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  1. 27 Apr


    Belated Macaron Day TO (March 20th) pics! Macaron Day is celebrated all over the world and it’s a day where you get to go around town sampling macarons for free. Furthermore, 25% of all macaron purchases from that day go towards a certain charity.

    Rankings:

    #1 Butter Avenue

    #2 Moroco Chocolat

    #3 La Bamboche

    Petite Thuet was the only place where the people were really rude and forced us to donate in order to get the free macaron, which is totally not how it’s supposed to work. Also, their macarons sucked. 

    The best macarons I’ve ever had anywhere in the world are the ones at Bottega Louie in downtown Los Angeles. If you ever go, I recommend the rose-flavored macaron. Oh and their margherita pizza. 

     

  2. 1 Feb


    Winterlicious lunch at Cafe La Gaffe, Baldwin Street. Menu here.Price: $15Cafe La Gaffe has been a personal favorite of mine for a while. Their brunch menu is absolutely heavenly and so when I get the chance to eat here for $15, I’m all over it.Appetizer: The split pea soup was the soup of the day and although it was a little cold when served, it didn’t lack for flavor.Main course: Atlantic Smoked Salmon served with penne pasta with baby spinach in a parmesan rosé sauce. I was pleasantly surprised at the flavor the chefs had managed to infuse in a fish as stubborn in its own taste as salmon. The pasta was perfect as usual and the salad rounded off the course very well.Dessert: Lemon cheesecake with raspberry coulis. This was divine! It was rich, but not too dense, creamy, and fragrant. The serving might have been a little too big, but hey! I’m not complaining.

    Winterlicious lunch at Cafe La Gaffe, Baldwin Street. Menu here.

    Price: $15

    Cafe La Gaffe has been a personal favorite of mine for a while. Their brunch menu is absolutely heavenly and so when I get the chance to eat here for $15, I’m all over it.

    Appetizer: The split pea soup was the soup of the day and although it was a little cold when served, it didn’t lack for flavor.

    Main course: Atlantic Smoked Salmon served with penne pasta with baby spinach in a parmesan rosé sauce. I was pleasantly surprised at the flavor the chefs had managed to infuse in a fish as stubborn in its own taste as salmon. The pasta was perfect as usual and the salad rounded off the course very well.

    Dessert: Lemon cheesecake with raspberry coulis. This was divine! It was rich, but not too dense, creamy, and fragrant. The serving might have been a little too big, but hey! I’m not complaining.

     

  3. 31 Jan


    Winterlicious $15, three-course lunch at Brownstone Bistro, 603 Yonge Street. Menu here.I had the Caramelized Onion Soup, the Vegetable Lasagna, and the Banana Tempura.The soup was served at just the right temperature so I didn’t have to wait forever for it to cool down. The Lasagna was a little bland and watery and the tomatoes tasted like they’d come out of a can. The tempura was a little dough-y, but the sweetness level was just right and the ice cream it was served with was delicious (albeit the tiny portion).The service was great. It was attentive, courteous, and friendly. You can’t really ask for anything more.

    Winterlicious $15, three-course lunch at Brownstone Bistro, 603 Yonge Street. Menu here.

    I had the Caramelized Onion Soup, the Vegetable Lasagna, and the Banana Tempura.

    The soup was served at just the right temperature so I didn’t have to wait forever for it to cool down. The Lasagna was a little bland and watery and the tomatoes tasted like they’d come out of a can. The tempura was a little dough-y, but the sweetness level was just right and the ice cream it was served with was delicious (albeit the tiny portion).

    The service was great. It was attentive, courteous, and friendly. You can’t really ask for anything more.

     

  4. 24 Jan



    Winter in Toronto: when making Wudu’ with cold water feels like my personal jihad.

     

  5. 19 Jun



    Summerlicious 2012

    Food!

    3 courses. Prix fixe menus. Tons of great restaurants to explore.

