Yang Teashop (DUNDAS STREET WEST and University Avenue)

I go through phases of being addicted to things but for some reason, I just can’t seem to kick my brown sugar bubble tea one😅.

At this place, the marble maple milk latte with brown sugar tapioca and cheese foam is usually always my go to. And they let you customize sugar and ice level, unlike some other places... 🦌👀

Pablo Cheese Tart (Bay Street and Dundas Street West)

Original Cheese Tart

Hey!

Oh man, long time no talk. Where to begin? Maybe I’ll ease back into things by sharing some of my thoughts on Pablo’s Cheese Tart which I decided to check it out on a day exploring with my sisters and thankfully there were no lines. And if you haven’t tried this yet, I am telling you, YOU ARE MISSING OUT. I would even go as far as to say it is one of my favourite desserts in all of Toronto. Mmm so creamy and delicious!

Pablo’s Cheese Tarts are originally from Osaka, Japan where the owner apparently spent over an entire year developing a cheesecake inspired recipe which had a completely different texture than the original New York styled variety. He took Japan by storm, later started expanding across the world, and beneficial to me and everyone else in the city, finally made it to Toronto, YAY!

Tsujiri Toronto (Dundas Street West and Bay Street)

Hey Everyone!

I finally did it and thankfully without having to queue for an hour. Today my friends and I went to Tsujiri, the new all matcha Japanese café that opened up in The Discovery District. Let me just say this visit has seriously been a long time coming. Ever since one of my friends mentioned this place to me back in March I’ve been seeing bazillions of pictures posted on Instagram (@naheedzzz, if you’re not following already -_-), and have been experiencing major FOMO. But yeah, I finally got some now so everything good in the hood.

This brand is spread all throughout Japan and has been open since 1860. Isn’t that crazy?! Just take in the fact that they’ve been open for one and a half centuries! The location I went to, which is the only one in Toronto, was a small little place which harboured a few two-person seating arrangements and one cute little seiza-style seating in the back of the restaurant. For those of you who don’t know, “seiza”-style seating is basically the tradition Japanese way of sitting on the floor.

I got the Matcha Chiffon Cake Parfait with Matcha Ice Cream on top. For your ice cream, you get a selection of matcha, matcha and vanilla twist, chocolate, or plain vanilla. The actual parfait had a matcha chiffon cake, layers of ice cream and frosted flakes with red bean, which I omitted and overall I really liked the parfait. After just having a bite of ice cream I could tell the matcha they used was really high grade. Good matcha always tastes pretty sweet, which is a result of the complexity of the amino acids in the powder they used. The bright green colour was lovely to look at and the chiffon cake nor the ice cream in the parfait had that fake bitter overwhelming grass flavor. If you love matcha this is a must try dessert.

The company even has a philosophy they’ve been keeping up with for more than 155 years:

TSUJIRI's philosophy of offering the best quality green tea remains the same by painstakingly selecting the best green tea leaves from the renowned harvest of Uji in Kyoto, using the traditional grinding method to bring out the best aroma and flavour.

Lets just say they basically had me at “155 years”, like seriously one and half centuries… still can’t get over that.  So yeah based on the treat I tried today, if you asked me I would definitely recommend you to try Tsujiri… just don’t expect me to pronounce it for you.

Happy Hump Day,

Naheeda

Fun Fact- Matcha is the only form of tea where the entire leaf is consumed.

Ichiban Sushi House (Wellington Street East and Church Street)

Green Dragon Roll

Hey Guys!!

Ahhhh, I’m done my exams, so exciting.

So yesterday a friend and I went on a little exploring session around the city. Though our initial plan was to get coffee, we of course got hungry and decided to grab some food first. We spontaneously stopped at Ichiban Sushi House on Wellington.

Firstly, its pretty crazy that the founders opened the first Ichiban Sushi House Restaurant in 1983 on Bloor Street. Today they have over 31 Ichiban Sushi Restaurant all around Toronto so considering I LOVE sushi, it’s pretty weird that I’ve never been to one before.

Seaweed Salad

For appetizer I got the Seaweed Salad, which was different than others that I have tried. Their seaweed is not the usual kind you get at most Japanese restaurants, it’s a fresh seaweed that is blacker in colour. It was served with sliced cucumbers, crab and garnished with toasted sesame seeds and daikon radish strips. While the salad did have that sweet and sour flavour, I found it a bit too salty. Personally for me I also missed that crunch you get from the usual seaweed salad.

I also got a Green Dragon Roll, which by the way is my favourite kind of sushi. The roll at Ichciban was absolutely delicious. I was filled with really crunchy tempura shrimp, cucumber, masago and lots of fresh avocado… yum!

