countdown...

to little big cousin's appearance into the world!!! eeks!!! can't wait to find out if i have a new niece or nephew! i'm calling the baby "little big cuz" because the boobla just got weighed at the midwives last week and is a whopping 8lb 5oz - gaining over an oz a day, BUT i think that's how much little big cuz weighed like, 3 weeks ago, in utero. my mum has taken to calling little big cuz the jolly green giant and referring to the boobla as sprout.

i can't imagine how rough it's going to be for my poor sis recovering from a c-section - it's major surgery! it's not like they can take a baby out laparoscopically. that and the fact that she gets 7 weeks off before she has to go back to work.

this weekend was fun! friday we had dinner at dr. rei and hanbo's house which resulted in this deliciousness courtesy of dr. rei (a lamb/eggplant dish with rice with raisins and carrots and a fattoush salad [not pictured] on the side):

my contribution was whipping my boob out during the meal and also a pumpkin/squash cheesecake that i forgot to flavour with pumpkin pie spice because i'm only half here, brain-wise lately. i was so stressed about it tasting weird that i had a slice of it during the day, which resulted in me bringing a pac-man cheescake over to their house. i had used this piece of squash/pumpkin from our CSA, it was a varietal i'd never heard of, which was MASSIVE. i roasted off cubes of it and then pureed it and folded it into the cheesecake batter in lieu of canned pumpkin. it definitely tasted fuller than canned pumpkin, but i think some cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger would have smoothed out the squashiness.

conversation on friday was aces as usual. we started talking about music and die antwoord came up and dr. rei started fuming, "die antwoord makes owl city [whom she had just been slagging] sound like freakin' pavarotti!" and we were all like, "PAVAROTTI?!? what does that even mean? is that a good thing or a bad thing?!?" it was jokes. it was also jokes when i caught dr. rei talking about how much she hates vince carter and managed to make her see that she hates vince carter for the same reason cleveland hates lebron (whom she had previously defended for defecting to miami). i felt so vindicated watching the dawning realization on her face when she realized she'd been caught.

saturday i went to school. ugh ugh ugh! the first hour i was like, WTF is going on?!? and then i eased into it. i went after lunch to maximize my time and left the dotytron at home for his longest solo stretch with the boobla ever. the boobla made it easy on him by basically snoozing the day away, the little champ. we had spaghetti and meatballs and a baby spinach salad for dinner:

and i baked off some of these macadamia shortbread cookies which are AMAZING! the ground up macadamia nuts add a rich butteriness that just underscores the natural butteriness of shortbread and the texture is insane. so crumbly and tender! these are definitely going in the xmas cookie tin this year for sure:



our saturday night was spent watching "toy story 3" which is SO GOOD. wow. pixar effin' nails every movie they make and they just keep getting better and better. the level of emotion they manage to squeeze into completely imaginary, computer generated characters should make james cameron and all those motion capture idiots writhe in their inferiority. the entire movie had me welling up every 10 minutes or so. so sad! and so cute! and so funny! there are so many genuine, laugh out loud moments that don't rely on cheap sophomoric humour - many live-action comedies should aspire to as much. blargh...so entertaining - i can't recommend it enough.

it was particularly affecting because the theme of the 3rd installment is all about growing up and coming to terms with growing up and i've had to grapple with that lately as the boobla continues to chub out and change on a daily basis and i've seen how his first month has literally FLOWN by. one of my favorite things in the world is after a feed, when he passes out milk drunk against my chest, and his eyes are closed, and his little mouth is gaping open in a little "o" shape and he's breathing all heavy and completely unaware of anything else - he's so defenceless and vulnerable, his little body slumped up against me is so small and trusting. looking down at him on friday night i started crying, because i was already missing the point when he wouldn't do that anymore. and i know that every stage just gets better and better, but it's hard to imagine anything more perfect than his being at every moment in the present. so hormonal!!!

