motodraconis | 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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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.

Death by carbs...

Re: 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

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