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  #481  
Old Posted May 24, 2019, 1:18 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by rousseau View Post
A couple of interesting places I've seen lately but haven't tried. I wonder what these guys have against pho? What happens if you ask for it? Do they tell you to fu lok off next door?


https://www.google.ca/maps/@43.13147...7i13312!8i6656

This one is in Waterloo's Chinese exchange student ghetto. I wonder if the turd they serve was inspired by Taiwan's toilet restaurant craze? https://www.tripadvisor.ca/Restauran...ua_Taipei.html


https://www.google.ca/maps/@43.47387...7i16384!8i8192
, Still better than this one.
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  #482  
Old Posted May 24, 2019, 4:13 PM
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I'm fasting and should not have just flipped through the last few pages of this thread.
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  #483  
Old Posted Jun 23, 2019, 5:12 PM
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Today for brunch we went to Quidi Vidi...





There aren't sidewalks, so...



To Mallard Cottage...









For their delicious $25 brunch...











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  #484  
Old Posted Jun 25, 2019, 7:01 PM
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A landmark restaurant in Saskatoon has been sold !

Saskatoon Station Place restaurant, across the street from the actual old railway station in the city, has been a staple in Saskatoon dining for 35 years.

The Arvanatis brothers immigrated to Canada half a century ago and built their Greek-Canadian fusion restaurant, including using two vintage railway cars in the design of the restaurant.



Stavros Arvanatis, along with his three brothers, collected antiques through the years. Some of the benches are made of solid brass, along with old telephone booths, clocks & Tiffany stained glass chandeliers, and a 400year old Italian mirror.



https://www.ckom.com/2019/06/24/579374/

The Saskatoon Station Place is being sold to The Old Spaghetti Factory with the stipulation all the antiques stay put.

The Old Spaghetti Factory is an American restaurant chain based in Portland, Oregon with most of their restaurants on the West Coast but some in the Midwest and in Western Canada as well.


https://www.osf.com/about/

The style of The Old Spaghetti Factory seems to fit well, their restaurant decor traditionally features antiques, including chandeliers, brass headboards and footboards as bench backs for booths, the most prominent feature being a streetcar in the middle of the restaurant with seating inside.
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  #485  
Old Posted Jun 25, 2019, 7:38 PM
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The Old Spaghetti Factoriy Canadian restaurants are owned by The Old Spaghetti Factory Canada Ltd. The Canadian chain has 15 Old Spaghetti Factories in British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, and Ontario.

The one in Toronto has been here since 1971 and lets just say it's a tourist trap or somewhere to take your kids.

source: https://www.google.com
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  #486  
Old Posted Jun 27, 2019, 12:43 PM
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I recently had dinner at Mesa, a great Mexican restaurant in Hamilton.
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  #487  
Old Posted Jun 27, 2019, 12:46 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by TorontoDrew View Post
The Old Spaghetti Factoriy Canadian restaurants are owned by The Old Spaghetti Factory Canada Ltd. The Canadian chain has 15 Old Spaghetti Factories in British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, and Ontario.

The one in Toronto has been here since 1971 and lets just say it's a tourist trap or somewhere to take your kids.

source: https://www.google.com

Yeah the Old Spaghetti Factory isn’t great, basically just a slight step above East Side Mario’s (which is the worst place to get Italian food imo). I only really eat there when it’s convenient.
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  #488  
Old Posted Jun 27, 2019, 4:01 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by TorontoDrew

...The one in Toronto has been here since 1971 and lets just say it's a tourist trap or somewhere to take your kids.
the restaurant...
... or Toronto?


Quote:
Originally Posted by stevanford1 View Post
Yeah the Old Spaghetti Factory isn’t great, basically just a slight step above East Side Mario’s (which is the worst place to get Italian food imo). I only really eat there when it’s convenient.
Not sure if this really explains why there is only one Old Spaghetti Factory in all of Ontario but the province has dozens upon dozens of East Side Marios...