sunday we strapped him into the ergo and went on a leslieville walk about. we wanted to try this coffee place that our neighbour, a coffee aficionado, recommended. it's called voulez-vous cafe and it's on queen, between greenwood and coxwell. the leslieville strip is rife with gourmet coffee retailers. we've got the original dark horse espresso bar, mercury espresso bar, te aro, tango palace coffee company, red rocket coffee company, and now voulez vous. the dotytron has been on a macchiato tour of all those places and agreed with the neighbour that voulez vous was the best, richest, most nuanced cup he's had so far. the ambiance is really nice, too. tonnes of magazines (my favorite is that they have lots of current issues of dwell) and a big, industrial communal table made from old bowling alley flooring.

then we headed down to visit my old canoe colleague, S's new storefront for her french macaron/wedding cake company, bobette and belle. they're a short, 10 minute walk from us and the store is GORGEOUS! just take a look at the wedding cakes on their site - freakin' incredible. and lots of delicious flavours, too. they've expanded so that the store also sells baked goods, pastries, cookies, and candies and it's a jewel box of a location with a full production kitchen in the back. we bought two cupcakes (red velvet and a chocolate hazelnut crunch), both topped with the airiest buttercream and a blueberry scone, which comes with a little pot of whipped devonshire cream. mmmmmmmmmm!!! we had the cupcakes late last night and they were DIVINE. moist, rich, cake topped with the fluffiest, lightest, most intensely flavoured buttercream imaginable, and all for the very reasonable price of $2.75 each! i'm so happy for S, her business is going so well - they did a bunch of macarons for the new york times party during the film fest, and they do cakes for the rich and famous and are routinely featured in high-end magazines.

i'm also selfishly happy that they set up shop in our hood. when we first bought lil' ugmo, i was more than a little upset to be moving away from my beloved danforth, home to my favorite grocery stores/cheese mongers/hardware stores, etc. and leslieville seemed SO gentrified to me. but now i freakin' love it. i love living in between two thriving, fantastic neighbourhoods that are equally accessible and yet are still far from the madding crowd. leslieville has amazing boutiques for clothes, vintage stores, more vintage furniture stores than you could ever possibly hope for, a plethora of charming neighbourhood restaurants, and SO. MANY. BAKERIES and brunch spots. plus my massage therapist and access to all the fast food along the lakeshore. then, when i have to do my grocery shopping, i can just nip up the danforht, which has all those material, daily life needs covered, but has a dearth of the "fun stuff" stores that queen east has. and in the middle of it all, is chinatown east and little india for arcane spices and cheap seafood. best! i love love love my hood!!!

for sunday breakkie, as a nod to the fact that we were scheduled to go to guu izakaya with mhui and her hubby for our quasi anniversary dinner, we had an OPEN FACED sausage and egg mcmuffin. i'll let you be the judge as to whether we actually exercised a lick of restraint or not:

not so much, eh? we dropped off the boobla for his first ever adventures in babysitting with momma and poppa d and went to guu for dinner and feasted like pigs. it was so good! i love that restaurant more than anything. i want in!!! how do i get in as an investor?!? mhui and her hubby (who were ALSO celebrating their quasi anniversary) eat the way we do (and by that i mean, a lot) and they love their guu hard. we just narrowly got into the restaurant, which almost resulted in a domestic.

the dotytron and i drove by at 4:40 and there was nobody there, so i made the call that he should drive me to my work so that i could pick up some books. i was also like, "don't worry! it's sunday night and it's raining! the hype has died down! we'll be there by 5pm!" we WERE there by 5pm to find that there was a LINE UP TO THE SIDEWALK. he wanted to murder me. we were the last people to the door when the host said the restaurant was officially full at which point you might as well have started making funeral arrangements for me. i asked if he would mind shifting people around at the bar and he agreed so we got to sit together. disaster averted (narrowly!) we ended up ordering 24 dishes at guu. plus drinks and dessert. amazing!!!

