On June 3rd, Jeys and I headed to Ontario Place for the Mac and Cheese Festival. This event will be running all weekend starting June 3rd to June 5th. The event started at 4pm with free admission. Jeys and I were extremely excited since we both like mac and cheese and anything in general that had to do with cheese (haha). Despite having free admission, in order to buy the mac and cheese you needed to purchase tickets. So, we got 20 tickets for $30.  And of course, from there ticket prices increased with additional amenities such as VIP washroom services, no waiting services, additional tokens, and meeting celebrity chefs.  However, since we came on the first day around 5 30 ish there wasn't that much people. Thus, the waiting time was fairly quick. But for those who are planning to go, be advised as you will be asked for identification due to alcoholic beverages being sold.

Bacon Nation's version of mac and cheese in a cone. Topped with bacon and with what I believe that has Pop Rocks. This was a fairly huge portion but sweet to my liking. However, if anyone is interested in sweet mac and cheese they may want to try this.

This was by far the most decadent mac and cheese Jeys and I tried. The portion provided was fairly decent.

This sample costed 1 ticket and it was from the NONA vegan foods. It was deep fried mac and cheese. Pretty good as well.

Overall, I did like that it was easy for us to move through vendors considering it was spacious and that we came pretty earlier. Jeys and I were able to walk around Ontario place about twice. We noticed that most vendors sold either Pulled pork mac and cheese or mac and cheese containing beef. The ticket ranges again, varied, but most of them consisted of 9-11 tickets so tickets ran out pretty fast in my opinion. Especially if you want to buy a drink with your tickets. Furthermore, we did note that there were several alcoholic beverages sold throughout. Although I did not take photos of it Jeys and I tried an alcoholic cocktail mixed within black coffee and another alcoholic beverage mixed with coconut water. Jeys felt that the black coffee cocktail was too bitter to her liking and we found that the coconut water tasted a lot like sprite with no sugar. However, they did sell more alcoholic beverages throughout such as Icee with alcohol, but I believe you always have the option of opting alcohol out. All drinks required tickets.  If you don't want to spend all your tickets and prefer using cash there are stands such as the Colossal Onion, Chicken Tenders, and Tiny Toms that did not require tickets. Consequently, despite being able to weave through the vendors easily we wished that portion sizes were bigger for the amount of tickets you were using. However, it was nice to see that there are various unique Mac and Cheese styles and flavours. So for those who are definitely up for the challenge they should consider coming to this festival.

Recently, we've been going to this restaurant, called Cora, that opens during breakfast and lunch only. It serves pretty much a choice of healthy meal which stands out among the other restaurants. Another thing that interest me is the presentation of the meal. The fruits are arranged in a more appetizing way that attracts customers compared to just serving it regularly. It gives a sense of appeal to an old traditional meals. I've compiled pictures of some of the food they serve from the times we've been going, as seen below.  As a note: breakfast meal are available to be served during lunch. Menu can be found here. Breakfast

Spécial Cora - 2 eggs, ham, baco, sausage, pancake and roasted potatoes served with choice of bread. I got rye bread which I didn't take a picture of.

This meal was very filling. The pancake was hidden behind the ham. It was a well worth meal.

Wooffles & Cream is located in Kennedy Square at Markham. I went to this place twice before I finally got what I wanted. The first time I was with friends. We came at around 10:30pm, they ran out of the wooffless and only had the soft serve ice cream. So I didn't bother buying anything. The second time I was with my brother and Tin. It too was a fail. We went there on a Monday only to find out that the store is not open on Mondays. The third time I was again with friends. We had just finished our dinner not too far from the place so we decided to go for desserts. This time we came earlier and finally had their wooffles. We had to wait 20 minutes for our order. The line was not long when we got there. However, a couple minutes after we ordered a flood of people came lining up. It was still busy even after we finished eating our desserts. There were only two staff working. One person took the orders while the other person had to make the wooffles and the other orders.

Left - Shinozuki parfait Right - Matcha soft serve ice cream cone $4.50

The shinozuki parfait was decent according to my friend. Apparently the matcha place in downtown has a better matcha taste than the one they serve at this store. Tin and I have yet to go to the matcha place downtown. When we do there will definitely be a post about it. So stay tuned!