...or maybe it does explain.

http://www.eastsidemarios.com/locations/

East Side Marios seems to be an East Side of Canada chain, I believe there use to be one in Saskatoon but it wasn't well received.
Hopefully Old Spaghetti Factory with it's longer history can make a go of it in Saskatoon.
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  #489  
Old Posted Jun 27, 2019, 4:12 PM
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The Old Spaghetti Factory doesn't belong anywhere near this thread.
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  #490  
Old Posted Jun 28, 2019, 2:42 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin View Post
The Old Spaghetti Factory doesn't belong anywhere near this thread.
, yes I agree, neither does East Side Mario’s and their wide array of flash frozen pastas. The Old Spaghetti Factory is a lot more suited for Clifton Hill then Downtown Toronto imo.




Although now that I think about it, Old Spaghetti Factory’s stuff looks (and tastes) microwaved and is almost identical to East Side Mario’s only OSF costs more. Anyway back to the good restaurants!
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  #491  
Old Posted Jul 17, 2019, 3:50 AM
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This is just too awesome. SSP needs more of this.

Quote:
Originally Posted by SaskScraper View Post
Not sure if this really explains why there is only one Old Spaghetti Factory in all of Ontario but the province has dozens upon dozens of East Side Marios...

...or maybe it does explain.

East Side Marios seems to be an East Side of Canada chain, I believe there use to be one in Saskatoon but it wasn't well received.
Incontrovertible evidence that diners in Saskatoon and/or Saskatchewan are more refined than in Ontario!
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  #492  
Old Posted Jul 17, 2019, 4:30 AM
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What will be the future of the traditional Chinese-Canadian/Chinese-American diner that sprung up all over the continent in the 1950s and 1960s serving up chop suey, sweet'n'sour chicken balls and fortune cookies, dishes and treats that are only vaguely Chinese and that no ethnically Chinese person in Asia has ever heard of?

They seem to be going the way of the dodo. Or at least, in cities with recent Chinese immigration, they're now just a tiny drop in the bucket. Thai food has captured the imagination of North Americans wanting an Asian food fix these days, and Stratford represents that trend to a T: we've got three Thai places and two Chinese-Canadian restaurants. But no authentic Chinese food (yet?).

The mom and pop Chinese-Canadian restaurants aren't being handed down to the kids, who are now successful doctors and engineers and lawyers. But there are any number of immigrants from China willing to take over these places no matter how remote they are, so I imagine they'll linger on in locales not being targeted by recent immigration from China. Still, I get the sense that traditional Chinese-Canadian cuisine is not very fashionable these days, and that the provinces will gradually take their cue from the bigger centres where a decent Sichuanese meal or northern-style dumplings are available.

Me, I lived in Asia for quite a while and know my way around a pair of chopsticks, but every now and then I get a craving for the chicken balls I grew up on that were "Chinese food" to me. I invariably begin to regret my choice about three-quarters of the way through my dinner for 1E, the sickly sweet sweet'n'sour sauce now imprinted on the tongue and portending a lingering aftertaste that will be disgusting, but still...

(The secret about the Thai food explosion in North America that most diners like my seventy-something parents aren't aware of is that it isn't really much like real Thai food, though it's not completely divorced from its roots the way that Chinese-Canadian food is. Thai food here is mostly limited to curries that are incredibly sweet without the proper spice and sourness. To suit Canadian tastes, of course.)

Last edited by rousseau; Jul 17, 2019 at 4:37 PM. Reason: Typo
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  #493  
Old Posted Jul 17, 2019, 5:13 AM
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I've never had a meal at Old Spaghetti Factory that wanted to stay down. I don't know how they manages this if the kitchens are clean.
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  #494  
Old Posted Jul 17, 2019, 12:25 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by stevanford1 View Post

I know pictures with a flash always make food look bad, but it looks like someone barfed in their plate. It looks like the owner is using his grandma’s plates to serve the food in.