the outlaw grandparents were fine with the boobla, who again made it easy on them by basically snoozing for the entire four hours that we were gone. he was up long enough that momma d managed to finally get some photos of him with his eyes open:

what a little gaffer! goddamn, he's a cute kid.

fin.

zomg - so intense

this weekend was crazygonuts. so busy! so many meals out! so much fun!

friday was this insane adventure that involved me hopping on my bike to go meet my new family doctor only to get a flat tire less than a 1/4 of the way there. so i had to drop my bike off, was late for my appointment, and had to pay $20 for the tire change. but somehow, in the midst of getting my tire changed, freaking scammers at cyclepath ALSO f**ked with my rear back breaks so that they were baby soft (incredibly unresponsive). what jerks. i'm thinking it might be time to invest in a new bike...maybe i'll hold off for one more season and wait til next spring...i think i'm going to get one of those city hybrid cruisers - not as heavy as a mountain bike, thinner tires, but not like, velodrome/tour de france thin.

anyway, then i got a massage and met up with the dotytron and accompanied him to his after school program, where predictably the kids went a little nuts at my presence and while i quietly did paperwork in the corner during his guitar lesson, i overheard gems like, "you know what i want right now more than anything? besides subway, i want spray-on shoes." lol! kids are hilarious.

before the goosetang hang at bwong's we passed by johnny's hamburgers in scarborough, which has been on my to-try list for forevers. i'm OBSESSED with burgers right now, for whatever reason.





the place is tiny - with only a sliver of stainless counter top for you to eat there - almost everyone is taking their food to go. the prices are dirt, dirt cheap - $3.99 for a banquet burger - you can't beat that. the patties are frozen, but the bun! the bun! so soft, so yielding, so accommodating to the melting cheese-whiz goo of american cheese - this is your classic, greasy spoon, burger joint, burger. good flavour, soft, tender, so good!





for dinner near bwong's we went to jetsun's juicyburger. (yes, i double-burgered in one day, nay! in the space of an hour.) the dotytron got onion rings and i got chili cheese fries and a cheeseburger. i ate it all really fast, but i gotta say, i'm not a fan of this place. everything was strangely tasteless - with the burger being the most tasteless of all. all i could taste was pickles, mustard, and ketchup - the patty itself had no discernible flavour or seasoning of even texture to recommend it. the chili cheese fries were pretty good, but they had beans in the chili which i'm not a fan of when it comes to chili cheese fries and the chili again was very bland. i think overall, my verdict of this place is that everything was bland and unmemorable.

then we went back to bwong's. funny stuff that happened:

- right when we got there, just as we're sitting down and laughing about something, bwong mysteriously shredded something that we're guessing he REALLY didn't want us to see. it was so funny! like, literally, bwong's like, "HAHAHAHA-" *shrrrreeedddd* - hand under the table. lol!
- i passed out on bwong's super comfy sectional while those guys watched blue planet on his giant tv on blue ray and woke up to some random channel (the w network, i think) showing something like "top ten lame a** movies for women") and they showed a clip from "love, actually" with hugh grant being interviewed which for some reason made dr. rei INCENSED and had her pointing at the tv, barking, "HUGH...ARE NOT!" which makes no sense but made me laugh like a mofo.

saturday morning i met H, sweet baby D and H's mom jeans to attend this annual vintage clothing sale around the corner from my house. it's put on by 3 vintage clothing retailers that i like individually, and there were tonnes of great pieces there, but everything was quite expensive (say, $150 for a dress) and i didn't have the money for it. tucked way back in the corner, i did see a pile of fabric remnants in great, 1970s bold prints and colours, on heavy linen/cotton blends...i bought these three:



they're going to look AMAZING! i'm so pumped. i'm going to stretch them onto wooden frames that artists use to stretch canvas and hang them on the walls - aren't they unique? what a find! they were priced at $20 each but i went in on them with another woman who was buying 4 and we haggled the seller down to $15 each, which i think is really fair for unique wall art.

