City Chicken: Toronto '06

I can’t speak for Kerry, but I know that I’m still riding very high from the last weekend’s (and a long one at that) visit to Toronto. It was both relaxing and fun, with a lot of self-pampering and equal parts indulgence. We got into town around 6 p.m. on Thursday, after making hella good time. We checked in, chilled for a spell and admired the view from the room before taking off.

We stayed at the Sheraton Centre, where the room was nice and the indoor/outdoor pool was a welcomed luxury. After check-in and chill-out, we paid a visit to Queen Street, kind of tooling up and down looking for a place to grab a drink and some dinner. We stopped at the Horseshoe for a beer. We left after the beer because the bartender was clearly uninterested in serving us drinks. We hauled ass out of there and back to this Indian place Kerry suggested, this fantastic little joint called Trimurti. We started with samosas and a couple of beers. They brought us these things. I have no idea what they’re called, but to our delight, they tasted exactly like Munchos, but they were about four times the size.

Kerry ordered the lamb marsala and I the murgh zaphrani, a boneless chicken kebob marinated in yogurt, spices and saffron, and covered in tandoori.

The dinner was near perfect, save for this young Asian couple at the table next to us who could not stop playing with their camera, constantly taking pictures of one another from across the table. Seriously, the dude must’ve shot about 35 pictures of this woman. They kept goofing and clowning with it and it really was getting obnoxious. They set the timer on the camera and started taking pictures of themselves. That’s when Kerry took it upon herself to lean into the frame of one of their shots and make a face. When they checked the screen on the back of the camera to admire their handiwork, and saw her goofing in the background, I think they got the point. Aside from that, dinner was sublime.

We headed down the street to The Rivoli, which was actually kind of nice. It’s a live music venue and apparently a popular one, but it was Thursday and not a lot of people were out, so we headed upstairs for drinks.

It was an enjoyable visit until about 30 minutes into it and the “music guys” up at the bar (read: the dork with the $150 Stanton headphones and the laptop programming the night’s playlist of bullshit electronic music) started with some sounds that were just gross. It was this weepy, wannabe-obscure, pussy techno that seems to be so popular with the “lounge set.” Judging by our mutual “let’s get the fuck out of here” expressions, Kerry and I had enough and bolted back toward the hotel. I had a couple of nightcaps at the hotel bar and we crashed hard and soundly in our big, comfy bed.

We got up Friday, sleeping in until 9 and had to head downstairs to talk some hotel personnel because the valet guys fucked up Kerry’s car. Just a couple of scratches, but still not very cool at all. I mean, come on, it’s a Ford Focus my little Portuguese friend. Small body, tight wheelbase, very easy to turn and negotiate. We took care of that, before heading here for massages, courtesy of Kerry. I was a massage virgin before this and now I think I might be corrupted. Wow. That was 60 minutes of bliss. We came out of there recharged, loosey goosey and ready to go. We figured that 1 in the afternoon on a Friday would be the best time to go to Ikea, as opposed to say, 2 on a Saturday afternoon. So to the Scandinavian retailer we went. We didn’t do much damage though, roughly 50 bucks on some shelves, a pasta canister, some picture frames. We split Islington and went to the Hockey Hall of Fame for T-shirts and hats for me. Kerry scored huge for her brothers, but I don’t know if they’ll read this before they get the goods, so I won’t spoil here. After that it was back to the hotel for a swim in the pool and a little relaxing before heading to what would be one of the best dining experiences she and I have had in quite some time.
We kind of freestyled it Friday night for dinner. We didn’t know what we wanted or where to go, so we started looking at options in a couple of dining guides. We settled on this place, a quaint Italian dining room just north of Little Italy, near the University district.

Kerry ordered one of the daily specials, the spag and meatballs. I took somewhat of a chance and ordered the broiled grouper. I call it a chance because I’ve never before had that type of fish and I was rather hungry, so I wasn’t in the mood to experiment. I’m glad I did. It turned to be some of the best fish I’ve ever had. It was little “meaty,” but it was seasoned perfectly. Our meal looked like this and I killed everything on my plate.

