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The Land Of Dessert Feng Shui
It’s happened to all of us before – you pass by something and you think “wait, when did that change?” Like, when did all the Kinko’s in Toronto become “FedEx Kinko’s”? When did that happen? When did that Coffee Time become the Coffee Tip, and then the Coffee Type, and finally the Dream Steak House? It’s just natural – we can’t notice everything as it happens, not even when we pass by regularly.
I had this sensation a few weeks back when I passed by 200 Bloor West, and saw a new eatery there. Now, 200 Bloor West might not be significant to everybody, but to me? That’s “where Greg’s Ice Cream used to be.” Yes, I know Greg’s Ice Cream moved to Spadina and Bloor, that’s not the point – for the longest time, though, that spot was empty, and then I know at some point it wasn’t. I think there was a Chinese food place there at one point that went under, but I can’t be sure.
Now, though, the former locale of Greg’s Ice Cream is the home of La Favorita, and just looking in the window I saw a host of fancy-looking dessert paraphenalia. I had to find out if 200 Bloor West had particularly strong dessert feng shui (it’s all about the feng shui when it comes to ice cream), so I rang up my favorite anonymous dining companion and we made a date.
La Favorita, unlike Greg’s, is an actual eatery and not just an ice cream joint: dinner specials, grilled sandwiches, and crepes in addition to a full dessert menu. We ordered and sat down – the space is still an exceptionally pleasant place to sit down and have a munch – the slanted windows in the front let in just enough natural light that the below-street-level location doesn’t feel claustrophobic, but you still get that nice cool basement feel, which is great in summer – especially if you don’t like having to hurry ice cream before it melts.
We order off the menu; I get the grilled chicken parma sandwich and she gets the savory sausage crepe. They barely have a beverage selection (a couple of types of canned pop and bottled fruit punch), so we just have water. (We considered milkshakes but passed.) We also order our desserts at the same time and ask if they can just be brought out when we finish up the mains, and our server/host nods agreeably. When our food is brought out (good enough speed), we dig into the mains.
My anonymous dining companion pokes at her crepe. She says it’s missing something. I try a bite, and she’s right – the individual ingredients are all cooked nicely enough (especially the crepe, which is very nice and fluffy) but it’s lacking pizzazz, lacking oomph. “Bland” isn’t the right word, because it isn’t quite bland; it’s just kind of predictable and thus slightly unsatisfying.
I feel rather bad, in a way, that I have to pan the chicken parma sandwich. See, the chicken itself is delicious – breaded perfectly, cooked just right, moist on the inside and crunchy on the outside, some of the best chicken I’ve had in a sandwich in ages, frankly. And the cheese is flavorful and strong. But there’s two problems. Firstly, I’m not one of those people who demands that a chicken parma sandwich come dripping red sauce so heavily that it overflows the plate, but there’s barely a smear of red sauce on the sandwich, just the slightest hint of tomato flavour, and that flavour gets killed by the excessive use of mayonnaise. (In retrospect, I suspect it may have been ketchup.) And secondly, I have this weird notion that a grilled sandwich should be grilled, and not just, say, be slightly warmed bread. Honestly, this sandwich wasn’t even crispy, much less properly browned – the cheese wasn’t even melted, for fuck’s sake! After such a solid start with such excellent breaded chicken, the rest of the sandwich is a real disappointment.
After our mains, I’m less than enthused about our desserts – which, I note, our host brings over to us just as we’re finishing our mains, which given that she was the only staff on duty that day impresses me with her ability to keep track of multiple diners in her establishment at once – but something has changed. Maybe it is the dessert feng shui kicking in, but La Favorita’s sweet selection kicks the freaking ass of its mains.
My anonymous dinner companion’s sweet dessert waffle – topped with whipped cream, apples and frozen bilberry yoghurt – is perfectly done, an exactly-right golden brown waffle, just sweet enough without being too prominent. I satisfy myself with an enormous (and wonderfully cheap) slice of chocolate sponge ice cream cake, splattered with chocolate syrup, and follow that up with a small dish of pistachio ice cream. La Favorita has a wealth of exotic flavours to pick from – I went with the pistachio after dithering over forest berry sorbet, apricot gelato, and lemon cream. Overall, the dessert leaves us far more content than the mains did.
So maybe 200 Bloor West does have good dessert feng shui. It didn’t work on our mains (although, given the quality of the individual ingredients, I’m willing to consider the possibility that it was just a bad day rather than a systemic flaw in their cooking process). But if you want a kickass dessert, you can do a lot worse than sitting down in La Favorita.
OTHER STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW: Not licensed. Dinner for two with desserts $25-30; desserts for two $10-15.