     

  6. 29 Mar


    “If I tell you where I am, can you send a cab out there to fetch me?”, were my exact words when I first tried calling a cab service in North America. I grew up in the Middle East. Nobody takes cabs there because everyone has their own chauffeur. Myself included. It’s not a status thing. It’s just a norm of the society. Uber takes this concept of a personal driver and makes it universal. Being able to call a cab is great. What’s not great is the variety of unknown factors involved. When will your cab be here? If you change your mind, how do you ‘call it off’? Is your cab driver lost? Enter: Uber. Uber is a somewhat upscale cab service that seeks to eliminate the unknowns and help the environment, while keeping it classy. When you fire up the Uber app (you can also do this via text message), you can see how many cars are near your current location. The map locations for the entire Uber fleet are shown in real-time. No more guessing how long it’s actually going to take your cab to arrive. Once you’ve made up your mind and would like to go ahead and arrange a pickup, you can simply assign a pick-up location and the app will notify you how long it will take for the nearest Uber driver to reach you. The app tells you the first name of your driver and a button to call him (doesn’t show the number; a subtle, yet excellent detail). I had my first Uber experience on my way back from the March Sprouter event. I was running late for a meeting and had to request a pick up. I was in jeans and a sweater and although I’d followed Uber’s activity in Toronto for a while, was not prepared for the men-in-black-looking Uber driver that came to collect me. He rolled up in a sleek Lincoln town car and got the door for me. The interior of the car: leather. What a refreshing change from the usual smell of smoke in cabs! Once inside, I noticed that the drivers have their own version of the app where they’re given their own screen with the first name of the customer and a button to call them. That’s pretty slick. I knew it was a short ride, so I took the opportunity to ask Zaheer all about the other end of Uber. How many cars are there in the fleet? (~100) Did he like working for Uber? (Very much so) How long had he been with them? (several months) Did they provide the smartphones? (Yes). He then asked me if it was my first time riding in an Uber. I excitedly told him it was. I would be lying if I said I didn’t feel pampered when we rolled to a stop outside my destination and Zaheer exited the car, opened the door for me, and wished me a good night. And I didn’t even have to mess with cab fare, change, or awkwardly waiting for the POS to connect to server. It’s all taken care of by Uber! I can’t help but applaud the keen focus on User Experience that Uber is targeting. It’s slick, it’s classy, and it’s not as expensive as you think it would be. There are a couple of drawbacks, of course: 1) You can’t pick the amount of tip 2) There’s a cancellation fee if you change your mind 3) You have to train yourself to look for a lincoln town car instead of a bright yellow sedan I paid about $3 more than I would have paid for regular cab fare. It was worth it.

    “If I tell you where I am, can you send a cab out there to fetch me?”, were my exact words when I first tried calling a cab service in North America. I grew up in the Middle East. Nobody takes cabs there because everyone has their own chauffeur. Myself included. It’s not a status thing. It’s just a norm of the society. Uber takes this concept of a personal driver and makes it universal.

    Being able to call a cab is great. What’s not great is the variety of unknown factors involved. When will your cab be here? If you change your mind, how do you ‘call it off’? Is your cab driver lost?

    Enter: Uber. Uber is a somewhat upscale cab service that seeks to eliminate the unknowns and help the environment, while keeping it classy.

    When you fire up the Uber app (you can also do this via text message), you can see how many cars are near your current location. The map locations for the entire Uber fleet are shown in real-time. No more guessing how long it’s actually going to take your cab to arrive.

    Once you’ve made up your mind and would like to go ahead and arrange a pickup, you can simply assign a pick-up location and the app will notify you how long it will take for the nearest Uber driver to reach you. The app tells you the first name of your driver and a button to call him (doesn’t show the number; a subtle, yet excellent detail).

    I had my first Uber experience on my way back from the March Sprouter event. I was running late for a meeting and had to request a pick up. I was in jeans and a sweater and although I’d followed Uber’s activity in Toronto for a while, was not prepared for the men-in-black-looking Uber driver that came to collect me. He rolled up in a sleek Lincoln town car and got the door for me.

