Just on a short trip to Toronto to visit some family and take care of some union business. (That’s another hat I wear, president of the freelance branch of the Canadian Media Guild) I always try to get to a few different restaurants while I’m here, but this weekend yielded mediocre results. Mediocre Thai food, mediocre Italian food, and less-than-mediocre sushi. So I won’t even write about those places. But I did arrive 20 minutes ahead of a trend by going for drinks at The Communist’s Daughter, a tiny bar in the shell of an old Portuguese snack bar on Dundas St. West at Ossington. It’s the ‘new’ place to go on the next part of Toronto to be ‘gentrified’. It’s cramped and smoky inside, but a great atmosphere of people just enjoying themselves, even playing crokinole or Scrabble.
The next day I saw an article in the Toronto section of the Globe and Mail lauding the bar and announcing that strip of Dundas West as ‘The next Queen Street’. You’ll have to judge for yourself, it’s still a pretty gritty area. I also made my Saturday morning pilgrimage to the St. Lawrence Market. My favorite treat is peameal bacon and a fried egg with cheese on a bun from the Carousel Bakery. For $4.25 it’s a messy, flavoursome treat. I picked up a big log of peameal to bring home from the market from Brown Brothers Meats. I will slather some of it with Anton Kozlik’s Mustard, another great shop in the market with over fifty different kinds of home-made mustard. Yum!
