Tidbits: featuring Hogtown Smoke, Smith Brothers, Pho Vietnam and The Burger's Priest

I haven't had the chance to do a full review of a restaurant in a while but I still want to share with you guys some of the things I've had the pleasure (or displeasure) of eating recently. Therefore I've decided to introduce a new series of posts called Tidbits. These posts will showcase specific dishes from several restaurants I've visited within the last couple of weeks. Hopefully this will allow me to create more content when times get busy and I can't take the time to do a proper review. Sorry for the bad pictures, I've been making due with my crappy camera phone for now until I get an upgrade.

First on the docket is the brisket infused burger at Hogtown Smoke. Hogtown Smoke originated as one of the first food trucks in the Toronto area and they opened up their first physical location around the end of last year in The Beach area. The burger itself is Angus ground, topped with pulled pork, BBQ sauce, caramelized onions, red peppers, three cheeses and bacon. First impressions, this thing is massive. I've always held that the best sandwiches were the messiest ones but I feel like this burger takes it a little too far as the pulled pork falls off, which in and of itself wouldn't be a bad thing if the cheese wasn't melted onto it. Once the cheesey pork fell off it was hard to put it back onto the burger which was disappointing since the flavour from the cheese was very good. The pulled pork/onion/pepper topping was too sweet for my taste, I feel like the sweet BBQ sauce and the sweetness of the onions kind of overpowered everything. Despite this the burger patty itself was very flavourful, but it was not without its flaws. Personally I like two different types of burgers, ones with thick meaty patties that are cooked almost medium/medium rare like a steak and thin patties with great crust (the only reason I separate them into these categories is that I feel its hard to get the best of both worlds). The Hogtown burger was thick but it was very dry in the middle, which made it kind of tough. Overall not the best effort, considering how good the BBQ from this joint is.

Next up is the New York strip from Smith Brothers. Accompanied by Smith's signature shoestring fries this New York strip is a thing of beauty. I am a vehement meat eater, so nights like these have me smiling like a little kid on Christmas. This was the first time I've ever had shoestring fries and I admit I was a little disappointed. I love fries (jeez what the hell do I not love) and I expected shoestring fries to be super crispy delicious morsels of carbs. Sadly that was not the case as the fries did not have the expected crispy nor crunch. The sauce that I ordered was the Mushroom Cabernet, the flavour of the wine definitely comes through but the earthiness of the mushrooms seems lost in the sauce. The steak itself is cooked to a beautiful medium rare and its flavour is pretty good. Not the most flavourful steak I've ever had but definitely juicy and cooked well. I do wish there could have been a better crust on it, but in the end it was a valiant effort.

Third up is pho from Pho Vietnam. This was probably the most disappointing dish of the post. Good pho has deep complex flavour and tons of body which the broth at Pho Vietnam lacked on both fronts. The broth felt like it wasn't given enough time to develop proper flavour as the depth normally seen in pho was missing, this was probably due to the onions and ginger not being charred enough during the cooking process before they were added to the soup. In addition to this the broth was very thin and didn't have the usual coat your mouth texture that good pho broths have. Overall disappointing since there are numerous good pho places in and around the city.

Nearing the end of the week I felt a little lost, so I decided to drop by The Burger's Priest for a little 1on1 with his Holiness. I ordered the Priest which is a traditional cheeseburger with an added cheese stuffed portobello mushroom patty. The portobello and cheese patty is coated with panko breadcrumbs (the superior breadcrumb, hue) before being fried up and served hot. The patty itself is fantastic, intensely flavourful with a nice light crust on the outside but the star of the show was definitely the portobello patty. The secret cheese blend oozes out of the crunchy exterior of the mushroom patty when you bite into it, smothering the rest of the burger in its delectable flavour. The burger is a messy one, but not overly so, and every bite is as delicious as the last. Definitely one of the best burgers I've ever had.

Thanks for reading! You can find more information on the restaurants featured here below:


Hogtown Smoke: @hogtownsmoke

Smith Brothers Steakhouse: @smithbrossteak

Pho Vietnam: Yelp Page

The Burger's Priest: @burgerspriest

Restaurant Review: Pho Viet/Return Post

 Feel free to skip the opening paragraph if you only care about the food review!

