This insanely popular strip mall joint serves up the best of Northern China

What kind of hole-in-the-wall strip mall restaurant requires reservations? On a Monday!?

When I recently visited Silk Road, a tiny Chinese restaurant in a strip mall in Etobicoke, I was shocked to find out that not only were there no tables available, but waiting wasn't an option—they were fully booked all night. A week later I booked a table (the waiter warned me the tables have a one hour maximum) and I headed back out to Silk Road to see what all the fuss was about.

 

The sign outside the restaurant is faded and unreadable and the tiny parking lot seems designed to provoke accidents, but this is the place to be if you like northern Chinese food. People waiting for a table stand awkwardly in the centre of the restaurant, and even a reservation isn't a guarantee that you'll be seated promptly. As you wait, you can watch huge troughs piled high with noodles and meat being placed before large groups of trendy looking Chinese 20-year-olds, adorned with pink nail polish and iPads.

The food is worth it. Blending influences from southern Chinese food and the dishes of Muslim people to the north, the food is heavy on lamb and spice.

The excellent lamb and noodle soup ($9.99) is a salty, savoury broth with chili and cilantro chunks that float to the surface. Underneath are impossibly long handmade noodles and ribs with tender lamb meat that easily falls off the bone.  

 

The spicy chicken stew ($28) is a gargantuan plate best shared amongst a gang of friends. The platter is weighed down with hefty, blunt chunks of leek, ginger, whole garlic cloves, red chilis, green peppers and tangy dried jujube fruits. Underneath are handmade sheet noodles that are thick like lasagna noodles and whole chicken legs, saturated in a dark, intense gravy.

The lamb skewers have a wonderful cumin smell that wafts all the way out the back door and to the suburban streets a block away. But the meat is fatty and chewy—for better lamb skewers check out BBQ Store or Chinese Halal Restaurant. Stick with the noodle and rice dishes, and you'll go home happy and very well fed. 

 

Silk Road is located at 438 Horner Ave., Etobicoke. Tel: 416 259 9440. Hours are Monday to Saturday 3pm to 10pm; Sundays and long weekends closed. 

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A visit to Scarborough's new ethnic food superstore

Forget about the ethnic aisle. Lovers of international food will be in heaven when they step inside the new 75,000 square foot Al Premium store in Scarborough. It's located at 1970 Eglinton East near Warden and it first opened in December. 

Al Premium isn't an ethnic store serving people from one country or region—instead it has food from all over the world. There is a heavy emphasis on Asian, North American and Middle Eastern foods, but Latin America, Europe and Africa are also represented. Check out my photos below for a tour. 

Al Premium is located in a former Rona building.

The store attracts a diverse customer base of people living in this stretch of Scarborough. 

There's a good selection of Middle Eastern cheeses, including akawie, which is similar to halloumi, and Palestinian nabulsi.

A display of Caribbean spices. 

There are a few different types of Middle Eastern flat breads, such as lavash.

The large halal meat counter offers various cuts of goat, beef and lamb.

The fresh fish counter is a hit with Al Premium's Chinese customers.

Al Premium's vice-president of corporate affairs, Manoj Biswas, shows off the selection imported produce

Rice galore.

If the store doesn't carry an item you want, Manoj will offer to bring it in.

There is a cafeteria where people eat food from the hot food counter and drink espressos and juices from the coffee bar.

The hot food counter offers dozens of Asian dishes, such as curries and noodles.

There's even a tandoori oven behind the counter. 

Garlic naan cooking in the tandoori oven. 

Butter chicken, lamb curry, garlic naan and freshly grilled kebab.

Al Premium is located at 1970 Eglinton East near Warden in Scarborough. Tel: 416 751 3666. 

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An excellent new Persian restaurant is now open on College Street

Residents of Dufferin Grove/Brockton Village were excited on Good Friday to discover that the long renovated space at 1120 College Street at Dufferin is now open. Turns out it's the home of Tavoos, a Persian restaurant from the same owners as Pomegranate and Sheherzade at College & Bathurst. The restaurant's full name is Takht-e Tavoos, which means Peacock Throne, a reference to historic Persian rulers. 

