A Classy Bay Street Lunch

With another day on my own in Toronto, I decided to explore the downtown area, and opted to have lunch there as well.  My sister suggested a few places, including The Gabardine, to try for lunch or dinner.  Knowing that there would be lunch crowds on weekdays, I planned on heading downtown to get to The Gabardine between 11:30am and 11:45am to be able to get a seat.  Unfortunately, I left for downtown late and arrived about 11:50am, and there was already a small line-up with an approximately 40-minute wait in the packed place.

A Stella Lunch with the Parents

Close-up of Stella's Café's Provalone Roast Chicken Sandwich

I had the fortune of hosting my parents once more this year.  This has been the earliest in a year that I've been able to host them, as I managed to convince them to come see me perform in a community theatre production in late April; the comparatively late show times allowed them to avoid the usual winter season.  It had also been a couple of years since I last visited Winnipeg with my parents, so a full daytrip, including lunch in town, was in order when my parents visited me this past weekend.

Toronto Dishcrawl to End 2011

Part of the kitchen at Bannock.

(I've unfortunately had to take a pause writing about my Christmas break culinary adventures due to my involvement in a musical production that just finished this past weekend.  So, now we return to our regularly scheduled programming....)

Knowing that she would still be on holidays from work, before my holidays my sister suggested doing a dishcrawl throughout central Toronto.  For those not familiar with what a dishcrawl is, you may have heard of a pub crawl, where people hop from one drinking establishment to another to try a feature/unique drink from each establishment.  So, a dishcrawl is where people hop from one eatery to another to try a feature/unique food dish from each establishment.  Though she had a quite a few places to choose, we originally settled to try five places and eventually only tried four as, in spite of what our tastebuds would tell us, our stomachs could only take so much.

Impromptu Lunch Out

I'm usually not a spur-of-the-moment kind of person.  I like to have things figured out or planned in advance, even if only for a day, but this past weekend was pock-marked with a few spur-of-the-moment events.  One of them was having a couple of friends crashing at my place Friday night after they went for drinks at a bar near my apartment.  By the time we were all awake the following morning it was brunch/lunch time, and my fridge was not properly stocked for a homemade breakfast (chiefly, no eggs).  However, one of my friends and I learned that our other friend had never before been to Lady of the Lake, so we agreed to go there for lunch.

Brunch Leftovers for Lunch

Thrift, thrift, Horatio! the funeral baked meats
Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.
William Shakespeare, "Hamlet"

No Train Stations Left Downtown, but One Good Stop Exists

Until recently I haven't had the opportunity to write a review of a place to eat in Brandon, MB, now my hometown for over three years. Many of the restaurants here are either franchises or independents that cater more to the moderate price range. That said, there are nonetheless neat little independent restaurants that should earn some honourable mentions, and one of them is a recently opened sandwich shop.

Grand Central Sandwich Deli recently opened for business in the downtown core of Brandon, and as its name implies, its focus is on sandwiches. The sandwiches this place offers aren't your lunchbox-packed-by-mom types. There are various kinds avaialble combining different meats and dressings or sauces, and this place is very generous in adding on the various raw vegetables between the slices of bread. It is no doubt cheaper to make your own sandwiches, but if you especially work in the downtown area and for one reason or another you can't bring a homemade lunch with you, it is wonderful a new place like this, arguably offering generally much healthier fare than the existing restaurants downtown or other fast food joints in town. is now available as an option. Furthermore, the sandwiches here do taste homemad, unlike franchise sandwich places like Subway or Quizno's where you can taste a bit of the mass production factor in their sandwiches.

Name: Grand Central Sandwich Deli
Address: 904 Rosser Ave., Brandon, MB
Cuisine: Sandwiches
Price Range: $7-$11/sandwich
Accessible: Yes