Cookies and cream wooffles with matcha soft serve ice cream $8

Caffe Afogato

Matchaccino

Unagi-Don - cream teriyaki and shimeji mushrooms with Japanese barbecued eel. Garnished with nori and shiso -$17

This pasta dish was very creamy. My friend called it a "very heavy meal" due to its creamy texture. It's what made it my favorite dish. If you like something creamy I would recommend this. I've tasted four pasta dishes, as we all shared a portion of our dishes to each of us in addition to our own dish. We asked for small plates so that we could easily distribute the Japanese poutine and share it. After we finished the Japanese poutine we used the same plate, filled it with a portion of our own dish as we passed the small plates around in a circle. That way when each of our small plates reach us we have three other pasta dishes to eat. It was a good way to taste the other dishes without having to go buy them. So far out of the  four pasta dishes I've tried I liked the Unagi-Don, despite the fact that I do not like eating eel. For the record, I never tried the eel so I cannot say how it tasted. Moreover, my friend had no complaints in regards to that particular dish, so it's safe to say that it is quite good. I probably would buy this next time I come back to this restaurant.

Shrimp Okonomiyaki - Spaghetti sauteed with bacon, onions and garlic, dressed with shrimp, homemade steak sauce, Japanese mayo and bonito fish flakes - $14

This dish is one of my least favourite. It's not so bad but compared to the other 3 pasta dishes it's quite on the dry side. I like my pasta to be creamy. Other than that I think it's still quite delicious.

Napolitan - Japanese tomato sauce with sausage, bacon, onions, nori and shiso -$10

This pasta dish tasted like the Filipino spaghetti. It is sweet rather than sour, and the tomato sauce was also palatable.

Shiso Clam Vongole - White wine, olive oil, garlic, bacon, fresh Manila clams and shiso -$15

I ordered this dish. The shiso taste on this dish was very strong. This dish was very dry for me. It did have a lot of clams in it. So if you like clams, I recommend this dish. I chose this dish simply for the clams. However, it was my least favourite.

Japanese Poutine Fries - poutine garnished with nori and shiso.

This was my first time having Japanese poutine fries. Apparently, there are other places where you can get one. As per my friend, this was more creamy and very similar to a regular poutine but has an additional touch of shiso and nori. To me it was not salty and very creamy. It was very delicious. I would recommend for poutine lovers to try it out.

Overall I would go back to this place for many reasons. Firstly, it's located at J-town. Secondly, you can go dine at this cafe after shopping around the area in J-town, which is a fairly small plaza. Finally, the food was delicious.

Hello Everyone! It's been awhile both Jeys and I have been extremely busy. However, now that summer is here expect to see more posts *fingers crossed. With that being said, this first 'comeback' post won't necessarily be a review but more of an overview of a recent place that I (Tin) went to.

Last Friday May 13, Jeys' brother and I went to Ripley's Aquarium. If you're heading to downtown Toronto I suggest checking it out. It's great for families, friends, couples and if you just simply want to see what's going on. Jeys' brother and I bought tickets for the Shark's After Dark Session which apparently is more cheaper. This does not simply mean there will be an event dedicated to sharks! We initially thought that there would be some soort of show specifically for Sharks, but there wasn't. But, there are definitely sharks swimming around in the Dangerous Lagoon area :).


So, our situation was slightly different Jeys' brother had a work discount so we were able to attain tickets for a much cheaper value. There was specified times (ours was set for 7 till closing) when purchasing the tickets online, but we managed to get into the aquarium around 6 40 pm. Which was great!  There wasn't that much people and quite frankly the aquarium is quite spacious, unique, eye-catching, family oriented, and most importantly educational.

Touching sting rays was super super smooth!

What was so amusing and cool was that you get to touch and feel some of these sea creatures :D. Ek, I forgot the name of this one.

Nurse Shark :D

There was a conveyer that moved for you allowing you to look around while it moves you throughout the water tunnel. However you can always hop off it easily too. Here I am looking right above and I see a nurse shark and a saw fish.

These are anemone. These were displayed throughout. The very pink one is called a strawberry anemone, don't be fooled though they are deadly!

Here they show how they maintain the aquarium and how much water is being used for each section of the aquarium. I guess this is their way of saying why the price of the tickets can be pricey.

A small play area to play around with the machine (not real machines). There are small machines throughout to play around and tinker around within the aquarium.

The aquarium took about an hour and 15 minutes I believe. And we are very fortunate because we could've actually gone through the museum till it closed due to the time of our tickets. We did actually go back to view the jelly fish, it was just honestly surreal.

Although there are mixed opinions regarding animal and sea creature life in regards to aquarium. But if you personally aren't bothered by it I'd suggest trying it.

This post is long overdue, but I would like to share with you my experience.

