In high school, when I used to frequent Ashridge’s Bay, no one arrived dressed-to-impress to walk along the boardwalk. That’s all seemed to have changed now that Toronto Beach Club has opened. Walk past the bouncer and you’re transported into a well-healed tropical paradise; where the volleyball courts disappear behind foliage and it seems normal, even essential, to pop some bubbly on the beach.

You can’t go wrong with one of their hot mezze that comes with a grilled pita to start. The bread arrives hot and fresh, puffed to perfection so that it’s crispy on the outside and soft on the inside, dusted with spices. They accompany the smoked eggplant ($16), a decent portion of warm soft legume that would have been amazing if the walnut and olive relish weren’t so sour that even the pomegranate molasses’ sweetness couldn’t balance it out. Maybe it’s me, but I prefer my eggplant savoury.

Their jamon iberico ($36) was sliced into respectable sized slices, the prized pig’s cured slightly sweet essence bursting on the tongue. Not quite a melt-in-your-mouth as what you’ll find in Spain, these were nonetheless tasty and worth a nibble if you appreciate a good charcuterie.

Of the three starters the sea bream crudo ($21) was my favourite. Thick meaty slices of white fish topped with citrus caviar (segments of finger lime) and chili sitting in what looks like a fiery olive oil but is rather delicate. The crudo was perfectly seasoned and wonderfully tasty, a lovely summery dish to enjoy while sitting outdoors.

Toronto Beach Club’s lamb chops ($45 for the half order shown) were cooked perfectly. So, it’s such a shame that they were too salty and requires some tableside knife skills. The seasoning needs to be toned down as the outer chops made me reach for water and since the marinated yogurt was also salted, together they were way too much. It’d be nice if the kitchen also considers the table size when finishing the dish: our four chops were only cut in half for a 3-top, which means you need to portion them yourself when they arrive. It likely helps the meat retain its heat and juices better, but it’s also a bit difficult to cut through the chops on a big platter with all the yoghurt and garnishes. The age-old joke of “how many people does it take to…?”, let me just say it is not one.

Thank you to Parv for this picture

Where they really excelled was the grilled seafood. Their fileted black sea bass ($36) had such a lovely, charbroiled exterior and was still delicately done inside. While it comes with a choice of sauce (we chose the harissa butter), it’s fantastic by itself.

Sides need to be ordered separately and are more than sufficient to share amongst three. The French fries ($12) are a safe choice – nice and crisp, dusted with oregano and salt and comes with truffle aioli for dipping. Yet, what really caught our attention was the grilled broccolini ($19): cooked until crisp and covered with pecorino-ramano, pangrattato, and calabrain chili creating such a lovely almost creamy sauce with a hit of heat to end. Do get yourself some greens.

Just make sure to save room for dessert as their baklava ($12-$15) is a must. I love that it wasn’t soaked in syrup, rather the perfect amount to add sweetness but still leave the puff pastry crispy and not oily feeling. The two pieces are sandwiched between a frozen cream layer. If this isn’t the ultimate ice cream sandwich, I don’t know what is. The strawberry crostata ($12-$15) paired nicely with it – the pastry a cross between a shortbread and cake and topped with ample sweet strawberries and a cold scoop of vanilla ice cream.

We all agreed that dinner at Toronto Beach Club is probably the most ideal time to visit. The temperature is not overly warm and it’s such a lovely experience to transition from evening into night. There was even a live Spanish band performing during our Wednesday visit, the women’s lovely vocals the perfect addition to the meal.

Thank you to Parv for this image

While the after-meal service can get a little backed up, the entertainment and atmosphere kept us happy while we waited for the verbal dessert menu to be presented. Wait aside, even with the pandemic you won’t feel rushed at the restaurant, the two-and-a-half hour seating times is sufficiently long enough to leisurely enjoy the meal. I certainly won’t be visiting Greece or the equator anytime soon. Until then, Toronto Beach Club will give me the tropical fix I need to transport myself out of Toronto. 

Is it snobby of me to have a negative view about ghost kitchens? I’m not against their operating model – it’s smart to get rid of the expenses of managing a dining room and walk-in service to focus just on preparing meals.  Yet, I can’t help but feel that this separation from the customer also allows them to hire untrained chefs to churn out subpar food like an assembly line.

In retrospect, it’s an unfounded view. When I went to write this post and looked up the address of Torch Pressed Sushi, I found the image of a bubble tea shop as the front. That’s when I realized, Torch Pressed Sushi, a place our household already ordered from a few times was a ghost kitchen!

Their tasting box is our go-to order holding 8 pieces of aburi sushi, two maki rolls (lobster salad and tuna), a healthy handful of edamame, and seaweed salad. 

What arrives with the aburi can vary but you’ll always find a piece of their spicy salmon that incorporates not only a jalapeno slice but also spicy sauce and black pepper to really create a punch. It’s so loved by my husband that we generally get an extra order of two pieces ($4.45) to add to the meal.

