Moxie's - Shopping mall chic

Moxie's Classic Grill is a chain of restaurants in Canada. The one I visited was at the Scarborough Town Centre, and is a popular stop for weary shoppers. The decor is tres chic with bold colours and modern design. Interior decor touches are tasteful, including even the fireplaces in the bathrooms. Consider it stylistically a Ki wannabe, but without the attitude.

The food is reasonable for the price although not spectacular. It's better than average for restaurant chains and often much better presented, like the perfectly-sized $2.99 bite of brownie for dessert. However, it still has that restaurant chain feel to it. For example, while the beef dip had very tender beef, it had average quality bread, and a slightly too salty dipping sauce. On the other hand, other sandwiches and wraps I have sampled there were a little more well balanced, and Moxie's own big rock grasshopper light lager is a pleasant and mild surprise, perfect for lunch. Another factor contributing to the restaurant chain feel is the servers, who although very nice, are still the usual young students you'd find anywhere. The clientele unsurprisingly runs the full gamut of shopping mall customers, which is to say that Moxie's at the Scarborough Town Centre is not really a big night-out destination, but functions more like other shopping mall family restaurants, welcoming all who wish to visit. However, it does so with a bit more flair and nicer surroundings. Shopping mall chic, as it were.

Overall, it's a fine place to visit for a casual atmosphere and reasonable food after shopping.

Spicy Dragon - Toronto's worst restaurant

My inspiration for starting this blog is Spicy Dragon, located at 1060 Kennedy Road, at Lawrence. Posted on the door was a reasonably strong recommendation from a local newspaper, so I decided to chance it. I'm glad I did, as this restaurant now holds my award for the worst restaurant in Toronto. That title previously went to The New Raj Nagar near Yonge and Bloor, but that restaurant closed a few years ago.



Spicy Dragon looks like your typical suburban strip mall pseudo-Chinese restaurant. It bills itself as a "Hakka Indian Style Chinese Restaurant". To be honest, I don't completely understand what that means, but I'm sure most Hakkas and Indians wouldn't want to be associated with this place. Sure, it's a hole in the wall, but that doesn't bother me. Hole-in-the-wallness doesn't mean bad food, and in fact, some my favourite restaurants in Toronto are dives. What does bother me is the utterly tasteless food. I didn't think it was possible to make food this bad.

I should have left immediately after inquiring about the Manchurian Tofu, but I didn't for some unexplanable reason.

Me: What's the Manchurian Tofu?
Waitress: It's dofu with red sauce.
Me: What's the red sauce?
Waitress: It's red.

I kid you not. Perhaps she was new, but nonetheless that's what she said. And she was right. The sauce was... well... red. It had no taste to it whatsoever and presumably was just red food colouring with a cornstarch base or something (with a slight bit of chili thrown in). The Yu Hsiang eggplant was similarly tasteless, but this one was light brown in colour. The beef with green pepper and black bean sauce was tasteless and dark brown. Even the steamed rice was tasteless, as it seemed they used the lowest grade of unscented rice available. I could not fathom how they could remain open with stuff like this. Perhaps the cook was recently diagnosed with high blood pressure and suddenly took it upon himself to save all his/her customers from the evils of salt. (If so, it might actually have taken extra effort for the beef dish, since so many pre-packaged black beans and black bean pastes are heavily salted.) Or perhaps they just ran out of salt and spices that day. To be sure, I would have been overjoyed had they thrown some monosodium glutamate into the food.

Actually I lie. I said I didn't think it was possible to make food this bad. That's not actually true, as I once had food this bad in Beijing at an ultra-cheap Chinese fast food restaurant in a food court. As you can see from the picture, they don't even bother give you bowls or plates. They just give you the pan in which the food was cooked.


But that didn't bother me either. What bothered me was the completely tasteless steamed rice, and the tasteless main dish. Perhaps Spicy Dragon is striving for the authenticity of this type of China experience. If so, they've succeeded.

Where to eat in Scarberia?

Hello everyone (particularly Torontonians)!

I just moved from downtown Toronto to Scarborough (Ontario that is), and view this as a great opportunity to discover a whole new variety of restaurants and shops. For the uninitiated, Scarborough is a region of the City of Toronto that is bordered by Steeles Avenue to the north, Pickering to the east, Victoria Park Avenue to the west, and Lake Ontario to the south. No, Toronto doesn't end at Vic Park people.

However, after having eaten a few really, really bad meals at so-called "recommended" Scarborough restaurants, I've decided that I can't always trust some of the local sources for restaurant reviews. So, I have chosen to take a shot at doing a few reviews myself.

A few places outside of Scarborough will probably creep into this blog from time to time, but I'll try to pick ones relatively close to Scarborough, so Scarberians can easily make the trek to them too if they should so choose.

I am by no means a hardcore foodie, and don't claim to have a deep culinary knowledge, but hey, who cares? If I can introduce you to some good restaurants and steer you away from some bad ones, then mission accomplished.