saturday night we had plans to meet up with heinz and amy (cleveland cru) at pizzeria libretto, only to show up at 8 and be told that there was a TWO HOUR WAIT for a party of four. that's freakin' insane. people on ossington (and the city of toronto at large) are morons. i mean, pizzeria libretto is good, but it's not TRANSCENDENT. it's not a bollito sandwich at mercato centrale, or deep dish chicago, or well, a night at guu izakaya or even fish'n'chips at harbord fish'n'chips. the food is really good at libretto, but the EXPERIENCE doesn't add up to more than the sum of its parts. i'm never going back there again! i'm telling you, if the pizza at that new place at the bottom of our street is even midway decent, i'm swearing off libretto until you only have to wait an hour. 2 hours?!? ridiculous.

anyway, we ended up at burger shoppe quality meats...which would be my third burger meal in a row, i know.

the burgers there are really good though - i got one with bacon and a fried egg, and we split an order of the pulled pork poutine and sweet potato fries and baked mac'n'cheese:





the next day we met up for dim sum brunch at chili secrets in markham - here are some shots of the crew:

and then we headed down to guu izakaya four hours later for DINNER. so crazy! we definitely wanted to take cleveland down there because they own a japanese restaurant in cleveland and guu is so g-d fun, how could you lose?

we showed up at 4:45pm and easily got a table for 8 when they opened at 5, even though there were around 30 people ahead of us. cleveland freakin loved it - we pretty much ordered the whole menu:

this was kabocha squash wrapped around a hard boiled egg, and then panko and fried. super tasty.

this is a dish we love...cold spinach sauced in a toasty, cool black sesame dressing. the dotytron LOVES black sesame more than any gweilo should, really.


deep fried octopus balls

okonomiyaki

this is one of my favorite dishes at guu, hands down. the grilled oysters with spinach (in the form of a creamy, pureed spinach-cheese sauce) with chunks of broiled mushrooms is a revelation. the mushrooms and oyster chunks match each other in umami and texture so perfectly.

spot prawn sashimi.

fried calamari with matchstick potatoes, in a sauce which heinz surmised was a mix of ketchup and sriracha.

grilled ox tongue.

pork intestines! these were a revelation - i'm used to the chinese bbq style where they're kind of rubbery and chewy. these were so tender and giving - almost like pork stomach - and they were sauced in a highly addictive sweet black bean sauce.

braised pork belly with egg. so effin' good. but i'm trying to get the dotytron to start saving me from myself, in the sense that i probably eat too many chunks of pork fat, per capita.

fried brie with the mango, blueberry sauce.

kimchi udon. we know how i feel about fat, chubby, slurpy udon noodles.

grilled pork cheeks! so good! the texture of the meat is a little firmer than you might expect (equivalent to pork loin) but very, very meaty and flavourful, with a good hit of fat, without any gobs of noticeable fat (like in pork belly). it was tender, even though you'd expect it to be chewier. we loved this dish.


oh hai, salmon belly carpaccio! so refreshing - we went a little lighter on the raw/cold stuff this time around, for whatever reason - but the cold stuff is super-refreshing so i would highly recommend it.

this is a special, almond tofu they were offering that day that was a giant version of their usual almond tofu - that they said was for 4-5 people but that totally served the 8 of us, quite happily. so awesome!

this is sakura (cherry blossom) cheesecake, their flavour of the day. it was so light! and not too sweet - i liked that.

some shots of the crew:

this is a shot of me and my guu boyfriend (aka my backup doty) - masa. SO FREAKIN' HOT. heinz totally pulled the tourist card so that i could get a photo with him - lol!

on the left you have my mum at the top, and across from her is her childhood friend B, B's partner P, heinz's mom, heinz, and amy. so cute!!!