I gotta give that to East Side Mario’s, it is very cheap. 10$ will get you an individual pizza and a side dish. Add 5$ on top of that and you get a beer. Of course the product is not top quality, but at this price you can’t have high expectations.
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  #495  
Old Posted Jul 17, 2019, 12:31 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by rousseau View Post
What will be the future of the traditional Chinese-Canadian/Chinese-American diner that sprung up all over the continent in the 1950s and 1960s serving up chop suey, sweet'n'sour chicken balls and fortune cookies, dishes and treats that are only vaguely Chinese and that no ethnically Chinese person in Asia has ever heard of?
Your question reminds me of this fantastic long read from Ann Hui regarding Canadian Chinese restaurants in small towns across Canada:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life...ticle30539419/
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  #496  
Old Posted Jul 17, 2019, 12:49 PM
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I see some of those Canadian-Chinese restaurants surviving in large cities because there will always be a demand for them and there will be a larger pool of people interested to run them, but they might indeed go extinct in the smaller cities and towns where nobody is interested to take over the business. The food they serve is too sweet and too greasy, but I don't know, there is something comforting about it.

Last edited by le calmar; Jul 17, 2019 at 2:02 PM.
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  #497  
Old Posted Jul 17, 2019, 12:59 PM
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I can see at least some "traditional" Canadian-Chinese type places surviving in larger cities, if only for a combination of nostalgia and the craving for sweet and sour chicken balls at 2am. Similarly I can see them survive in smaller rural areas even if taken over by new immigrants, if only because that's what locals are used to. If anything they are more likely to vanish from medium sized centres.

I also wouldn't be surprised to see some variation of a refined version of this food pop up - it already sort of exists in some newer Asian focused places I've been to that are doing the comfort food kind of thing. In a similar vein, I can think of two old diners that have been re-purposed by decent chefs that have kept more or less original decor and a similar menu... just with good quality food.
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  #498  
Old Posted Jul 17, 2019, 1:16 PM
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The traditional Chinese Canadian joints aren't going anywhere. At this point their dishes are too well entrenched to disappear. Don't forget, to a large part of the population, the chop suey, chicken balls and fried rice type dishes effectively ARE Chinese food and the demand for that will not go away. Even in an image obsessed city like Toronto there are still probably millions of people who don't care about what cuisine is in fashion and will continue to order the same Chinese food they know and love.

What I've noticed with the Chinese Canadian joints locally is that many of them (at least around here) are owned by young, apparently recent immigrants who are probably totally unaccustomed to these strange dishes purporting to be Chinese. But they bought a business with a longstanding clientele and aren't going to alienate them by starting to serve proper Jiangsu or Hunan cuisine or whatever.

I'd go so far as to say that even if the number of traditional Chinese Canadian food restaurants declines slightly as they are eclipsed by newer and different Asian tastes (the aforementioned Thai, as well as such other cuisines like Vietnamese, Japanese and others, as well as 'authentic' Chinese), I would expect the traditional Chinese food to remain available for the long haul.
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  #499  
Old Posted Jul 17, 2019, 1:48 PM
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I wish authentic Chinese had caught on the way Thai and Vietnamese has here in Toronto. One of my favourite spots in NYC to grab lunch is Xi'an famous foods which is an extremely popular authentic Western Chinese restaurant serving primarily spicy noodle dishes. Downtown Toronto seems to still be dominated by the crappy chains although maybe I just haven't searched hard enough? There are good dumpling spots and such around Spadina, but I'd love a hole-in-the-wall type spot like Xi'ans somewhere downtown.

I'd probably be getting this way too often though


from:https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaura..._New_York.html
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  #500  
Old Posted Jul 17, 2019, 1:53 PM
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I wish authentic Chinese had caught on the way Thai and Vietnamese has here in Toronto. One of my favourite spots in NYC to grab lunch is Xi'an's famous foods which is an extremely popular authentic Western Chinese restaurant serving primarily spicy noodle dishes. Downtown Toronto seems to still be dominated by the crappy chains although maybe I just haven't searched hard enough? There are good dumpling spots and such around Spadina, but I'd love a hole-in-the-wall type spot like Xi'ans somewhere downtown.
I've read that the more recently arriving cuisines like Korean tend to be more true to their roots because of improved availability of ingredients (couldn't get authentic Chinese vegetables, spices, etc, 100+ years ago when the traditional Chinese Canadian/American dishes became popular) and because palates are more adapted to Asian tastes and textures.

I'm sure if Thai, Vietnamese and Korean became popular in NA 100 years ago, they'd be equally bastardized as well. (I say this tongue in cheek, as the "bastardized" Chinese food we know well here has effectively become its own style of cuisine, not quite Chinese and not quite North American.)
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