    The interior of the car: leather. What a refreshing change from the usual smell of smoke in cabs! Once inside, I noticed that the drivers have their own version of the app where they’re given their own screen with the first name of the customer and a button to call them. That’s pretty slick.

    I knew it was a short ride, so I took the opportunity to ask Zaheer all about the other end of Uber. How many cars are there in the fleet? (~100) Did he like working for Uber? (Very much so) How long had he been with them? (several months) Did they provide the smartphones? (Yes). He then asked me if it was my first time riding in an Uber. I excitedly told him it was.

    I would be lying if I said I didn’t feel pampered when we rolled to a stop outside my destination and Zaheer exited the car, opened the door for me, and wished me a good night. And I didn’t even have to mess with cab fare, change, or awkwardly waiting for the POS to connect to server. It’s all taken care of by Uber!

    I can’t help but applaud the keen focus on User Experience that Uber is targeting. It’s slick, it’s classy, and it’s not as expensive as you think it would be. There are a couple of drawbacks, of course:

    1) You can’t pick the amount of tip

    2) There’s a cancellation fee if you change your mind

    3) You have to train yourself to look for a lincoln town car instead of a bright yellow sedan

    I paid about $3 more than I would have paid for regular cab fare. It was worth it.

     

  7. 23 Feb



    Daniel “Just Build” Burka

    I went to a SproutUp event last night hosted by the lovely team at Sprouter. The main speaker for the night was Daniel Burka - co-founder of Milk Inc., PEI-er who now lives in San Francisco Bay Area.

    Initially, my plan was to write notes from his talk, which stemmed around the “talk less, do more” principal. But someone beat me to it. Very comprehensive notes of his talk can be found here.

    I got to talk to him at the end of the evening. He was very polite and answered questions despite the fact that he was completely exhausted. He was also very honest. Like ridiculously so. Not gonna lie, I was kind of taken aback by it. It was refreshing. He also has a cartilage piercing. Much like yours truly, so of course he gets extra points for that.

    Daniel is a product designer at heart, and never figured to call himself a “founder”, which is another thing about him that’s refreshing. But what’s even more refreshing, is how much he “gets” the people he’s designing for. During our little discussion, he mentioned how you need to be careful what to implement. It’s great to listen to feedback and to work on it, but don’t let the users dictate what you do. “They will ask you for feature X, but they’re doing so because they have desire Y. Your role is to figure out that desire Y and work to implement that”. That is pretty much the basis of crafting user experiences.

    My question for him was the growth of startup communities in new cities and how Toronto can get on the fast track for that given that we keep losing talented Canadians like himself to the Valley (another example is the acquisition of Vancouver-based Summify by Twitter). He was very sincere in telling me he didn’t have a good answer for it. That if I were to look at how things were in the Bay Area and how one could have great wines, lunches, and conversations with the “guys who run the Internet” every day that I would feel the same way. It’s a high saturation point of talent, he said. And he apologized.

    I don’t blame him. I’m sure the West Coast is great! And I believe Daniel when he says people there are far less sceptical and willing to take a lot more risks than in the GTA. I would move there for the weather alone, but if we all do that - what’s to become of Toronto? When does Toronto get to bask in the glory of being an “active hub of startups”? Surely not if we keep losing players. It’s not that we lack talent, it’s that we lack appreciation for said talent. This is true for everything Canadian. We don’t appreciate our television as much, or our movies, or our actors. So they move to places where they are appreciated (read: Hollywood). And it’s sad. And I’d like to help fix it. And I’d like for all Torontonians/Canadians to believe in that. Sprouter is a great movement because it’s building the Toronto tech community and for that, but when do we all start pitching in?