i love those guys. i can't even imagine that a year ago, i didn't even know we HAD cleveland crew! and now look! best cleveland crew of life! (seriously...those guys are the funnest AND our exact double. heinz had a "heinz turns 10!" 30th birthday party where everyone wore like, 80s clothes and l.a. gear high tops and they went go-carting - SO BEST.)

onward and upward.


tonight for dinner i'm trying to resume sensible, non-burger/restaurant eating by making us spinach, mushroom, roasted pepper and mozzarella & ricotta calzones - hearty little veggie-packed mothers, which i brushed with chili oil and sprinkled with salt before baking on my trusty stone.

fin.

such n00bs...

and why i could never move away from toronto.


this was saturday night's dinner. pretty effin' tasty. the creamed spinach was soooo good, the steak a little under but very delicious (we took a 1lb steak and cut it in half) and i did champignons à la D grande, which is basically butter-sautéed mushrooms flambéed with cognac (big D's favorite preparation). sided with a baked potato with chive-dill sour cream, it's starchy insides well lubricated with pats of salted butter. for dessert i made us chocolate soufflés, although i'm starting to realize that i'm not the biggest chocolate soufflé fan, even when they're served kind of under the way i like them. they're just never chocolate-y or dense or richenough.

we watched "the hurt locker." despite the hyperbolic text on the movie poster, i wouldn't call it a "near-perfect movie" - it's an extremely VISCERAL film, which actually makes it an apt comparison piece to "avatar" - purely experiential - not really a thinker piece. it's a tight, lean little number guaranteed to keep you on the edge of your seat - you're completely immersed in the world that bigelow constructs. so if you're looking for something that builds tension and plunges you into a heart-pounding, death-defying, immersive sensory experience, i would take "the hurt locker" over the hyper-constructed, credulity-stretching environment of "avatar" any day. while the thrills in both might be cheap and manipulative, "avatar" wears its artifice on its sleeve. also, kathryn bigelow is an ass-kickingly good director. think about it - her female contemporaries are making stuff like "it's complicated" (aka mom-porn) and she's making these small, gut-punchingly good action flicks. and she's a stone fox, too!

we came home from the show at the rivoli and polished off an entire LARGE pizza nova meat lover's pizza, which made us feel disgusting and created a very logy start to our sunday. we were supposed to have corned beef hash for breakkie but i kiboshed that in favour of bran muffins as a way of apologizing to my innards for the hefty hit they took on saturday night.

so we roused ourselves enough on a lazy, slackery feeling long weekend sunday to do some mild house sprucing - i touched up paint that had been stripped by leaving painter's tape on the wall for too long, the dotytron worked on painting the doors and then we decided to finally act on a long-incubated plan to go visit a T&T grocery store. CAN YOU BELIEVE I'VE NEVER BEEN TO T&T?!??!!!? it's REDONKULOUS.


alls i gotta say is: wow. i'm never going to chinatown again. why would i want to when you have stuff like hamberger cake with REAL lettuce?!? T&T is AMAZING! it's a gleaming, clean, giant hall dedicated to all things asian (mostly chinese). you can buy ready-made dim sum, chinese bakery goods (INCLUDING MILK TARTS!), there's a whole hot pot aisle, every noodle, tonnes of fresh pork, beef, chicken and a well-stocked seafood counter with pacific oysters, mussels, and fresh tilapia a plenty. so much fun! we wandered the aisles in wonder.

alls i also gotta say is: i love going on staycation adventures with the dotytron. he was SUPER-pumped and giddy to check out T&T - i love that this constitutes our big city adventuring. going to a chinese grocery store. we basically went in our pjs, thinking it was going to be a quick mission.

