motodraconis | Death by carbs...

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Death by carbs...

To be honest, it's a relief to get home to escape North American food.* I was pretty skint on this trip, so subsisted on conference food and the hideous Tim Hortons cards given to me daily by my hotel/hostel in lieu of a proper breakfast. At first it's a novelty, the sort of guff I don't eat at home, but by the end of the trip I was getting pretty sick of it and craving decent food. (Ceviche!) I'm not a fan of carbs and sugar, and the past 10 days has been a nauseating conveyor belt of sugar, bread, sugar, pastry, sugar, potatoes and yes... more fucking sugar. I tried this "strawberry season wont last forever!" offering at the airport in an attempt to use up my Tim Hortons cards.

It had no discernible strawberry flavour whatsoever, tasting entirely of sugar, right down to the thick, pure coloured-sugar crust on top. It was quite horrible. I've no idea why I bothered... it was free, it was intriguing, it was revolting. After eating it, I felt a bit sick and didn't want to eat any food again for about 18 hours. Ugh. Luckily, not all the food was vile.

On arrival, I asked the guys at reception for recommendations of genuine Canadian food. This threw them into confusion, but after some discussion, the only food they could name was Poutine, Canada's guilty secret junk food. A quest! A veritable quest!

Now... on my first day, before the conference started, I had a chance to go up the iconic CN Tower...

There are two restaurants at the top of the tower, the famous revolving one, you have to book in advance. I went and took a look. It did indeed revolve, but was so rammed with people you'd be lucky to be anywhere near the windows and a chance to appreciate the revolviness. However, on the level below was a fancy restaurant - pretty much empty, with a 3 course set dinner for a reasonable price (translated to sterling.) You could chose a seat by the window, and one of the set meal starter options was a poshed up poutine dressed with smoked duck. Ideal!

My view.

Sorrel and ginger soft drink, complete with a CN Tower swizzle-stick...

Aaaaaand, my poutine starter arrived, I'd imagined something lofty and delicately piled, a posh taster. I got this...

IT WAS THE SIZE OF MY FUCKING HEAD!

Cheesy chips and gravy, this alone was a bigger meal than I'd normally eat by itself. And it was a starter. "Surely some mistake?" I asked the waiter... "I've 2 more courses coming!" He assured me that this was "the size" but to be honest it really freaked me out. Bear in mind, I was raised English, (albeit with a French mum) and that means clearing your plate - not leaving uneaten food to go to waste. How in the hell would I survive 3 fucking courses? I got so upset, the waiter brought me a doggy-box to put half of the poutine in. It was the only way to calm me down, but even a half measure was a full dinner in my book. BLOODY HELL. Not that it wasn't nice, but, BLOODY HELL!

"Main" dish, salmon on a croute-potato bed. (More potato - groan!)

With some difficulty, I ate the salad and tasty fish, and half the potato bed.

Me with my pudding... pecan choc muffins and berries.

Looking remarkably cheery despite being on the brink of explosion. I dragged the doggy-box of poutine all the way back to my hotel after a full day wandering around Toronto, but was so stuffed I couldn't eat for 24 hours and had to bin it. Boo! It was debauched... but oh so good. Er, even if it did give me a 6 hour stomach ache from all the grease.

But to continue... I'd delved into a Tim Horton's breakfast during my stay, a bacon sammich. On the face of it, what could go wrong. Bacon sammiches are brilliant for brekky...

WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK? I nearly burst into tears when I saw this sorry excuse for bacon, sat forlornly on some sort of bread item called a "biscuit." Would the horror never end? Natch, it tasted of fuck all. NEVER AGAIN.

But all was not lost. I was told I should go to the famous St Lawrence market where real food would await me...

Shrooms.

CHEESE!

REAL CHEESE!!

FUCKING ACTUAL DELICIOUS CANADIAN CHEESE!!!