     

  8. 16 Feb



    Things I learned at my first ever NBA game

    DISCLAIMER: I know nothing about basketball. This was the very first game I went to. Toronto Raptors VS. San Antonio Spurs at the Air Canada Centre, February 15th 2012

    • Basketball players are really really tall
    • It must suck to not play on your home turf. The crowd is merciless.
    • Tony Parker is Eva Longoria’s ex-husband.
    • The games are played in four segments of 12 minutes, with a kajillion breaks in the middle.
    • Football cheerleaders »»» Basketball cheerleaders. I could dance better than the Raptors “dance pak”
    • Mascots are awesome! Toronto Raptors have a Raptor and a mini Raptor.
    • I had more fun watching the half-time mascot game than the actual game. OK, maybe not.
    • The big TV thing in the middle of the stadium is called a “Jumbotron”.
    • There’s a strange bond that you form with every single person in that stadium. You cheer, breath, and curse in sync with everyone.
    • The players run really fast and are surprisingly light on their feet.
    • The concession stands rip you off like it’s their last chance to do so (With the Raptors track record, it’s probably the safest route to go) 
    • $6.50 for fries + dip, $2.26 for an extra cheese packet and the nachos don’t come with salsa! 
    • Basketball players are celebrities
    • People love being on the Jumbotron
    • I always thought fouls were something that rarely happened. I was very wrong. Players foul each other every minute
    • Tony Parker never misses a free throw
    • When the non-home team is up for a free throw, the crowd distracts them by making a lot of noise, which kinda sounds a lot like cheering. So can we stop doing that, please?
    • Jose Calderon is kinda cute in a basketball-player-kinda-way
    • There’s a lot of marketing that goes into this stuff.
    • Only people sitting in the lower bowl get throwaway freebies.
    • If you have no idea what’s going on, just yell at the ref every now and then
    • It’s really difficult to concentrate on the Jumbotron and the court at the same time
    • Coaches let their star players “rest” for the first half of a quarter and send them in the game in the last half
    • 3-point shots look really boss
    • The Air Canada Centre only plays music for when the Raptors are trying to score, which could actually be making them nervous. So, can we stop doing that please?
    • The Raptors aren’t all that great, but they’re one of the top revenue-generating teams out there (source: unknown) I’d put my money on the eternal optimism of Torontonians.
    • Noise makers/thunder sticks are my favorite. I like them better than the big gloved hands marked #1 (aka foam fingers)
    • When players are under stress, they make(?) fouls left right and center
    • When there’s 3 minutes on the clock and a 3 point difference in the score, you can feel the tension in the stadium.
    • People start leaving before the game ends if it’s not too close. I call these people non-dreamers.
    • Balcony seats have no space for people to walk in and out. You can only hope you don’t sit next to people who leave the stadium 5+ times to get food/drinks/go to the bathroom/smoke/all of those things, but if you’re on a student budget, you really have no choice
    • Basketball teams have these “Spirit Ambassadors” who come and rile people up. Then hand out free swag
    • There are a lot of ways to get cheap basketball tickets
    • I could really get used to being one of those people who regularly watch/follow the NBA.
    • The NBA was on strike earlier, which is why this year’s season started late.
    • Jeremy Lin is asian and currently, everyone’s hero.
    • If you’re a point/shooting guard, you’re probably hot sh*t.
    • There are a lot of breaks, and hence, a lot of little contest things that happen on the court
    • Tony Parker is really really good
    • Basketball players can be sweaty and out of breath, and the fans will still swoon all over them
    • Competitive sports bring out a ferocious side in people of all ages
    • When the mascots played a basketball game (in which, sadly, no one was keeping score), they looked like Looney Toons in Space Jam
    • The Air Canada Centre is really pretty inside
    • Cheerleaders have several uniforms none of which do a very good job at covering anything up that they change into throughout the night
    • If a player gets 5 personal fouls, they’re out of the game
    • When there’s little time left on the clock and the team that currently has the lead has the ball, they will waste time so the other team doesn’t get a chance to score
    • Referees really like blowing their whistle
    • Coaches can call timeouts whenever they feel like it, but there’s some form of cap on it to make sure people still get home at a decent hour
    • Popcorn and beer vendors are very vocal
    • A can of beer costs $9.50. DISCLAIMER: I don’t drink, I heard the vendor call it out
    • If you buy bottled pop, the booth vendors are not allowed to give you the cap lest you throw it in the court/at players.
    • Sports announcers have the best job in the world
    • Little kids + Jumbotron face time = eternal cuteness
    • Basketball players probably don’t date cheerleaders because they have enough Hollywood actresses throwing themselves at them
    • Professional athletes earn a ton of money
    • Every players name has a certain ring to it. Parents choose their child’s career path when they give them a name that rolls off the tongue nicely. Leandro Barbosa, Rasual Butler, Tiago Splitter, Andrea Bargnani, DeMar DeRozan. If you want your kid to be an NBA star, name him/her something fancy/that sounds good in your sports-announcer-impression-voice
    • I want a jersey of my own
     