During the summer last year, Toronto was hosting the PanAm/ParapanAm 2015 games. The events were held all over Toronto and its surrounding areas. My friends and I decided to attend at least one event and show our support to our athletes. Also, it was one of the big events happening within Toronto and it doesn't happen often. I wanted to go to as many sports events as possible with a couple of friends, however I was only available to come to this one; when I'm available they're not available. The aquatics event was held at PanAm Aquatics Centre in Scarborough. During the Aquatics event, it showed men's and women's swimming events from breaststroke, freestyle, to relay events. It costed $45/person and lasted for 2 hours. It was a well worth experience to see it in person than on television. I never had the time to watch the events on television so I was only updated of the event by word of mouth. The women's team did amazing compared to the men's team during this particular event. The excitement was surreal. The crowds were cheering on for Canada, and when our athletes got first place in each event the crowd soared from happiness.

The PanAm Aquatics Centre

Since I missed Tin's birthday celebration due to work, I made it up by treating her to AllStar Wings & Ribs. Also, it was partly because I was craving for wings. We ordered quite a lot of wings actually. It was my fault. I was craving for something cheesy and something spicy that I decided to order 2 lbs just so I can split the flavour. So basically, if you order 1 lb of wings you cannot split the flavour. However, if you order 2 lbs or more, you can split the flavour with an additional charge of $2 for each flavour. It was actually cheaper to order 2 lbs or more if you wanted to split the flavour rather than ordering 1 lb each. If I remember correctly, 2 lbs of wings is $20, plus $2 extra for each flavour if splitting. As mentioned in previous posts, my taste buds for spicy threshold is quite high, so I find it fitting to have Tin's opinion of the spicy flavour on it too. All of the wings posted below are breaded wings.

Cleopatra - spicyness level: No heat

This flavour has no heat at all. It can be found on the no heat menu 5th flavour. It is very cheesy and sweet.

Midnight Express - spicyness level: Medium

This flavour was just sweet to me and I couldn't taste the spicyness in it. I actually wouldn't think it was spicy if it didn't say it on the menu. It actually taste like barbecue sauce with a bit of cheese. This is Tin's staple flavour to order whenever we go here.

Witch Doctor - spicyness level: 5 alarm (caution very very spicy)

While shopping for some cosmetics at Tony Moly, I stumbled upon this product. Since it was only for $5 (CDN). I decided to purchase it. For a girl like me, who has little knowledge for pedicure and manicures, I thought this was the best alternative without spending $20 towards nail treatment. I wasn't expecting much from this product to be honest.

A couple months ago our family went to Dragon Pearl on a Sunday afternoon for lunch. Our family loves eating at all-you-can-eat buffets, so we thought we'd give this new restaurant a try. The restaurant is located 865 York Mills Rd, North York. For each individual it costed $21.99 for that particular day.




This is the front entrance of the restaurant. Our family went crazy over pictures haha.

I don't actually have that much pictures of the restaurant because it was so dark. I think that would probably be the only draw back of the restaurant. It is quite dark, kinda like Hollister lighting 2.0. However, the interior design of the restaurant had a touch of ancient modern Chinese feel with hints of red throughout the restaurant. Once you enter the entrance you'll be welcomed with glass displayed sculptures of Chinese zodiac signs (and free book marks!), as well as bamboo wood seating to stay seated while waiting for your table.

Entering the buffet portion there is a wide selection of foods (seafood lovers you will not be disappointed!).  The eating area (aside from being fairly dark) had a very nice ambiance. There were a lot of tables designed to carry up to 10 people. Our family is quite huge, so not every one could fit in one table. Nonetheless, most of us fit into one huge bamboo table.

The room right next to the general eating area, was a room designed for family events. So if you're interested in having a family party and you're into doing family video montages, you'll be pleased to know they have a large projector ready.

Overall thoughts:
- Place was very clean
- Food selection was great
- Food taste better than most all-you-can-eat buffets that we go to (Super Buffet)
- Place is a bit dark, so those who love to pull out their phone cameras mind find that lighting can be very poor
- Servers were really friendly and welcoming

Look how cute the tea set was! We have never seen tea served like this in buffets.

This was actually my first plate haha.

So, if you're in the North York region or in the Scarborough region head down to Dragon Pearl with some families and friends if you like all-you-can-eat buffets. You won't be disappointed!

It's summerlicious time in Toronto. It is a summer event featuring a variety of restaurants of different culture, located all over Toronto, offering a three-course lunch and dinner menu at a discounted/exceptional price points. This year's event started on July 3rd and will end on July 26th.