Eating in Canada

I read in our AAA guide that Toronto, Ontario, Canada is a city of over two million people, and with five million in the metro area, which is about one-seventh of the entire population of the country. There are over 100 languages spoken there, and we heard more than our fair share. So, with such a rich cultural diversity, why did we manage to eat at a Subway subs restaurant?

Part of it was convenience. There is a Subway just across from the Royal Ontario Museum, it was about 6 p.m., and the Daughter was hungry. Part of it was her peanut allergy; going to some Chinese or Thai restaurant, which the Wife and I might have gone to on our own was not really practical due to the likelihood of the use of peanut oil. And the Daughter, a least in part because of peanut allergy fears, just isn’t a very adventurous eater. Oh, that particular Subway had no spinach, only lettuce; I prefer the former on my sub.

Convenience factored into eating at some of the attractions we were visiting. BTW, there’s a Nestles’ freeze pop, sold at the Toronto Zoo, made in a facility where peanuts are used. Did not anticipate that.

The one night we went out to dinner, we walked to the gay part of town, not unlike New York City’s Greenwich Village, and ate at the Rainbow Café, only five or six blocks from the hotel. The biggest problem with the place that, though we were inside, smoking was allowed outdoors, and a door was open; actually, more like a bay – it looked, on the side, like a three-car garage, with a section up.

The Daughter’s favorite place to eat was a place (a chain?) called the Golden Griddle. We ate dinner there one night and breakfast another morning. It was a clean, safe place. And Lydia got a toy at the end of the meal. And speaking of toys, I think it was Wendy’s hamburgers, where we stopped leaving town, at which the toy in the kids’ meal was a 30-second timer and some cards for charades; I loved that.

The Wife’s favorite place to eat was Tim Horton’s. We’d started seeing them in western New York, but the donut shop was ubiquitous in our travels. There was a dinky place in our Toronto hotel, which we never went to, except that she verified was not peanut-free. But as we were leaving town, she got a couple donuts and an iced coffee, and loved the freshness and taste.

This took place on the road from Peterborough: we stopped at a place that had Tim Horton’s, Burger King, something called Pizza Pizza and another place. The Wife stood in the lengthy TH queue to get me a fruit smoothie and herself a couple things, while I stood in the shorter BK line for food for the Daughter. I was finished with getting my order, while Carol was STILL in line. She got distracted by the fact that a whole family suddenly showed up to order in front of her and she managed to forget my drink. By the time she realized this, the TH queue as even longer than it was when she entered it. She did make it up to me, though, buying me a smoothie –it WAS good – at our stop 6 kilometers before we crossed the border back into the United States.

0 thoughts on “Eating in Canada”

  1. Roger, love your musings on travel food. I believe Golden Griddle is a chain, because there’s one in Niagara Falls, CA. Now that we are in Wisconsin, I admit I read this a bit wistfully (note that there are no Timmy’s in WI), but it’s more than made up for by the plethora of locally owned, locally roasted bean.

    As for standing in line, I always have a pen and paper in my purse. I taught my daughter this trick when she was a kid… even if it’s writing one long word like “deconstruction” and seeing how many four-letter words you can make out of it, you always have a pastime!

    Glad to be back in the world, Roger, you know what I mean… and peace to you, my friend. Amy


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