 

A full year of renovations in this former bakery space have paid off. The room is ornately decorated with eye-catching Middle Eastern rugs, pottery and murals. You can choose between traditional Persian seating and regular tables and chairs. Pre-revolutionary Persian pop music floats through the air. 

So far Tavoos is only open for breakfast and lunch, but there are plans to expand to dinner later on. Tavoos's menu is different than Pomegranate, with a fusion feel and a focus on brunch items.

 

 

 

The knowledgable waitress explains the traditional way of eating dizi sangi, a clay pot stew made of lamb shank, chick peas and white beans, to one of the first diners. You take the pieces of meat out of the stew and soak up the remaining broth with pieces of the flatbread; then you use the remaining bread to scoop up the meat and beans. Other specialities include haleem—a bowl of spiced wheatberry porridge—and kalleh pacheh, a Persian soup made from sheep head and hooves.

Open image in new tab to see the full-sized menu.

I opted for one of the breakfast dishes, the Tavoos Soltani Special. It was a sort of omelette with two sunnyside up eggs served on top of wonderfully crispy spiced potato chunks. The perfectly prepared plate comes with two pieces of puffy, fresh flatbread, olives, tiny grilled tomatoes, pieces of creamy, rich feta and walnuts. The olives were a surprising treat, as they were coated with a sweet pomegranate and walnut paste. 

 

 

It's a strong start for Tavoos, and with curious passerbys popping their heads in regularly to check out the space, it seems destined to do well here in this up-and-coming neighbourhood. I look forward to trying more dishes as the menu expands. 

Tavoos is located at 1120 College Street near Dufferin in Toronto. Telelphone: 647 352 7322. The restaurant currently opens at 10am and closes in the mid-afternoon. Tavoos is closed on Easter Sunday and Monday. 

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Falafel frenzy: Dr. Laffa fans flock to the restaurant's new location

Toronto is in love with Dr. Laffa. Converts have been frequenting Dr. Laffa's Magnetic Drive location, buried deep inside a bleak industrial park near the 407, for a few years now to eat amazing Iraqi-Israeli food. The world-class falafels and shawarmas are served inside a stretchy, fresh bread (laffa) baked on site in a clay oven. 

A few months ago word got out that Dr. Laffa was opening up a new location south of the 401 and Toronto's Jewish community—as well as the city's food writers—have been salivating with anticipation. The wait is now over, as Dr. Laffa On The Go opened Wednesday at 3023 Bathurst just south of Lawrence. 

I visited the day after the opening and the place was a mad house. The small shop was crammed with people lining up to place their orders. It was a mosh pit of screaming toddlers, patient teens and religious Jews wearing kippahs and black hats. The location is mostly take-out, although there are a few stools at the edge where you can eat.

A staffer struggled to make his way through the chaos with a giant vat of laffa dough. By 8:30 the cashier announced they were—gasp—out of shawarma. It took a half hour to get to the cash and another 15 minutes or so to get our food, but no one was complaining.

"We're happy there's a Dr. Laffa in the neighbourhood so we don't have to schlep up north anymore," says Miriam Rosenberg, a dentist who lives in the neighbourhood. "The food is fresh and it's interesting, because it's Israeli food with an Iraqi spin. It has a different flavour and I like it better than regular Israeli food."

There is no question the food is worth the wait. The chicken pieces in the shawarma are juicy yet crispy around the edges. Sabich is an addictive, oversized sandwich filled with an impossible amount of goodness: smokey roasted eggplant, a boiled egg, hummus, lettuce and falafel balls. Each giant sandwich is wrapped in the chewy, elastic laffa bread, which isn't quite like any other bread I've tasted. You can buy pieces of this excellent bread on it's own, steaming and fresh from the oven.

Dr. Laffa will be closed next week for Passover. The restaurant is closed Saturdays for the sabbath, although this location will be open after sundown this Saturday, from 9pm til midnight.

Dr. Laffa is located at 3023 Bathurst just south of Lawrence. Tel 647 352 9000 or 647 352 9001. Hours are Sunday to Thursday 11am to 10pm; Fridays 11am to 4pm.

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