Exploring Toronto – Kensington Market, Eataly & CN Tower

Kensington Market

Kensington Market is an area near Chinatown, which has many independent food shops and eateries. Plus it also has some interesting street art.

One of the noteworthy places was Sanagan’s Meat Locker. This is a butcher come deli, Definitely worth a visit if you are staying somewhere in Toronto that has cooking facilities.

There was also a butchers counter with fresh meat but I didn’t take a picture of it.

Here was the street art that we spotted around Kensington Market.

This first mural is above 4 Life Natural Foods, 210 Augusta Avenue. It is by Adrian Hayles and features five black soul artists. Billi Holiday, Gladys Knight, Audre Lorde, Miriam Makeba and Nina Simone. They have been painted in the spectrum of the rainbow.

Across the road still on Augusta Avenue is this one by visual artist Carlos Delgado.

Finally, we spotted this colourful car filled with plants as we were leaving Augusta Avenue.

Eataly Toronto

Once we had been around Kensington Market, we walked up to Eataly to check it out. From Kensington Market to Eataly was roughly a 35 minute walk.

Previously we had been to Eataly in New York but didn’t have any cooking facilities at the place we were staying in. This time in Toronto, we were staying in a well equipped AirBnB.

I have to say Eataly in Toronto didn’t disappoint. It is full of amazing Italian produce, much of which is fresh. In a later journal entry, we bought produce to cook in the AirBnB. For now here are the images that we saw on our initial visit.

We entered Eataly from Bloor Street West. This meant that our first encounter was with the Il Gran Caffe on the ground floor. This bustling little cafe serves a great selection of sandwiches and cakes. Some of which we sampled later.

We couldn’t resist have a couple of slices of the cake, honey lemonade and a coffee.

Here are some images of the wonderful delights on offer at Eataly…

Although we didn’t purchase anything to take back with us on this visit we knew we would be back later in our trip.

The CN Tower

Immediately after Eataly we went to the CN Tower.

I had booked the tickets online hoping that this meant a fast track situation. This was not initially the case. When we arrived everyone had to queue together regardless of whether you had made an online booking. Once past security, the online booking did make a difference. Those that hadn’t done an online booking then had to queue to purchase tickets before they joined the next queue for the lift.

On the way to the lift, there was the usual charade trying to get you to pose for a photo, which you can buy later for an inflated price. We decided to skip past this and head for the top of the tower.

The lift up to the top had windows so you could see Toronto on your way up. Albeit that the lift was fairly crammed.

Once at the top, you enter the main observation level. The 360 degree views of Toronto are spectacular. We booked to go on a day where the visibility wasn’t completely clear but still managed to get some amazing pictures.

Note – we also booked the Skypod, which was another 33 levels up. I have to say that I don’t think it was worth it. The views from the main observation level were uninterrupted (apart from by the other people).

PAI Northern Thai Kitchen

Finally, after an exhausting day we decided to stay in for the evening. We ordered a Thai take away from PAI.

It was extremely tasty. Here’s what we had:

Kung Tawt ‘Garlic Shrimp’. This was a portion of six delicious black tiger garlic shrimp. They were accompanied with a sweet tamarind sauce

Then for mains, we had Gaeng Panag.

This was a panang curry sauce with makrut lime leaves, Thai basil leaves, red bell peppers, and coconut milk. We had it with chicken and served it on jasmine rice. It was mild and pleasantly spiced.

We also had Pad Gra Prow.

This is a dish that my husband makes extremely well at home. So this had to stiff competition. It was very yummy. The dish is made with holy basil stir-fried with ground pork. Again it was served on steamed jasmine rice but also nam prik nam pla sauce (fish sauce, garlic, chilli & lime). We also requested two fried eggs on top so that we could have one each. When we have had this at restaurants before normally it is very spicy. At Pai, we were give a choice of the level of spice, which meant we could have it Medium.

Since returning home we have also invested in the cookbook Kiin written by Nuit Regular (owner of Pai). We can’t wait to recreate some of the wonderful flavours we experienced.

On to day three and our road trip to Niagara Falls.