Spoon and Fork - The Queensway

For my birthday, my boyfriend and I decided to go out for dinner. We were originally planning on going to one of our favourite Thai restaurants, but then we remembered that a while ago we had passed a combination Japanese and Thai restaurant at the corner of Kipling and The Queensway that we kept meaning to try out.

Both my boyfriend and I love Thai food; however, between the two of us I am the only one who likes sushi.

It was a pretty last minute idea and being around Christmas (December 15) we didn't really think that we would get a reservation. We called anyway and the man that answered was more than happy to fit us in.

We arrived 10 minutes early to make sure that we wouldn't lose our reservation and were seated right away (even though the restaurant was very busy). Generally on the weekends it's a good idea to make reservations or the wait time can be very long.

Now, Spoon and Fork has 2 different menus: a standard dinner menu and an all -you-can-eat menu. We opted for the AYCE menu.

Our server was Junior N. He quickly took our drink orders and gave us a few minutes to go over the menu. I started with a combination of sushi dishes and my boyfriend started with their pad thai. Our drinks came right away and our food followed a few minutes later. Honestly, the food came so fast that at first I thought they had given us someone else's order, but it was our orders.

All of the food that we ordered that night was delicious. My boyfriend stuck mainly to the Thai menu (pad thai, mango salad, rice, etc.), while I ordered mainly from the sushi menu with a few Thai dishes thrown in.

The wait staff came around constantly to keep our table clean, remove any of the empty dishes and made sure that our drinks were full. All of the staff were very friendly and accommodating.

Our entire meal, including drinks, was less than $80 for 2 people.

The only suggestion for this place would be to up the lighting level a tiny bit. It can seem a bit too dark at times, but this is the only negative thing that I have to say about this place.

We will definitely be going back!

Pinty's Wings - Whisky Mustard

A few weeks ago my boyfriend's parents decided to make pizza and wings for dinner. His mother bought a box of Pinty's Whisky Mustard wings and baked them in the oven along with the pizza.

This product claims the following features:

- The ultimate pub experience in a box
- Authentic Flavours in a variety of sauce pouches
- Total customization
- Enjoy the wings plain
- Sauce them
- Dip them
- Premium jumbo roasters
- Fully cooked
- Series of booze infused flavours

While the outer coating did become nicely crispy in the oven, the first thing I noticed when I bit into my first piece was just how much fat was covered by the coating. The entire outside of the chicken was covered in a thick layer of fat that bonded itself to the coating and to the chicken, which made it nearly impossible to remove. It honestly seemed to be more fat than chicken.

The chicken itself wasn't bad. It stayed moist (probably in part to the gross amount of fat) and tasted like chicken. I didn't really find the chicken to have a "series of booze infused flavours", most of the flavour came from the sauce. I'm a dipper so without the sauce, the only flavour the wings had on their own was salt and pepper.

I didn't really find the sauce to be much different than any other honey mustard sauce. I couldn't really pick up any notes of booze in the sauce.

With all of this aside, the most disappointing feature of these wings came after I had eaten a few wings. I picked up my next wing and noticed something white on the side. At first I thought it was only some of the fat that had gotten through the outer coating, but upon closer inspection I found that there were FEATHERS still attached to the wings! Every wing that was left in my plate and my boyfriends plate had varying amounts of feathers, but they were still on EVERY SINGLE WING!

Quite honestly, I don't think I will ever buy Pinty's wings again. For $10 I can go to the grocery store and get the same amount of wings (minus the feathers and huge amount of fat), instead of shelling out $14.00 for fatty, feathery wings.