New Brunch place on St.Clair!

Started up by a family who originally lived in the neighbourhood, the Sunnyside Grill has a new location on St.Clair in Corso Italia.

We checked it out last weekend and were pleasantly surprised by the modern diner feel, which is a lot different from the other restaurants in the area. The service was great and the food was yummy and inexpensive.

Poached Eggs Hollandaise and a Traditional Breakfast for under $20...Are you drooling yet?

Great to have an all-day-brunch place in our hood now! Good luck to Sunnyside Grill! Hope to visit again soon!

WagJag deal for SunnySide Grill

Brunch is a lazy man's way of having two meals at once. And since we're lazy, it also happens to be our favourite meal of the day.

Lucky for us, a new brunch place recently opened up on St. Clair and we will definitely be checking out on our next lazy Sunday morning walk. It's called The Sunnyside Grill and today, WagJag has a $10 for $20 deal for two of their locations.

And one of them is the St. Clair location...woooooo!

Just checked out their menu - sounds yummy and the prices are decent. You can get a good hearty brunch for under $10.

Sah-weet!

If anyone else checks it out before we do, please share your reviews!

For the WagJag deal, go here.

Rifling through the Butler's Pantry

It was a cold and stormy night...

No really, it was last Monday, wasn't it? After work we had to stop by the Annex Animal Hospital to buy some more special cat food. That's more than you needed to know, but since we were in the hood we thought we'd try out a new restaurant.

To be honest, because it was rainy, we walked into the first place that looked open and warm. And thus, we found ourselves in The Butler's Pantry.

Open since 1985, the Butler's Pantry offers "comfort food for the health conscious customer." And now that we're on a crunch to get fit before 2012, we are now under that category. The restaurant has a warm and inviting atmosphere. It's actually quite big in the inside, but it still felt cozy. The walls are covered with original water colour art (there's a story about that at the end), and there were small groups of customers scattered in different booths, enjoying their meals.

Man, were we hungry.

We started off with some hummus drizzled with olive oil.

Matt had the Beef Burgundy Casserole - a savoury beef stew slow cooked with carrot, sweet pepper, onion and a hint of red wine. Then topped with a layer of onions and mushrooms, then covered with creamed potatoes.

If that doesn't say "raining day dinner," I don't know what does!

I went with something a bit more exotic - the Chicken Bastilla Pie, which is one of the Pantry's more popular dishes. This famous Moroccan dish is a chicken pie with onions, mushrooms, eggs and cinnamon-scented almonds, wrapped in many layers of buttery filo pastry.

The service was friendly and prompt and our meals were delicious! Definitely would recommend for dates and small group outtings. Or, in our case, a safe haven from the crappy weather outside.

....

Ok, so about those paintings. They are beautiful, that should be stated first and foremost. But the one above our table had a slight creep factor and I happened to say it out loud when our server came by our table with the cheque. She asked what was creepy about it and I pointed out that while I liked the top portion with the animals, at the bottom of the canvas were two naked women with, what appeared to be, blood steaming from their bodies. I'm not a painter, what do I know?

Well, I defintely didn't know that I was telling the painter herself that I thought it was creepy. The moment the words came out of my mouth, Matt gave me that "look" that said "Yup, you said it" and then I looked at our server and asked "Please, don't tell me you're the artist."

Luckily, she laughed and said she appreciated honest feedback.

Also, lucky for us that I opened my big mouth AFTER our meals arrived.

The Butler's Pantry is located at 591 Markham St.

Big Love for The Big Ragu

I think I've died and gone to food Cielo.

Last night, Matt's parents came down to visit and we decided to take them to the popular Corso Italia restaurant, The Big Ragu.

We arrived just in time - the owner and head chef, Carmine Accogli, had just finished a shoot for OMNI TV, and the restaurant was open for business. Carmine greeted us warmly as we entered and joked about how he was going to be a big TV star.

As we were brought to our table, we noticed two women having dinner in the corner, and one of them was our very talented wedding caterer, Jen Draper, from Eatertainment. Suddenly it felt like we were regulars at a local Trattoria, and Carmine commented that Jen seemed to know everyone. She told us that The Big Ragu was the first place she goes when she's craving Italian cuisine, and she lives on the other side of the city. And knowing that Jen has a palette for fine food, we knew we were going to have a great meal.

So, let's just get to the food already!!

For appetizers, we had grilled calamari served over a bed of greens topped with homemade salsa verde...

...Along with "magic mushrooms": Portobello & button mushrooms baked with goat cheese over arugula with a wine reduction...

...oh, and don't forget the toasted bread with prosciutto, pear, gorgonzola & toasted walnuts, drizzled with honey.

Pair that with a bottle of Italian white wine, and we were off to a good start.

For my main dish, I went with one of their specials for the evening; Tagliata di Manzo, a savoury steak fillet on a bed of arugula and paired with roasted potatoes.

YUM.

Matt had a pasta dish drizzled in Truffle oil (a favourite of his since our honeymoon in Tuscany), and his parents had a white fish filet dish and a chicken filet in a lemon & white wine sauce.

The service was great (our glasses were never empty and the bread basket was always full), the atmosphere was pleasant (lucky for us, we got there before the regulars filled up the place), and well, suffice to say, the food was delicious!

If you're looking for an intimate space for great Italian food or a venue to hold your next special event, this is definitely the place to be.

Big Ragu, you've made regulars outta us. See you soon!!

The Big Ragu is located on 1338 Lansdowne Avenue, just south of St.Clair.

Sunday Morning at Nova Era

What smells like fresh baked bread and sounds like a bunch of old Italian / Portuguese men deep in conversation?

Give up?

Nova Era on a Sunday morning!

Matt, sporting his Movember 'stache, which only makes him look more like all the other patrons.

Heading over for some coffee and almond filled croissants after a night of debaucheries has become somewhat of a tradition for us since we moved to the west end. Walking in, it's as if suddenly we've been transported to a local bakery in a small Italian village, where's it's packed with fresh baked goods and tons of chatty people (how do they do it so early in the morning?!).

Another highlight for us is bumping into our friend's dad ("Home Deeps") and all of his friends, who also make it a point of meeting there every Sunday morning to talk about work, politics, and women (mind you, these are all guesses, since they're speaking Portuguese and we don't understand a word they're saying).

We've been here so often that on our last visit the cashier said our order out loud before we did. We've finally reached "Regulars" status and we're loving it.