaele Stea offers a tipsy tarte au sucre, a textural love child between a lustrous creme brulee and quivering flan, spiked with a hiccup-inducing slug of Screech rum and served with a heady brown-butter milk sauce. Open in Google Maps
Copy Link Pitmaster Darien List has staked his regional barbecue claim in Toronto, offering diners Central Texas-style meats. Relish in signatures like marbled brisket that’s cooked indirectly over pecan wood and licked with just the perfect amount of heady smoke.
Starbucks: You get one free beverage or food item if you’re a Starbucks Rewards member. You’ll need to have been signed up at least seven days before your birthday and made a star-earning purchase within the last year.
Rachel Adjei is a Ghanaian Canadian chef and food justice advocate who celebrates much of the underrepresented African diaspora in Toronto. She founded the Abibiman Project to support Black food sovereignty initiatives via a range of pantry products, pop-up dinners, and catering — all in the hopes of challenging people’s perceptions of African foods and the narratives surrounding them. At her staple pop-up location at the Grapefruit Moon in the Annex, her ever-evolving dinner menus offer deep-dives into specific African regions, which Adjei contextualizes with information about the corresponding culture.
Copy Link David Schwartz and Braden Chong’s Mimi (美美) — which loosely translates from Chinese to “beautiful, beautiful” — lives up to its name with crimson banquettes, pearly lotus wallpaper, and black lacquered tables. A meal here serves as a love letter to Guangdong and its Cantonese flavors, with deference to additional regions such as Shaanxi, Sichuan, Shanghai, Huangzhou, and Hunan. The stunning yet laborious char siu is a prized possession, requiring three days of prep work that includes brining, marinating in secret aromatics, and roasting twice.
Gandhi Roti in Toronto's Queen West neighborhood offers some of the spiciest, cheapest, most filling meals in the city. Here roti are tossed on the flat-top before being filled with various ingredients, from butter chicken to vegetable korma or West Indian curries.
Longos offers $15 off an order of $cem or more when you get your order delivered by Grocery Gateway. However, this promotion is only available with an SPC card at participating locations in Ontario.
The Momo House puts Himalayan cuisine on the map one momo at a time. Get your fix of scrumptious momos, Tibetan-style filled and steamed dumplings, at any of their three locations.
Copy Link When plant-based restaurants first descended upon Toronto in the late ’90s, they primarily catered to a niche, healthy audience. Planta founder Steven Salm quietly revolutionized vegetarian and vegan food in the city by making it appealing to staunch carnivores. David Lee, co-founder and click here executive chef, worked in numerous Michelin-starred restaurants before applying his culinary know-how to the diverse menu, often eliciting counterintuitive praise for how “meaty” dishes taste.
Many successful restaurants that populate the city today are helmed by chefs who got their start at this one. Since 1995, Canoe has showcased the provenance of Canadian ingredients from coast to coast. The fancy enterprise calls the 54th floor of the Toronto-Dominion Centre home, offering views of the skyline and demanding high prices to go with it. Executive chef Ron McKinlay (who worked alongside Tom Kitchin and Gordon Ramsay) leads the elaborate tasting and hyperseasonal menus. A portrait of Canada is framed in hedonistic creations like his intricate Pig’s Trotter: a compact porky cylinder stuffed with sweetbreads, lap cheong sausage, and wild shrimp from the North Atlantic, counterbalanced by a relief system of tangy pickled pears, salty spot prawn bisque, and grassy tarragon emulsion.
If pitchers of sangria or margaritas are more your speed, indulge in one for $20; they will pair beautifully with their yuca fries and house-made tortilla chips.
The surprise bags feature items that the restaurants or stores would’ve thrown out, so you’re saving perfectly good food from going into the landfill!