Scaddabush Italian Kitchen & Bar (Scarborough Town Centre) ♥

Back at it again, no white Vans though. So what’s new people? Well of course besides Pokemon GO taking over Toronto, and the rest of the world, and my favourite chain restaurant, Scaddabush, opening up in Scarbs! What what!... Yes, that was a Central Intelligence (2016) reference haha, those of you who watched it will know okay haha.

Anyways back to Scaddabush! It finally opened up yesterday beside Jack Astor’s at Scarborough Town Centre and of course my girlpal and I had to get our fix. We went for a late lunch and though they had a beautiful patio set up we of course we sat inside considering the 37 °C heat…not about that life.

Let me start off with the service, which was amazing. Our waiter Anthony was really attentive and seemed extremely happy to help. I’ll even mention that we asked another server to grab us something and she immediately got on it without saying she was going to grab our table waiter. I mention this because though I know nothing about service zoning, usually chain restaurants assign waiters to tables and the servers only work their own area. The manager even came by, checked on us at the end of our meal, and invited us back. I mean yes they are just probably on top of everything because the place recently opened, but still the staff seemed genuine.

 

Bumba Burrata

Scaddabush Italian Kitchen & Bar (Scarborough Town Centre) ♥

Back at it again, no white Vans though. So what’s new people? Well of course besides Pokemon GO taking over Toronto, and the rest of the world, and my favourite chain restaurant, Scaddabush, opening up in Scarbs! What what!... Yes, that was a Central Intelligence (2016) reference haha, those of you who watched it will know okay haha.

Anyways back to Scaddabush! It finally opened up yesterday beside Jack Astor’s at Scarborough Town Centre and of course my girlpal and I had to get our fix. We went for a late lunch and though they had a beautiful patio set up we of course we sat inside considering the 37 °C heat…not about that life.

CYAN Cafe & Lounge (Yonge Street and Major Mackenzie Drive East)

Hey Guys!!

After a busy two weeks of zero work life balance, I finally met up with one of my besties for some much needed loafing. We decided to explore Richmond Hill today and try out Cyan Café and Lounge. And that’s Cyan, pronounced “sigh-Anne”… just so you don’t sound silly if you ever want to suggest it to a friend haha.

Yamamoto Japanese Cuisine (Warden Avenue and Finch Avenue East)

Yamamoto Japanese Cuisine

What do you do when your best friend’s back in The 6ix? You spend hours at an All You Can Eat sushi restaurant catching up, of course. She actually came back last Saturday but because of our busy schedules meeting up was actually such a mission. No complaints though, she just extended her vacation and there’s still a few more days before she flies away.

Dessert

I hadn’t been to Briddlewood Mall in a long time so I was pretty amazed that they had a few restaurants inside now. We ended up going to Yamamoto Japanese Cuisine on a whim because it was really close to her house. The place is huge and it’s different from all other sushi All You Can Eat restaurants because their menu offers a large variety of unique dishes. For example, their dessert menu doesn’t just have the plain old ice cream and fried banana option, there were like 4 different kinds of mouses, Crème Brulee, etc. …Just a little disclaimer though, all the deserts sucked except for maybe the Mango Yogurt and I have to say the Crème Brûlée ...that was exceptionally good. They also have over 40 different types of sushi and 30 varieties of rolls and hand rolls to choose from.

Nova Ristorante (Kennedy Road and Lawrence Avenue East)

439 Oh Oh Oh Oh PIZZA NOVA! …You know you sang that in your head, admit it :P. So today my friend and I kept it in the hood and decided to try out Nova Ristorante. This is the first Italian restaurant to open up in Scarborough as well as the first Pizza Nova chain to open up all the way back in 1963… yeah that’s right 53 years :O.

Blogging over Coffee! Coffee Culture (Markham Road and Ellesmere Road)

So we went here to work on my friend’s blog and Coffee Culture officially has my favourite carrot cake ever… now I’m not the biggest fan of carrot cake in general but when people are making it into a cheesecake hybrid and drizzling caramel all over the place who am I to hate, right? This cake isn't even the weird kind which is basically just carrot cake with cream cheese frosting piled on top. Just two classic cakes made into one amazing dessert. It was really creamy, dense, while being light at the same time. There were pieces of carrot cake throughout but they didn’t even omit the graham cracker crust, which I crave when eating cheesecake! Winner! And being the major cheesecake junkie that I pride myself in being, I seriously don’t know why I’ve never had this before… so many days of incompleteness #regrets. The only negative I have to say is the size of the piece… sure enough they weren’t joking when they literally cut me a 5cm slice…