Here I had a bit of fun. I've been shown round the market swiftly by one of the local lecturers, and returned a few days later with D, a girl I'd met a the conference and agreed to go on a trip to the islands with. D was Indian, and new to the joys of cheese in all it's variety. Here was a proper cheese shoppe, with a cheery, friendly cheeseman happy to let D (and me) taste samples of a range of varieties. I recommended D try smoked, be-salt-crystalled, soft and super creamy, creamy with blue (egad!) and hard and tangy goat. All of which were new flavours and varieties to D. The creamy with blue disturbed her a bit, but the be-salt-crystalled and goat were a hit and she bought 2 slabs, one to give as a gift to her brother in Montreal, and another the take back home to India. I advised the goat for the gift (so if he didn't like it, she'd get to eat it all! Goat can be a bit of an acquired taste) and the salty, being a hard and robust cheese, to take home as it would cope fine in a suitcase long-haul or with unrefrigerated bouts. Not to mention a salt crystalled cheese would be ideal in the heat of India. The nice cheeseman wrapped the slabs properly in waxed paper and shrink-wrapped them for scent-sealed travelling. (Not so good to end up with goaty clothes in your suitcase!)

For me, I sought out another famous Canadian food...the world famous Peameal Bacon.

Peameal (cough) style...experience this Toronto tradition. Eh!

REAL BACON!

Tasty, though not exactly a novelty for someone who eats bacon in the UK.

And for my final food foray, "one of Canada's quintessential desserts" the Butter Tart.

Wikipedia cites butter tarts as..."common in pioneer Canadian cooking, and they remain a characteristic pastry of Canada, considered one of only a few recipes of genuinely Canadian origin." Yet, in chatting to Canadians in Toronto, they expressed surprise at the Canadian uniqueness of the Butter Tart. Surely such a pastry was so ubiquitous they could be found everywhere, and not something to seek out specifically. Yet, in all my travels, I have never seen or eaten the like.** And while they look a bit grisly, they are very tasty. Recommended!

Healthier than you might think according to Time magazine. Now I do have a horror of excess sugar and carbs, and am still reeling from my carb-sugar overload, so I thought I'd try and find more info on this fat research. From Harvard.edu. Interesting stuff, particularly for those who, (like me) have high cholesterol. Maybe my anathema of over-carbing is not so foolish after all.

* Alas my hopes that typical-definitive Canadian food would have more of a unique character than typical-definitive US food proved unfounded.

** No doubt they can be found on Cowley Road I'm sure.

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Mmm, fancy the butter tarts... I have to admit, despite my own penchant for carbs and sugar, that if the Tim Horton's stuff was anything like as vomitrocious as it looks, it must have been pretty grim

The butter tarts are good! Urrgh, Tim Hortons, if i never eat another Tim Hortons it will be too soon. I've still got one of the food cards left.
I suppose on the plus side, it is a Canadian cultural icon, I even tried (the smallest) box of Timbits. (https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=timbits&espv=2&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=MXKsU63NN8XH7AbihoDABg&ved=0CAYQ_AUoAQ&biw=1680&bih=935)

From wikipedia...

"Some commentators have bemoaned the rise of Tim Hortons as a national symbol. Rudyard Griffiths, director of The Dominion Institute, wrote in the Toronto Star in July 2006 that the ascension of the chain to the status of cultural icon was a "worrying sign" for Canadian nationalism, adding, "Surely Canada can come up with a better moniker than the Timbit Nation."

but yeah. I was 3 months in Toronto, not my favourite international work place. OTOH I was in a self-catering apartment so didn't have to choke down a breakfast of the sort you describe. Have had to elsewhere, though - this weird idea of some north american hotels that you might stay in the hotel and not be provided with a proper brekky there, it's just wrong!

The butter tarts look nice and I don't remember even seeing them before - and no, not even God's Own Cowley Road serves them here, what I wot of. We've got Jack fruits on offer right now though ;-)

Jack fruits ain't nothing special. It's no surprise they're on offer, they're not very nice.