  9. 8 Feb



    Feedback on Twitter

    I often tweet about things I see and would like changed. I don’t always expect someone to be listening on the other end. One of these things was the missing links on Toronto Life’s coverage of Winterlicious restaurants.

    This is their response on Twitter:

    And here is the article, with added links. Within minutes of tweeting my complaint.

    Ta-dah!

    Needless to say, I feel like a proud mama. Thank you, Toronto Life!

     

  10. 7 Feb



    Shopcastr: bringing stores to you

    “Shopcastr gives you x-ray vision into a store”, was the one-liner that stayed with me after Matt O’Leary’s gripping presentation at the recent Sprouter event in Downtown Toronto.

    I live and breathe the tech startup scene. This may or may not have something to do with the fact that I work for the poster child startup company of Toronto. The US of A tends to have the most compelling numbers of successful and innovative startups, mainly focused in the west coast for obvious reasons. However, it’s been really great to see little communities of startups evolve in other places. DC, Seattle, New York are just a few examples. Toronto is slowly getting there; Sprouter being one of the biggest catalysts for it.

    Shopcastr is a beautiful, electronic shopping catalog of merchandise from stores in your area. Despite the name alluding to shopping - this isn’t Etsy or eBay. You’re not on Shopcastr to shop online, you’re on Shopcastr to take a look at what stores around you have to offer. They’re all about local businesses and relationships with people - so the people behind Shopcastr actually want you to go to the store and buy the item in person.

    The founder, Matt O’Leary, is (and I’m proud to report it) a User Experience Designer. This might be the reason behind the gorgeous flow of items, the simplicity of the placement of information, the visual grids (of course, I might just be biased). It just exudes flow. Which is great to see.

    You can “love” things on here that will show up on your profile and you can go look at an item and then look at what the entire store’s catalog looks like. You can even filter it by neighborhood. Want a backpack but don’t want to walk more than a mile from your house on a cold February morning? You don’t have to!

    I’m a fairly new user of the site, so I’m still feeling my way around it. But I have a couple of suggestions (some of which Shopcastr has acknowledged already). One of which is to include addresses in the sidebar when viewing an item. For e.g., looking at the picture below, it’s not immediately obvious where I have to go to see the store’s catalog. Hint: You click on the header. 

    This is Shopcastr’s response to my suggestion tweet:

    There are two ways to use Shopcastr: as a shopper or as a shop.

    They also have a mobile app (of course!). When you download it and start it up, however, it asks you to login or sign up. And since I downloaded the app right after Matt’s talk, I didn’t have an account. So I decided to sign up. Which gave me this screen:

    It’s great that Shopcastr wants to make uploading a shop’s catalog easy enough to do via mobile, but my guess is, if I’m a shop owner - I’m probably using the web to upload a large collection of photos. Regardless, it would be nice to be given an option to sign up as a shopper on the mobile app.

    Overall, the site is not just a pretty face, it’s useful too! I’ve found my dream backpack. Will be stopping by Sweet Pete’s later tonight to pick it up.

    Most importantly, show Shopcastr some Toronto community love. Check out shopcastr.com, read their blog, follow them on Twitter, or download their mobile app to discover your local stores!