I had made plans to see a pretty large group of people in the evening at a pub on the Thursday evening before Easter, however this was not the best solution for everyone… Some of my friends have kids, family, trips, and other evening obligations that make an evening bar visit less than ideal. One of these friends is Helga, she is currently enjoying her maternity leave and had made some family plans for the evening. She suggested we have lunch in the recently redeveloped distillery district. I had heard a bit about this area from people recently, so it seemed like a good opportunity to check it out.
From their website, the district is described as;
“The Distillery District is a national Historic Site with an incredibly rich history. The site was once The Gooderham and Worts Distillery, and represents the largest and best preserved collection of Victorian Industrial Architecture in North America”
In keeping with the olde tyme spirit, I put my photos of the area through the lomography filter so they would look nice and dated.
Everything is red brick in the district and it looks very nice. It reminded me quite a lot of NC State university (where I had a visit back in 1993 or so) or even the towns on the North Sea Islands in Germany (like Borkum, Liam’s favorite) Lots and lots of red bricks. It was a nice place to walk around and there were many cafes and restaurants around.
This building had a nice looking clock out in front which kind of reminded me of the one in Gastown, Vancouver. I am sure they are completely different and have really no similar qualities, but in my memory they are near identical.
I met Helga in a café called Balzac’s, which was cozy and full of fancy coffee drinkers. I myself am a non-coffee drinker, so we vacated the place and looked around for somewhere nice to eat lunch.
Gord have given a recommendation of the Mill St. Brewpub, which Helga also knew of, so we tried that place first. The menu looked good and it was not too busy, so we headed inside to check out the lunch offers. I forgot to take any photos of the place itself, so I stole these ones off their website. There were no umbrellas and flowers out the day that I was there, but I can see that there is some potential for a good patio spot in the nicer weather.
Typical pub décor inside, although no festive balloons were waiting for us. It was not a particularly busy time, being a little early on a Thursday afternoon. There was strangely enough a cricket match playing on all the big TVs, something I am not too used to seeing in pubs, but it was not that much of a distraction.
I was happy that we were able to get a booth. I don't really know why, but I always prefer sitting in booths when they are available in restaurants, pubs, etc. There is something nice and cozy about having your own little wooden building within a building where people bring you food and drink.
Lunch was good although I thought the beer was nothing too special. Either I made a bad choice (Original Organic Lager) or I am spoiled by the excellent quality of German beer. Either way I was not particularly impressed with the taste of the selection I had made. I did have a very nice hamburger though, that was better than anything on offer in Germany. North Americans seem to do anything beef related better than Germans in my opinion, the burgers and steaks are just a class above anything I have had around here. Pork and sausages are another story, but a giant beef burger was what I was looking for that day.
Here is a photo of Helga and Kurt. Kurt was pretty much trying to eat her phone the entire time we were there and I think it shows from his expression that he was just about ready to go for another bite. Kurt was a charming young man who drifted off to sleep at just about the right moment so we could enjoy our lunch.
After lunch, we parted ways and I headed off to the streetcar stop so I could do a little more city roaming before the evening meetup. Just outside the gates into the district, there was a big rent-a-bike stand. I thought this was pretty cool. It looked quite new and I wondered if they were catching on in the city. It would be nice to see more people biking.
One last photo before I got on the streetcar. Not the most flattering view of the city, but it was my first moment to get a good look at the tower and downtown on this trip. I had not been to Toronto in about 3 years, so it felt odd to be standing there. Lots of the details are quite different now, but when you get in a “big picture” spot, Toronto is still Toronto.
1 comment:
The Mill Street Organic is a good beer, but you might have enjoyed the lemon tea beer more. They also have something new that's close to guiness too.
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