I don't like jack fruits either, they taste of rotten banana chewing gum or at least that's what I remember them as when I tried them as a kid. But I quite like seeing them for sale in the street (I just meant on sale, not 'on offer' as in discounted).

I am a bit of a guilty carb-fiend, however the photo which appealed to me most in your post was the sorrel and ginger drink, that just sounds amazing!
and such a stunning view. I love doing the revolving restaurant in Berlin's TV tower but have to admit that the view isn't a patch on yours.

It's Sorrel as in the Caribbean drink made with a type of hibiscus. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roselle_(plant)) So the main ingredient to make it could probably be sourced in Burnt Oak. I might investigate.

that sounds just as amazing as I love hibiscus too. Which reminds me, must try to find some more hibiscus tea.

I've actually noticed this a lot about American food, that they seem to associate anything fruit flavoured with sugar and generally mistake colour (food coloring) with flavour too. I once had a banana tart that tasted nothing like a banana or a tart at a store I can't recall the name of in Ohio.

I remember the first time I tried a Krispe Kreme (apologies if I misspell) donut, I nearly choked at the sheer amount of sugar. I could not take a second bite if my life depended on it. When a KK opened here in malaysia back in 2009 (I think) I was among the few people not at all excited because jesus a sugar waterfall? Just looking at it gives me cavities.

Another thing I always noticed about US foods is portions. I mean, I'm not the healthiest eater, I could live on chocolate and ice cream but those huge plates and what looks like mountains of french fries even give me - a fairly unhealthy eater - the willies.

Which is not to say all American food is bad. I love some of the things I've tried there but the general tone of food there seems to be super sized and more full of colour than flavour.

And as you pointed out, the excess of sugar.

ETA I didn't read the post under cut so sorry if any of this sounds repetitive/stupid.

Edited 2014-06-26 22:10 (UTC)

Arf! The poutine portion was a shocker, it almost put me off my entire dinner.

The conference was loaded with sugared snacks, four times per day. Pastries for breakfast, pastries for break, pastries and cake at lunch and more pastries and cake for afternoon break. I adore (alleged) maple syrup and pecan plaits, but grud I was desperate for some sort of salty savoury.

A subtle culture shock, at my uni, you're more likely to get crisps, bombay mix and peanuts as snacks, or tiny savoury sammiches for something a bit more substantial; sugary snacks are unusual.

I've never had a butter tart, but to me, they largely look like mini pecan pies without the pecans. I do notice that the one you have in the picture in the bottom has pecans. If pecans aren't plentiful/popular in the UK, perhaps that's why you've haven't seen many of them maybe?

High fructose corn syrup is a plague on North America, that's for sure. Dang corn farmers! It is pretty difficult to avoid food that doesn't have some sort of sugar added. Almost freaking everything has it, including things you wouldn't expect. I feel for people with dietary restrictions.

I think most appetizers in North American restaurants are really too large, across the board. I'd only order one as an entree if I wasn't massively hungry, or if I was going to split it with other people. Serving sizes for everything in sit-down restaurants tend to be huge, anyway. I guess you are getting your money's worth. But poutine as a starter sounds like a distastuh. I thought I sent you the links describing it? The description alone seemed a bit much to me. XD Is the UK version smaller portions or less heavy or something? I thought you said there was something similar in northern areas? Anyway, it definitely sounds like it would be better in cold weather (and eaten alone).

I will say that the Tim Horton's biscuit looks pretty sad. I don't know where they fall in the fast-food spectrum, but it looks like a somewhat fancier McDonalds?

They're nothing like pecan pies when you bite into them (we have pecan pie in the UK, and it was on sale in Toronto.) The filling is a buttery goo, very different from a pecan pie. If anything, the purist butter tart has raisins, not pecans. The clue's in the name!
This is the size of starter you might expect in the UK...

(https://www.flickr.com/photos/motodraconis/8732050210)

Ok, ok, I am taking the piss, that is an extreme example! This is more normal...