A couple of my other favourite bites is the zesty shrimp that contains a hint of lemon, which nicely balances the rich mayo base of everything else. The marinated saba is a stronger tasting fish and is usually slightly thicker than the rest so it’s a piece where you can really taste the protein and not just the rice and sauces. Overall, Torch’s seafood is sliced thinner than some other places so if you like a meaty bite, it could be a disappointment. Yet, the thinner fish is also reflected in their lower price point and there’s enough of it to add to the taste.

Ingeniously, their hand rolls arrive with the nori separated from the rice by a plastic wrapper, a great way to save them for lunch the next day – something that always happens in our household as we tend to over order. The toro or tuna belly roll is bland and doesn’t include much of the green onion or tobiko that’s described on the menu. So, you’ll want to rely on the limited soy sauce (how do they give such a small package for so much food?) to use on this item. Or if you happen to order an appetizer that has the spicy mayo given, then save some to jazz up the toro. 

The lobster roll is much better as it’s tossed in a tangy mayo that provides some flavour. You can’t really decern the lobster from any other seafood, but of the two maki this is the clear favourite.

We’ve generally ordered from Torch through Uber where they offer a complimentary seafood basket ($5.99) deal. The crispy tempura battered seafood trio consists of squid tentacles (fairly tasty), shrimp (overly battered so you can’t really taste the shrimp), and aji or Japanese mackerel (very good and the best piece of the bunch). A great add-on, if only for the chipotle mayo that can be used on the toro roll.

Maybe minds can be changed. Ghost kitchens aren’t as unfriendly as I used to think. From now on, I’ll think of them as being Casper, the Casper that feeds me sushi.

When having meatballs as a starter, I want them nice and large. The size of tennis balls, the menu describes polpette di manzo ($16) as being made from ground beef, but it’s surprisingly delicate for beef. Sitting in a lovely tomato sauce, it pairs so nicely with the complimentary salty oily focaccia.

I had doubts when I first laid eyes on the thick crust on the parmigiana ($22) pizza – did I make the wrong choice? The crust is deceiving as once I bit into it, it is surprisingly light and airy, and nicely toasted on the bottom. This main combines my love for eggplant parmigiana and pizza and Paese doesn’t skimp on eggplant or cheese. While they augment flavours with basil, chili, and oregano; I would have liked more salt to seep into the neutral eggplant and dough as the tomato sauce isn’t applied as liberally, rightfully so, on the pizza versus the traditional dish.

Overall, Paese makes some good sauce – not too acidic and fresh tasting. Interestingly, their bolognese di tacchino ($25) incorporates turkey instead of the traditional beef, pork, and/or pancetta mixture, which makes it taste lighter. So even though it arrives as a huge plate, the men at our table were able to get through the entire dish. This would have been even better if there was some chili sauce thrown into the mix.

What a good dinner. Pizza, patio, and prosecco… who needs anything other than these three Ps during the summer?  

Dinner at Tapagria Spanish Tapas Restaurant happened on their patio, where they transformed the parking lot as much as possible by covering a section with AstroTurf, a tarp, and string lights. The simple tables weren’t fancy, but the ones found outside at restaurants in Barcelona aren’t either - try to block out the cars and imagine yourself surrounded by the historical architecture of Spain.

Perhaps think of it as being on La Rambla where it’s crowded, hectic, and there’s tons of kitschy things happening on the iconic street. And like a La Rambla restaurant, which is typically geared towards tourists, you’ll find an extensive menu of Spanish favourites at Tapagria: pintxos (small sandwich bites), tapas (different small dishes), larger sharing plates, and paella (a rice popular rice dish that is made to be shared).

While waiting the 45 minutes for a paella, it’s important to get a few small bites to tide the stomach over. The truffle paste and Manchego pintxos ($12) was a strongly flavoured bite with the truffle dominating against the delicate toast and the buttery cheese binding things together. It’s tasty but given its powerful flavour is best eaten last amongst the sandwiches.

Surprisingly, for something that’s cooked in fat the duck confit pintxos ($14) were a little dry. Tapagria puts a dollop of mango chutney on top - a nice pairing with the fowl – but there wasn’t much of the condiment, so it didn’t really hydrate or flavour much. Perhaps a drizzle along with a condensed red wine reduction would help to give this pintxo some pizazz.

I enjoyed the nice creamy texture of the jamon croquettas ($12) but found the varying pieces of ham mixed in them confusing – one bite included diced pieces, so it was almost like having a croquette with sweeter chorizo, while another had pulled pieces. Truthfully, I was expecting slivers of thinly sliced jamon to be ribboned amongst the silky potatoes. Nonetheless, the dish’s flavours were on point.

