[CDL.TO]

Yes, Bagel House is good. Until I swung by their Bayview location a year or two ago (upon reading a recommendation here on urbantoronto, I believe), I was quite jaded by people here in Toronto claiming to have found great Montreal-style bagels, only for me to discover later that they were the same damn Kaiser buns with a hole in the middle that way too many people in this city think is a good bagel.

Jeez, tell me about it! A bagel should not be a round piece of white bread! Bagel House is decent and heads and shoulders above anything else in this city and we're lucky to have them. Hopefully they open a location downtown.

Still, look at the crap we have to deal with when some ignorant fool touts the virtues of Toronto bagels to Montrealers.

The article says the Leafs can use Toronto bagels as practice pucks. In my experience, that's a better description of Montreal bagels... Toronto bagels are better used as soft, fluffy pillows!

 

[Eug]

What about Gryfe's? I have never tried those.

P.S. I do very much like St. Viateur and Fairmont, but I even think the bagels at Le Faubourg are a half-notch better than The Bagel House.

 

[Irishmonk]

Great original post! As a Torontonian who has lived in Montreal I agree with much that has been written in this thread. For myself, I love both cities but I find that Montreal appeals much more to the heart than my hometown, while Toronto, typically, appeals more to the brain. I think of them as our great yin-yang cities.

 

[allabootmatt]

Nice post, KM. I agree with you considerably; I find Montreal and Toronto so similar in so many ways, and I agree, more or less, with your assessment. TO feels like a much bigger city in its centre, broadly speaking, for sure. And Montreal's outer neighbourhoods give one a great sense of how, from an early stage, Montrealers thought of their city as a metropolis.

That said, I might quarrel a bit with your statement about shabby architecture--the places you mentioned have some not-so-nice blocks for sure, but almost anywhere between High Park and Victoria Park and south of St Clair (except in East York, I guess) has its pockets of spectacular homes.

I am a great lover of Montreal and of course of my hometown of TO, and happy you are too. Would that more shared your attitude!

I think Montreal has an incredibly bright future, incidentally. Except for some Anglo backbiting (to which, alas, I am often treated by my Montreal relatives) I think the city has settled very, very gracefully into its role as Canada's Barcelona or Melbourne. It's like a weight has been lifted.

 

[adma]

What about Gryfe's? I have never tried those.

Well, they're the best argument for a distinct "Toronto" bagel, as opposed to Open Window-style white-bread-with-a-hole-in-the-middle or St Urbain-style faux Montreal...

 

[urbandreamer]

Gryfe's bagels are fluffy, light and airy. Almost like an unsweetened Krispy Kreme donut. For every one Fairmont bagel you eat, you'd have to eat 3 Gryfe's to get the same amount of "food."

Still, I love them.

 

[Torontovibe]

After living in Montreal for 10 years, I found it quite easy to find bagels here to replace the ones I loved in Montreal. It's the smoked meat I can't find a replacement for. I LOVE Schwartz's smoked meat and NOTHING in Toronto, even comes close. Toronto does not know how to make Schwartz's style (the only kind I'll eat now) smoked meant, so I have to travel all the way to Montreal, to take care of that addiction. (AND THAT SUCKS!) I tried that one everybody said was just like Schwartz's, (Caplansky's in Little Italy) and it made me sick, with that hickory taste. I couldn't even eat that shit! Most of what they call smoked meat, here and in Montreal, tastes just like what I know as pastrami, and is not like Schwartz's smoked meat at all. I'd say the next best thing in Toronto is baby beef, at Pancer's.
The Montreal 99 cent pizza, I can gladly do without. The worst pizza I've ever had in my life, was in Montreal. There are so many really bad pizza joints there. Toronto also makes the best shawarma I've ever had. Although both cities have lots of great places for food.
God, I want some smoked meat so bad right now!

 

[urbandreamer]

^Haha, Madonna/99 cent pizza is gross. I was always tempted by the price, but really I ended up tossing my 99 cents in the garbage....

Pancers? Yep, that's the closest experience I've had to Montreal's superior product. A real pity Pancer's isn't on Spadina or somewhere downtown, as I must say, I really like it. Schwartz's is in a different league of course, but Pancer's is where I'd hang out at more if it was closer to where I lived. At Pancer's, the secret to getting closer to Schwartz's? Bring your own pepper mill along....

I'm really tempted to make my own Mtl-style bagels. Wonder if I can knock 'em off?

 

[kEiThZ]

Toronto also makes the best shawarma I've ever had.

When it comes to Shawarma, I'd say Ottawa is king out of most of the places I've been to in Canada. And at least they understand when somebody orders it in a more 'authentic' fashion. In Toronto, they charge you extra for tabouli on it sometimes. What's really hard to find in any Canadian city is lamb shawarma, which was quite common in the middle east and is definitely the best tasting meat.

On a broader note, I can never understand why people get regular salad and garlic sauce on their shawarmas. I order it how I had growing up in Dubai: Humus, tabouli, pickled turnips, pickles, and tahini...hot sauce occassionally. That garlic sauce is a disgusting Canadian creation...I am guessing it came about to satisfy Maritimers who love their donairs.

 

[CDL.TO]

They had garlic sauce at all the Shawarma shops I visited in France and Switzerland. Shawarma kebab is a common dish in several countries (AFAIK)... does a Lebanese Shawarma differ from a Emirati Shawarma, for example?

Donair sauce is something completely different from garlic sauce.

 

[Disparishun]

What's really hard to find in any Canadian city is lamb shawarma, which was quite common in the middle east and is definitely the best tasting meat.

Come visit us in Thornhill some time! Most of the Israeli-style "grill" restaurants have lamb shawarmas. We like it at Hakotel, on Steeles just west of Bathurst (EDIT: I have to admit that our sample size is pretty darn small -- do not know how it is at Mi va Mi, Sofra, Bissli, Meron Bros., etc.).

On a broader note, I can never understand why people get regular salad and garlic sauce on their shawarmas. I order it how I had growing up in Dubai: Humus, tabouli, pickled turnips, pickles, and tahini...hot sauce occassionally. That garlic sauce is a disgusting Canadian creation...I am guessing it came about to satisfy Maritimers who love their donairs.

No; garlic sauce is one of the distinctive things about Lebanese cooking (in fact, it is just called "toum", or garlic, there). The various approaches to shawarma will vary, I think, by the ways different Ottoman territories indigenized it or, subsequently, spread it to other parts of the world like Dubai.

 

[urbandreamer]

According to Chowhound http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/501598 Toronto's best falafel joint is history: Halleluia on Eglinton west of Bathurst--how sad. I ate there for the last time a few weeks ago, and noticed their portions were smaller. The lamb shawarma was incredible, and incredibly sized. It was my favourite spot to hang out with my gf. I'll go by there tomorrow to confirm if it's history....

Mashu Mashu in Forest Hill Village is okay...but Halleluia was the best!

 

[Mr.Colley]

I've never gotten them in Toronto, But to be honest where I am, (Windsor) you go down one of the main streets downtown and you end up hitting one ever 3-4 shops. Sometimes they are right next to each other. Quite delicious if you ask me. Some of them use the preprocessed meat. Others, like the one that I frequent more often then not, uses only fresh meat. MMmmm this thread is making my mouth water just thinking about it. Think I'm going to go get me a gyro or a shawarma.