A charming 1950s diner with a great Filipino breakfast

A Spice City reader recommended that I check out Ritz, an East-side diner at 310 Donlands near Cosborne (see map below). It was a wonderful discovery.

As you walk into this tiny restaurant, you feel like you're leaving Toronto and entering a cowboy-friendly town out west in the 1950s. The place has old-style milkshake glasses, table-side juke boxes and a classic diner menu. However,  Filipino food is also served at the Ritz.

The Sunday breakfast crowd is a mix of Filipinos and others in the neighbourhood in search of cheap, hearty breakfasts. It's just $4.95 for a "Canadian" breakfast. Add a Toronto touch to your meal with peameal bacon and it'll come to $5.50.

It's worth checking out the Filipino breakfasts. You can choose between tapisilog (pieces of marinated beef), dangsilog (marinated fish) and longanisa (a type of sweetened sausage). Each plate is served with a couple of nicely poached eggs and tasty garlic sticky rice.

The tapsilog (beef) is a bit sweet, but tastes great with the vinegar sauce.

The dangsilog is a tasty piece of fried, marinated fish.

In addition to the whole range of regular diner foods such as burgers and BLTs, the other Filipino dishes on the menu here include kare kare (peanut stew), caldereta (beef stew), adobo (vinegar and soy marinated meat), binagoogan (pork in shrimp paste) and lumpia (spring rolls).

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