(https://www.flickr.com/photos/motodraconis/6957574064)

A starter can be anything in the UK, a miniature version of a main course is not uncommon, so it might be reasonable to expect a mini portion of poutine for a starter, not one the size of your own head! It was dressed up with smoked duck, giving the impression that fancy thought had gone onto it. In a fancy UK restaurant, if I ordered fish and chips as a starter, I'd expect an ironic version. A small piece of beautiful, delicious fish, perched delicately over two crossed chunky chips, drizzled with sauce and a scattering of capers, maybe a jus of mushy peas for ornament... that sort of thing (almost a food joke, but tasteful!)

Actually when I eat out (hasn't happened in a while), your first picture is usually my type of "starter." XD That, or chips and salsa if we're talking about Mexican restaurants.

There's one woman I follow with a local restaurant blog and I think she takes half her food home on a regular basis and uses it for another meal. I couldn't eat out as much as she does.

But I think as a general rule of thumb, expect at least two meals worth of food at a sit-down restaurant in the US unless you know how their portion sizes run (you can always order something else if you are still hungry), and from your report, sounds like you could potentially add Canada to that list, too.

I found this in the USA too and found it quite irritating; there seemed to be no way to order food without ending up with a load of waste. In a steak restaurant we thought we were being cunning by splitting one 20 oz steak between two of us, but then the side dishes were only available in a size that would have done for four people, so because we wanted to have more than one side, as in having some sort of vegetable as well as fries, we still ended up with far too much food. And we could have got the rest to take away with us but who wants cold doggy-bagged fries? It all just seemed so unnecessary.

Some places in the US do offer smaller sizes geared toward kids on a limited kids' menu since a lot of kids will take 3 bites of something and declare they are full, but occasionally the restaurants will be picky and not sell those sizes to adults. Fries tend to be on those kids' menus. It doesn't hurt to ask your server. I don't think they can give you discounts if you want less food, but they might be able to swing a substitution for other things, perhaps. They have to follow the menus, but they occasionally have some leeway. I wouldn't say it was a universal thing. But "small" in the US might be "normal" for you. There are also places that will offer light options, but a steakhouse usually doesn't have that, or if they do, it's a few things. It's more likely if they sell seafood, too.

I've been to steakhouses a handful of times and they do tend to have really large portions (part of their schtick, to appeal to big appetites and groups), but my favorite place to get a steak was a place that just had a weekly steak-night, but wasn't a steakhouse. I can't remember how big the steaks were (definitely not 10oz), but they had small ceramic or metal cups they used for their sides (sort of a "meat and 2 veg" thing) and would include a roll as well. Might've also had a small salad, IIRC. It was a manageable meal and a reasonable price. But when you're paying $10 for one item, I think people expect the larger portion sizes for splitting or for leftovers usually. Or they are starving and that's their main/only dish. An actual steakhouse would be once-in-a-blue-moon thing for me, and I'd probably not be hungry until later the next day if I actually ate everything.

It's definitely harder if you are traveling and not familiar with a restaurant and how they tend to be. Higher prices tend to be a lot of food, though, unless it's some sort of fancy fusion cuisine restaurant. Then you get *really* small servings with ridiculous prices. Buffets are plentiful here, but I think they are crapshoot if you want to avoid food poisoning. Manned buffets are usually safer than the self-serve ones, in my experience.

I grew up not eating out that much, not even fast food, so it's not something I do very often. It's really expensive to eat 3 meals a day that way. I'd rather hit up a local grocery store if I was going to be in one place for a while and had access to a refrigerator. It tends to be a lot cheaper overall and you can control portion size a bit better. I like to go into grocery stores in foreign countries/new-to-me places, though.