the original plan, based on my intimate understandings of the dining habits of the general public, was that we were going to go for our valentine's day meal on monday, at guu izakaya. we were going to ask our buddy L to join us. knowing that sunday was valentine's day and that on a regular day, the lineups at guu can take more than an hour (an hour minimum if you're a party of two, more if you have 3 or more in your group), i called on friday to make sure they were open on monday and our plan was to show up promptly at 5pm so that we would get seated in the first rush and then not have to wait in line. BUT (so stupid), as we were leaving T&T, we decided that we had enough time to go to the bay, pick up something for the dotytron and then show up at guu by like, 5:30pm. we'd be fine, right? (so stupid). we even STOPPED halfway between our parking spot and the bay, at like, 4:50, and debated whether we should go straight to guu and be there for 5pm, or whether we should risk it and go to the bay. and then i went against MY OWN KNOWLEDGE OF PEOPLE'S DINING HABITS and said, "no, we'll be fine, no one ever wants to eat before 6pm" (so stupid). WHY WAS I SO STUPID?!?

so of course we get there at 5:20pm and are faced with this. we kept inching forward up the line as they called couple after couple into the table. then, when we were 2nd in line behind a nice, older couple, the host told us that the restaurant was completely full and that we were looking at a minimum 1 hour wait. what they do is they take down your name, the number in your party, and as people leave, they bring more people in. you can run the risk of leaving and going someplace for a drink, but you can't leave your phone number, so what they do is they keep going down the list and when you come back, you're put back at the top again. there's also a 2 hour maximum seating time on any table, so conceivably, if everyone had sat for the maximum time, we wouldn't have gotten in until 7pm.

we opted to stay. we waited about 45 minutes or so, outside. it wasn't that bad. although what was annoying was that we KNEW this was going to happen, planned around it, and then stupidly decided to go through with it anyway. on valentine's day. at a hot new restaurant. thinking we could squeeze in a quick errand. like total n00bs.

the space inside is beautiful. all dark stone (slate?), and thick communal tables and benches made of rough-hewn wood. we got to sit at the bar (yay!) which is the best place to sit in this restaurant. the bar chairs are made out of solid blocks of wood, heavy and cumbersome to move around but surprisingly comfortable. holy crap, this is the FUNNEST restaurant i've eaten in in a loooooong time. so. much. fun. so delicious. so gently priced! nothing on the menu is over $10. because it's izakaya (like japanese tapas) it's all food that's conducive to whetting your whistle with their extensive sake and japanese vodka selection (the dotytron also got a GIANT sapporo). ALL the staff are japanese and japanese-speaking - this ain't your bloor street sushi, folks - and they greet your raucously when you finally get a seat. everyone's shouting and screaming (kind of like a japenese lick's) and it's a rollicking good time.


the cooks are also insanely hot. so effin' attractive. you're informed about your 2 hour seating limit and that your server will take your last order in an hour and a half. don't try messing with this system with your western sense of entitlement because you will fail (or get into a giant fight like this guy). seriously, that guy ("david" in the list of reviews) was an idiot. 2 hours is MORE than enough time to eat. it's also encouraging when 95% of the clientele are asian people, because as we all know, asian people know how to eat with a near unmatched vigor, enthusiasm, and adventurism that's seldom seen amongst our pale-faced brothers.

so, let's get down to business. the menu is divided into sections based on type of preparation: apps, salads, cold, fried, braised, grilled, udon/rice, and sweets, supplemented with a list of specials.

we talked over our choices for like, a half hour before ordering (the place is busy, and it's not like your 2 hours starts when you place the order...it's more like when your drink order is taken. again: SMARTEN UP! think strategically! not guu's fault if you dither and waste time!)

hotate (scallop) carpaccio with wasabi mayo. these scallops are shipped in from hokkaido. i know you're not going to believe me...but this obscene waste of fossil fuels is totally worth it.


braised pork belly with egg. there are some people in the world who don't like biting into a hunk of warm, molten pig fat and feeling the unctuous flood of porcine lard coat your tongue and mouth in a bath of pure, primordial, liquid sunshine. those people don't enjoy life and i feel sorry for them.

