A Weekend Dodging Falling Ice & Drunken Men

I found the Marriott Eaton Center to be a comfortable middle-of-the-road hotel - nothing fancy but nothing shabby. It is centrally located downtown Toronto.

I slept like a baby. The rooms are very clean with nice comfortable mattresses and very cushy duvets and pillows. It was like sleeping under feathers plus the entire hotel is non-smoking so I slept allergy free!

I didn't eat in the restaurant (there are too many amazing restaurants in Toronto to waste a meal there) but I did use room service for a late night snack and all my breakfasts.

Room service was OK but pricey and my meals were never really hot. Plus I was served a non-twist cap beer with no bottle opener. Note: the security bar on a hotel door can double as a bottle opener.

There is a walkway from the hotel to Eaton center (great shopping) which is important when it's minus 20 degrees Celsius outside.

Jamie Kennedy is the local 'hot' chef and has three restaurants in Toronto (www.jkkitchens.com) - one located in the Gardiner museum (fancy schmancy!) and two (a wine bar and a restaurant) in the same location downtown. I love tastings and tapas so we chose the wine bar. The space is essentially two long bars - one long straight bar fronting the alcohol bar and one L shaped bar fronting an open kitchen. It is a place to see and be seen.

There are no reservations but there is a lounge where you can wait with a drink and a nibble (recommendation 1: warmed olives). Kat and I waited less than fifteen minutes on a busy Friday night and were seated on the edge of the kitchen bar - perfect for people-watching and kitchen watching (my personal favourite hobby).

Funny-story-about-the-type-of-people-who-frequent-tony-Toronto-restaurants. As we were being seated, the woman sitting on the corner of the L bar is chatting away on her cell phone (ignoring her date) and bumps her purse pushing her wine glass over the edge of the bar into the kitchen. Thus began the pre-dinner show of the kitchen throwing away food, sweeping floors and picking bits of glass out of their fingers while the woman continued chatting on her phone ignoring the chaos she had caused (and her date). You could tell she knew exactly what she had done but she refused to acknowledge (or apologize). Kat and I muttered to the sous-chef working in front of us that we were black belts and could take her outside and get an apology for him. The sous chef sadly shook his head. He knew her type - fake hair, fake lips, fake boobs, too much money - and admitted that an apology would never be had. She continued with other bad behaviors (too many to recount) and I have to admit that she was entertaining to watch as a dinner show.

Back to the food and the wine! Every plate has a wine pairing. Wine is available in 3oz (a taste), 6oz (a normal glass) or by the bottle. I was in heaven because for every plate we ordered I had the recommended taster!

The menu is changed every day but we had and enjoyed:

Beef short rib poutine with Yukon gold fries (a truly Canadian concoction).
Chicken liver pate with walnut tulles
Grilled octopus with preserved lemon, olives, and chermoula
Beer battered smelts with chipolte yogurt
Duck confit with smoky beans (my favourite)
Artisanal cheeses (all local Canadian cheese - to die for!)
Crème brulee with Scottish shortbread

This is where making friends with the sous-chef paid off. Kat made noises about the cheeses being amazing that he then provided her with a very healthy portion of a very stinky cheese. Not my type of offering, but she was in love!

The bill came to about C$200 but note that it included six 3oz glasses of wine and six vodka martinis.

All I can say is, 'yummy!’ If you like semi-authentic Asian, then this is a great place to go.

The Queen Mother Café (www.queenmothercafe.ca) would make a really good first date spot. While I went with a relative, I though it had the right atmosphere as a introductory date spot.

It was loud enough that the table next to you couldn't listen in but not so loud that you had to shout. The atmosphere was casual enough that a good time was pretty easy to have and, if things didn't work out, inexpensive enough that you could offer to split the bill.

We shared Dim Sum Quartet and both ordered the Pad Thai. Canadian Asian fare but tasty!

Service was brisk and efficient but nothing to write home to Mom about.

Dinner was around C$50 including tip and a half liter of wine.

The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) is worth a visit every time you go to Toronto. The exhibits change regularly and reflect a wide variety of interests (www.rom.on.ca).

Note: If you happen to be visiting with a local resident who wants to sign up for a membership, you can sign up as a non-resident for a year’s membership for $77 dollars (forcing the resident to pay) and then assign your second card to them. If the local had signed up for a normal year's membership, they would have had to pay $99. Twenty dollar savings plus you can visit anytime you come to town AND there are cross museum memberships benefits. For example, I can now visit the Vancouver Art Gallery for free!

The key exhibit this trip was the Lost Treasures of Peru. Don't you find that those ancient people were awfully careless with their treasures? They are always losing stuff. The exhibit was an artful display of gold and jewelry left within the tomb of a Sican ruler. Sicans pre-date the Incans and were masters of gold work.

The dazzling array of headdresses and crowns prompted us to guess which crown was for what type of regal activity. The wave crown was for jaunts on the royal yacht, the bat crown for visiting the nursery (gotta terrify the kids), and the deity headdress for Sunday trips to church.

My regular haunt when I visit the museum is the court of Chinese sculpture with the gallery of Chinese Temple Art. This large collection of Buddha and Bodhisattva's statues is my inspiration to visit Buddha wherever I am (see my Hong Kong trip for my biggest Buddha yet).