But that's the frustrating thing: I'm 6'2", fairly active and not a small eater at all by the standards of anyone in the UK/Europe, and neither was the other person I was sharing that meal with, who at the time was cycling 100 miles a week for his commute and who'd recently had to buy a bigger box to be able to fit the size of pasta-heavy lunch he needed in it. Both of us own plates that are too big to go in most dishwashers, and when eating out for functional purposes in the UK, we'd normally consider the person who'd picked the dish that came with the most food to have won, in some sense. But in many places we ate in the US (where we were staying in hotels and didn't have much alternative) the problem was always being served too much. We found it difficult to find anywhere (that wasn't a fast-food chain selling plastic and cardboard) to just go and eat functionally rather than have an enormous blow-out meal with lots of wasted leftovers, basically, and people who eat on the scale we do shouldn't have to look for tricks involving the kids' menu to achieve that.

Oh, hotels. Yeah, hotels in the US can be pretty ridiculous with their serving sizes, especially if it's a fancier hotel with a really nice sit-down restaurant. I remember getting chicken once at the Peabody Hotel and they gave me practically half of a chicken. Way too much food for me (I'm 5'10" myself), but their entrees were priced at something like $20 or something ridiculous like that at the time (this was well over 5 years ago). Just looked at some of their current prices at their lower-priced "grill" and omg, heartattack. XD

I don't know if they are largely catering to people who are eating less than 3 meals a day, or people who have access to refrigerators. Or if they are lazy and don't want to deal with leftover food and don't really care if there is tons of waste. But I think they are mainly covering their butt with the huge serving sizes so they can charge outrageous prices for not particularly fancy food. $30 for chicken parmesan is insane to me. They are making a tidy profit on that one. I'm sure if they gave a reasonable serving size for that amount of money they would get lots of complaints.

Yeah, I think this is the fundamental problem; I wouldn't expect a more expensive restaurant to serve me larger portions, I'd expect it to serve me better food, which doesn't include paying for good ingredients and skilled preparation time to be wasted. As a rule of thumb I'd expect cheaper restaurants to serve bigger volumes in the UK, to give some incentive to put up with the quality.

Just out of interest, what sort of place could I look for in the USA to find reasonable food, then? As in not too fancy, not blow-out-meal amounts, but not fast-food levels? I mean normally I cook at home, but sometimes you're travelling and just need somewhere to eat. In the UK I'd find a roadside pub somewhere, preferably not a chain one, or perhaps a Chinese or Thai restaurant, and expect to get something fairly quick and not terrible quality for not too much money. What would be the equivalent, or does this just not translate?

The US is overrun with national chain restaurants. There are lots of sit-down places like Olive Garden, Applebee's, Outback, etc. that you can find in most any sizeable city, but I'm sure you'd rather have a good local restaurant when you're traveling, not 50 McDonald's that serve the same thing. Bar & grills here can be really hit or miss, in my experience.

It seems a lot of people like to use Tripadvisor (http://www.tripadvisor.com/) to scope out places when they travel. I've only glanced at it a few times, so I don't know if people get into portion sizes and the like with restaurants (it's probably more along the lines of "this was good food at a reasonable price," but that might be one way to find good local restaurants. Yelp (http://www.yelp.com/) seems pretty popular these days (and you're more likely to get local people rating), but it covers way more than restaurants. Also, it doesn't cover everywhere in the US, but it does hit a lot of popular places with tourists. There's also UrbanSpoon (http://www.urbanspoon.com), although I'm not sure if that is as well known as the other ones I mentioned, but the coverage looks to be better than Yelp as far as the number of locations go.

Another awesome post, thank you so much!

Tricky hunting down genuine Canadian dishes, I missed a few classics, though finding places that would feed you those dishes would have been difficult.

Keep up the good work!

Your lunch in the tower did indeed look huge!

It was crazy big, I couldn't eat a thing until the next day!

Edited 2014-06-30 09:30 (UTC)

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Death by carbs...

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I quite like Tim Horton's coffee

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Re: I quite like Tim Horton's coffee

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Well, this turned out to be really long.... :-D

Re: Well, this turned out to be really long.... :-D

Re: Well, this turned out to be really long.... :-D

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Re: Well, this turned out to be really long.... :-D

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Fantastic Post

Re: Fantastic Post