Ontario Place - July 21, 2007

Here is the long-awaited post about my weekend in Toronto.

Jimmy and I decided to take a little trip to Toronto a while back. We wanted to check out the Rogers Chinese Lantern Festival held at Ontario Place.

It started out at the water park area, which seemed a LOT smaller than what I expected. I forgot to take pictures *slash* I didn’t want to remember being a pale Asian chick in a bikini.

The highlight of Ontario Place (during the day) was the pedal-boat ride. It was bright and sunny, but still breezy. There was also an abundance of ducks and geese to chase. Score!

I think we had 15 minutes on the pedal-boats before we had to return. We probably spent 14 and a half minutes chasing waterfowl. (Note: no waterfowl were harmed in our delightful game.)

Not long after returning the boats, we saw a family of mute swans moseying along the water. They were so cute!!


By this time, we were getting really hungry. Instead of hanging around for the lantern festival to start, we left Ontario Place for heaven on earth, a.k.a. Chinatown. You can get ANY food originating from the Eastern Hemisphere in Chinatown. Chinatown rocks!

Jimmy and I decided to go to one of our favourite restaurants: House of Gourmet. It looks small from the outside, but once you heed the call of the glistening BBQ ducks in the shop window, you never turn back. We’ve probably eaten here five or six times now, and we’ve yet to be disappointed. The food is amaaaaaaaazing. Drool-worthy. Of course, if you don’t like Chinese BBQ’d meat and related dishes, then stay away from this place. However, this place has the best-tasting BBQ pork (a.k.a. “char siu”) I’ve ever had. Each piece tastes like an end piece.

For those of you who have never experienced an end piece, you’re totally missing out. The end pieces are the smallest part of the pork, so it cooks faster than the rest. As the meat dries out during the BBQ process, the flavour becomes heavily concentrated. More flavour equals more pork-loving.

*ahem*

I ordered noodles and soup with BBQ duck, BBQ pork, and shrimp wontons. Ah… home food. Simply delicious if you happen to have grown up with the stuff. Check out the size of the wontons! Christine and I joke that the kitchen staff got lazy and tossed in shrimp siu mai instead of making wontons. Not that I don’t approve. Because I do. *nods*
Oh, and I definitely planned the whole “chasing ducks by day and eating duck by night” thing. I thought it would be a funny story, and I have to say that I still get quite the chortle out of telling this story. I’m not an animal-hater by any means, but I like to think that I’m clever sometimes.

Jimmy ordered the Chef’s Spicy Beef Noodle Special, or something to that effect. It was spicy, beefy, and full of noodles. Jimmy says, “Three out of five.” He was comparing the beef noodle soup to the Taiwanese version though. I don’t remember much about it, except that the noodles had fully absorbed the flavours of the broth.
We left the House of Gourmet waddling. At least, I left it waddling. Over-eating is one of my vices. We paid the horrendous $13.00 parking fee to get back into Ontario Place, but considering the sights we saw that night, I think it may have been worth it. I’m still pondering that one.

I’m not going to write too much about the Chinese Lantern Festival. Enjoy the pics!

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Here's a dragon lantern made entirely out of plates, cups, bowls, and spoons. Super cool. I'm glad we took these pictures before it got dark because they never did light this one.

Soft-core panda porn.

Lots of panda shenanigans.

Four dragons and a shiny ball.

The God of Fortune.


"The Dragon's Chi."

I've forgotten the name of this exhibit.


Chang-an. This was part of the Silk Road exhibit.




Fin.

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Addresses:
House of Gourmet
484 Dundas Street West
Toronto, Ontario
(416) 217-0167