Plus, the place was just kind of sharp and charming.

We walked to Little Italy, passing this place. Sometimes getting to the point of your signage eliminates any questions about your goods and services.

We had some more pints of Stella at Marlowe’s before walking around College Avenue a bit. Kerry ducked into a store for some gum.

Further examination of the window revealed some really cool, old-timey, wind-up tin toys. These things were really bomb.

We stopped at Beba Lounge, which was a total waste. Fifteen bucks for two bottles of beer. And it’s kind of hard because I order a beer and Kerry orders a beer and they serve them to us and then announce the price. I swear, I would’ve gleaned great pleasure from shoving both of them, fat-end first, clear up someone’s ass in that place. Fuckheads. We crossed the street to window shop when I caught a glimpse of this comic book place.

Ever watch “The Simpsons”? I swear, in Toronto, I found the living, breathing equivalent of the pretentious comic book guy from the popular animated TV program. Tell me there isn’t a resemblance, striking or otherwise.

We took a cab to some place way, way east on Queen that was recommended to Kerry by a friend, some place called The Drake. There was a line, so we walked down the street to The Social, where we had more Stella. We took a cab out there and luckily had a pretty smart, older cabbie. I just wanted to get away from the pretty boys, the low-fi/retro, hipster posturing, and the cancer-causing agents of that whole “scene.” I basically tried to convey to the hack, despite my inebriation, that we just wanted a place to get a shot and a beer and be around some “real” people. He took us here
And, believe it or not, it wasn’t that bad. It was nice and clean in there.

The crowd was normal and kind of friendly and by the end of the night, I got to see some absurd shit. This woman fell from her bar stool and flat on the floor. She then got up and five minutes later, was playing the spoons. Strange. At that point, we should’ve gone home. You know, we’re drinking more Stella and now shots of Bushmills. It’s about 1 in the morning. These things spell disaster. We left that place and headed around the corner to this bar called The Irish Embassy, which was also very nice.

We had a long, drunken conversation over some late-night fish before taking a cab back to the room, where Kerry would later hiccup herself to sleep and I would stay up, short of catatonic, watching “Family Guy” reruns until 3 a.m. I could not, for the life of me, recall what those episodes were about.
Enter Saturday and a couple of vicious hangovers. Kerry was a little more wrecked than I, but I was in bad shape. We got room service breakfast and that cost us only $487. We went back to bed, woke up, back to bed, peeled ourselves from the sheets, took showers and finally made it out of the hotel at a bright and chipper 1 p.m. We had more lunch and kind of tooled around before heading to a part of town called The Annex, thanks to the suggestion from SCREETUS

I liked it there and had we not been so incredibly beat-up from the night before, it probably would be been even more enjoyable. We checked out some shops around there, even trying a little hair o’ the dog at a little pub, but that didn’t do much for either one of us. We took the subway back to the hotel, took a nap and then made plans for our last night in TO.
It was more like a date night than anything else. We had dinner at the Green Mango (excellent Thai food) and then went to a 9:20 showing this Canadian indie film, “Six Figures.” It was OK. With indie films sometimes comes “indie acting,” and this movie certainly showcased a lot of it. Still though, it was a good, slow night. We got out of the movie house at around 11:30 and hightailed it back to the hotel. We were done drinking for the weekend and the rest of the day was catching up to us. We crashed, got up, had some crepes on Queen Street and drove back to Royal Oak.

We have a thing for Toronto. It’s a clean, friendly, seemingly very efficiently run city. It has exciting nightlife, a throbbing arts and culture community, effective public transportation, a rich history, proud sports franchises, and a general sense of tolerance unseen in these United States. People aren’t going around Canada blowing each other’s fucking brains out with the frequency we see here. I’m not complaining, don’t get me wrong, but it’s, I don’t know, refreshing to exist somewhere, even temporarily, where you’re not surrounded by people who have this global sense of entitlement. And you know what? Canadians know more about our current events and the history of our country then we do of theirs, so you really can’t knock a damn thing. That, and the people are just so nice. These were the two toughest customers we encountered all weekend.