yellowtail sashimi with belly meat. WHY IS BELLY MEAT OF EVERY ANIMAL IN THE WORLD (FISH, FOUL, VERTEBRATE, INVERTEBRATE) THE BEST IN THE WORLD?!??? this was a special, flown in from b.c.

this is saba (spanish mackerel) deep fried and served with a house-made tartar sauce.

this was a special dish. tongue in a japanese style curry with udon noodles. i don't know about you, but i LOVE fat, slippery, chewy-textured udon noodles and when they're sauced in a rich, creamy, malaysian-influenced curry sauce with tender hunks of tongue - well, the very thought of this is bringing tears to my eyes right now.

deep fried brie cheese with mango and blueberry sauce. it's deep fried cheese - you do the math.

grilled oysters with mushrooms, spinach, mayonnaise, and cheese (aka japanese oysters rockefeller). SO GOOD. the giant pacific oysters are all cut up and the mushrooms add a umami savoriness and the the oysters and the mushrooms take on the flavour of each other and mimic the others' texture - the whole thing is really harmonized well.

b.c. uni (aka dirt custard). uni is an acquired taste. the dotytron didn't think he liked it. i KNOW i love it. but he tried it again last night and came around. having it shipped from b.c. totally helps. it depends on how well you like things with an earthy funk to them (like lobster tomalley). it's like tomalley custard.


salmon natto yukke (salmon with seven friends). salmon sashimi chunks with natto (fermented soybeans - we were warned that they taste very strong, both by the chef preparing the dish and our server when we ordered it), garlic chips, scallions, wonton crisps, shibazuke, takuan, and a raw egg yolk. it's mixed table side by your server and then you roll it up in nori and eat it. really good. the natto wasn't that strong at all, especially once everything was mixed up. we were a little scared by all the warnings but it's just that fishy, fermented taste.


okonomiyaki, a deep-fried japanese pancake (containing egg, flour, cabbage, grated yam?) served with tonkatsu sauce and mayonnaise (I LOVE KEWPIE MAYONNAISE!) and bonito flakes moving seductively on top.

i love almond milk like few things on earth (when i was the pastry chef at sen5es, i was developing a warm almond-milk/nut soup served with a shot of cognac and some fried fritters as a winter dessert item). so we ordered the almond tofu, which is gelatinized almond milk served in a little clay cup, fragrant with the sweet perfume of almonds. delicious!

so...we paid $111 for all this. that includes a GIANT sapporo, a small sapporo, and a japanese vodka for the dotytron. tax included (we tipped in cash). THAT'S AMAZING. we could basically go back and not repeat what we ordered and still get a whole new meal of awesomeness. seriously. SO BEST!!!!!!!!!!!!!! it's also FUN! fun in a way that pizzeria libretto and fine dining and even the black hoof aren't fun. this is fun fun fun food and a fun fun fun dining experience. the variety of flavours, textures, temperatures is incredible. people who i know are going to love this: BWONG, L, MY ENTIRE FAMILY. i can't wait to take my mum for her birthday.

at one point, midway through our meal, i looked over at the dotytron and met his eyes and smiled and he looked at me and laughed and said, "you look so happy. you look drunk. you're food drunk. this is your booze." and i totally was. so happy. so sated. so intensely in love with my surroundings and my current state. that's why i could never move away from toronto. i could never live in a place like peterborough, or brockville...where there's like, ONE chinese grocery store or ONE sushi place and you can't get ramen and kushiyaki and izakaya and charcuterie and hakka and northern indian and southern indian and malaysian, thai, vietnamese, northern chinese and southern chinese. i couldn't do it...at least not now.

speaking of which, i actually hit that izakaya place on front like, 6 years ago with buns and the dotytron and my friend Tpat visiting from vancouver...that place was ABYSMAL compared to guu.

today is a day of laid back house chores and quilting in preparation of returning to work a demain.

fin.