"Its been one week since you looked at me"

More like two years if you were my food blog. I admit I flirted with the idea of bringing back the blog (often at the most inappropriate times, like right before finals) and lack of time wasn't the reason I let this place collect dust for so long. In two years a lot has changed, in my life and my perspective with food. I got my undergraduate degree for one thing (yay!) and am looking to take my first steps into a new career. But despite all the "knowledge" my academic transcript says I've gained over the last four years, the most poignant realization I've come too is that there is a hell of a lot of shit I don't know anything about. This was the first reason for my hiatus. Although I have decent knowledge about food I have no experience with reviews and it didn't feel right to be throwing around numbers arbitrarily just because I didn't like the chili marinade in someones ceviche. The second reason for not picking things back up was predominantly out of respect. Those who know me understand that I have a deep respect for food and I realized that this same respect should extend to restaurant reviews. Real people are trying to make their livelihood from some of these restaurants, not every establishment is backed by giants like O&B or Cara Group. Therefore if we're going to critique and share our opinions regarding a restaurant for 2.7 billion (and counting, more people are using the Internet every day) people to see then we better do it right. With this in mind I hope to resume trying delicious things and writing about them but in a much different format then before. I've decided to implement a variety of changes to the way reviews will be done around here and they are as follows:

• Every restaurant will have a minimum of two visits within 3 weeks before a review will be written. This will help reflect that restaurants are not static establishments, your experience at a restaurant can dramatically differ from one visit to the next. Consistency is the mark of a good kitchen!
• No numbers, I'm not an experienced food critic (yet!) so there's no reason to act like one. I will simply write about each dish tried and about what I liked and disliked. At the end of each post I will simply recommend or not recommend the place for others to try
• Timing matters, restaurants constantly change staff, chefs and menus so if a review is more than a year old I'd probably look for a second opinion
• Finally take everything written here with a grain of salt. Ultimately any review will be subjective, regardless if its been written by Zagat or Bruce the burger eater

 Now with that out of the way lets get on with the goddamn review.

Pho Viet, located at the corner of Warden and Steeles in the same plaza as the T&T supermarket (and the hordes of horrible drivers that frequent the parking lot, trust me I'm one of em). As you probably guessed from the name the place serves Vietnamese food. I frequent this small establishment often (which should be a hint for what I'm going to say later) especially during the winter time. Like most Vietnamese places in the city this one serves pho so you bet that was the first thing I ordered. I must admit that initially I was not that impressed, the broth itself was less flavourful and deep compared to other pho broths I've had in the city (Pho Hung and Pho 88 come to mind). But I want to comment on this and use it to illustrate the subjective nature of food. When it comes to soup noodles, I'm a broth guy. The first thing I do when I get a big bowl of noodles is taste a spoonful of broth. I usually don't enjoy adding anything to the noodles other than some chili oil (mmm feel the burn) so the Sriracha sauce and hoisin sauce that you so often see at pho restaurants are usually relegated to dipping sauce and never make it into the soup. But I have read discussions online that in some regions of Vietnam (predominantly in the south) their pho is often eaten accompanied with Sriracha and hoisin mixed directly with the broth. So I went again to Pho Viet and ordered another bowl of pho and this time mixed Sriracha and hoisin straight in and tried it. I must say the sauces definitely helped patch a lot of the holes that I initially felt the dish had and made me think that perhaps I was unfairly judging the pho here when I was too used to eating it without  the sauces at other pho places.

Next up on the menu were rice dishes and I must say they were underwhelming at best. The sauce on my tamarind chicken was overpowering and way too sour. This was made worse considering that most of the plate was drenched with it leading to me having to abandon most of that meal. The deep fried chicken wings with fried rice was better as the chicken was crisp and juicy but the rice was dry and a little cold coming right out of the kitchen.

This far down I'm sure you must be thinking if you don't like their pho and you don't like their rice why do you come here so often. Well sometimes all a restaurant needs is one star to get you coming back, one knockout punch, one heavy hitter and at Pho Viet its the bun bo hue. Bun bo hue is another Vietnamese soup noodle dish, but unlike its pho cousin bun bo hue noodles are thicker, rounder and white. The broth itself is beef based and tasted heavily of lemongrass, fried garlic, onions, spring onion, cilantro and of course chili oil. The broth was intensely flavourful, smoky and had various elements of sour, sweet and spicy all working harmoniously. The dish is accompanied by shredded cabbage along with the usual pho sidekicks: bean sprouts, lime and mint. The dish also features chewy pieces of beef flank/tendon and wonderful Vietnamese ham (otherwise known as cha lua). O boy do I love that ham. My only qualm with the dish is that at times the noodles are a tad softer then what I would like but the broth more then makes up for it. Overall the bun bo hue is a great dish and one that you don't often find at the generic pho places in the city and this alone lures me back time and again.

Recommended

Pho Viet is located at 7010 Warden Avenue, Markham, Ontario unit 17 & 18 you can learn more about them here on their website.