Still, the paella de Tapagria ($56) was the star of the show. It’s a creation that can’t be rushed as you want to let it sit until there’s a bit of a crust on the bottom. While it wasn’t covered with a lot of ingredients, there was enough shrimp, squid, clams, chorizo, and chicken to go with the shallow flavourful rice. Some reviews claim it’s too salty, but I found it be seasoned nicely and like the hint of chili that makes an appearance. 

The caramel flan ($12) was very thick, possibly from the Spanish recipe incorporating condensed milk compared to the whole milk that’s used in French crème caramel. It feels like you’re eating a cheesecake (without the cheese flavours) that’s covered in a thinned caramel sauce. While not necessarily terrible, I do prefer the delicate crème caramel consistency and will stick with the churros or Spanish toast next time.

The most important part of the meal is to just take your time with it … arguably this may be difficult with the one and a half hour seating limits, but during our dinner wasn’t actually enforced. It’s the conversation over sips of wine and bites of food that really creates the Spanish experience and that is well within your control.  

Meal Choices and Pricing

With 28 recipes available each week, Hello Fresh offers the most choice and was a breeze to find three meals to order. They also have extras - dessert and sides (veggie plate, garlic bread) – you can add on to really round out the meals and even extend a two-person kit to feed a family of three.

You’ll pay more for these options, $13.15 per portion (assuming three meals for two people) or $79 a week, which was the priciest out of all the companies I tried. This is also just the base price, as like their competitors, they also charge more for quicker 20-minute options (+ $2.99 a serving), special occasion recipes (think Father’s Day), or multi-protein meals (+$9.99 a serving).

Customer Service and Ordering

You can pick meals and skip deliveries up to five weeks in advance. Their skipping option was more difficult to find as you need to go into week and click the “edit delivery” button to navigate to the skip options. Then, there’s also a question asking customers why they’re skipping the week, which I find to be an annoying and unnecessary feature.

What is useful about the “edit delivery” area is that you can change the delivery date for each week individually (i.e., some weeks you can have it come on Sunday while others on Thursday) and even the plan option (i.e., three meals versus four meals) without having to change the entire subscription. From a customization standpoint, Hello Fresh is a leader with this feature and they deliver six days of the week in Toronto (everyday but Friday) so creates flexibility.

Ease of Cooking

As we entered spring, Hello Fresh started dedicating recipes for the BBQ, which is a great idea as I really would rather not turn on the oven during the warm weather. The cheesy brie and beef burger was delicious, a honking thick beef patty and more than enough brie to create a gooey decedent bite. I was just a little miffed about the recipe’s suggestion to add an egg to the beef mixture for a firmer patty – if anything it made it waterier and didn’t bind together as well, causing the patty to break apart easier.  

Even the potatoes get finished on the grill in a foil-pouch. Just put them on 10-minutes earlier than what the recipe calls for as we found them still undercooked after the burger was ready so ended up eating them separately.

Compared to other companies, Hello Fresh also didn’t require as many tools – most recipes only call for two pots and/or pans.  A recipe like the barramundi and brown butter lemon sauce with roasted potatoes and sugar snap peas could have easily become a multi-tool recipe with competitors. With Hello Fresh, there was just a sheet pan to roast the potatoes and everything else was prepared in a frying pan (with recipe actually saying to use the same one) making clean up easier.

The Taste Test

The recipes did have fewer flavouring components compared to others as most do not come up spice mixtures, instead relying on the ingredients themselves and salt and pepper. So, something like the barramundi I found a little bland.

Nonetheless, for dishes that use flavourful ingredients, I didn’t miss the spice kits. The gnocchi Bolognese had a lovely zest tomato sauce and when combined with the consommé, vegetables, and parmesan was a tasty dish.

While I would have like the cheesy chicken enchiladas to be saucier, they were still great and easy to prepare frying everything in a pan, wrapping the ingredients into a tortilla and baking with cheese and sauce on top. For a dish like this, Hello Fresh did include the necessary spices to make the meal taste like Tex Mex.

There were a lot of good vegetarian recipes as well. The Philly style portobello hoagies smartly calls for chefs to remove the gills from the portobello, so you’re left with a less watery mushroom that once mixed with peppers, onions, cheese, and spicy mayo makes you realize you don’t need the beef. And Hello Fresh uses Beyond Meat as an ingredient for some of their vegetarian recipes if you’d rather go for a fake protein.

Environmental Factors

I did like that Hello Fresh uses little packaging compared to others, even if it can sometimes create a slight detriment to taste. It’s a simple solution: pick up a couple of multi-purpose seasonings and use those to supplement the recipes that need a flavour boost. Creating less waste and helping the environment is worth it.

Conclusion

For those who do not mind paying a bit more, Hello Fresh was a great experience. Overall, I had a lot of success with their recipes and the amount of choice and flexibility with deliveries is helpful for those who like to plan. And if you’re going to use delivery services regularly, finding one that uses less packaging is also a great touch.