Bye Bye Sea Hi restaurant

What's changed in Toronto that it has caused so many long running institutions to start disappearing?


Today is the last day of the decades long running restaurant Sea-Hi Tavern on Bathurst Street just south of Wilson Ave in Toronto.

It seems odd now that this dated Chinese Food restaurant would sit in a predominantly Jewish area.  It's also hard to believe how long it's been in existence compared to the flash in the pan restaurants that have been popping up over the past 5 years.

There really wasn't anything special about this place other than the fact that it was in a dessert of nothing else like it and it was consistent.

Sea-Hi was opened by Edna Chan in 1955, just in time for the birth of my older brother.  Yes this place has been around longer than I have.

My parents probably went there when they needed a break from cooking and dealing with kids as parents do.  It was rare for my parents to go out for dinner so going to eat Chinese Food was a special occasion usually with their friends. 

It is a fact that a lot of non religious Jewish people would go to Chinese Food Restaurants over the holidays like Christmas because they were the only restaurants open and if you didn't want to cook for a big family that's just what you did.

I haven't really been there in years even though one of my friends lives down the street.  I think the last time I went was maybe 6 months before I sold my car and only to get some of their popular bacon wrapped chicken skewers.

But in the past couple of weeks I have gone there twice.  The first time to get take out with a friend that doesn't live too far from there.  Even though we ordered before 5 it was a bit of a wait and the poor counter guy was going crazy trying to keep up with orders.  One after another every Jewish person in the area came in to the tiny take out area to order or pick up food.  The wait kept getting longer as we were waiting for our pick up and some people just couldn't wait.

One guy waiting said he tried to get some people together to buy their recipes but I guess that didn't work out so well.

Someone else said that they think it's going to be either a Dollarama or a Synagogue.  I think the Synagogue may be more appropriate for that area but I guess we will have to see.

By the time we got to my friends place and started unwrapping the food some of it was already cold though.  You can't really be upset considering all the people now surging to get their last fix in like we did.  It's not exactly the same as I remembered it but I wasn't a food blogger when I used to eat there so I didn't have as much to compare it to.

The following week I went with different friends.  The one that lives nearby and another one who lives downtown and had never been there.  He wasn't too sure if he wanted to go but then after the meal he said he wanted to bring another friend there but too late because even after they extended the closing today is the last day.

The 3 of us sat in the very dated and in serious need of a makeover dining room this one last time.  The service was excellent but the restaurant wasn't totally full.  The tables were covered in Dollarama tablecloths, I know them well because we use them at work for our social events.

We didn't order that much.  We ordered the bacon wrapped chicken which has clearly been made way in advanced and lacked that fresh out of the fryer taste.  We also ordered shrimp fried rice, eggplant with black bean sauce and orange beef.  I might have chosen other things but we each picked something we wanted.

The food was ok, nothing spectacular but it was more important to show up and show support to a business that has been around for decades as a thank you for their service to the community.

Although it's not somewhere I think of going to eat I am still going to miss it being there.  It was kind of the same thing when Honest Ed's closed down.  It was part of my childhood and a place that my parents counted on.  I wish my parents had Instagram back then because I don't have any photos of them going there now.
Times change but sometimes it's nice to see things last for generations to share.

New Food Inspirations - BBQ steam buns

Try something new

For the past few months I have been trying to get inspired by taking on new Food Missions that are posted on the GASTROPOST website that appears in the National Post on saturdays.   Every week they post new food theme missions that you can try to do and post onto their site.

This weeks food mission was to TRY SOMETHING NEW.  I started thinking about ethnic foods and if there was any ethnic restaurants in Toronto that I have never tried or things that I have been wanting to try.  There wasn't anything extreme and new that popped into my mind and it seems that Toronto goes through food trends.  The current trend is Tacos, which isn't anything new but it's just people experimenting with the things they are putting into tacos.

There are lots of things I will probably never try like Chicken Feet, fried crickets, fish eyeballs and other assorted weird animal products.  At least that I know of.  Considering the GMO food these days you never really know what you are eating anymore.

But anyway I thought it would be a challenge to try and think of new things to try and when I eat out over the next week I will try and look for new things if I can.   But last night I went out for dinner with a friend and we wanted to have
Dim Sum and since I live in a very Asian neighbourhood in North York we ventured out to a fairly new place called MANDARIN GARDEN Restaurant on Yonge Street just south of Finch Ave.   We had a glance at the photos posted in the front window and saw that they had a few different dim sum dishes so we decided to check it out.  I really like the nice Chinese Lanterns hung on the front of the restaurant.  They caught my eye when I drove by when they first opened.

The interior was clean and bright and the lady that served us was very friendly and efficient.   We ordered 3 dim sum dishes.  An egg and green onion pancake, a leek and pork potsticker dumpling and a steamed shrimp and pork dumpling.   

They were all made really well and the dumplings were perfectly seasoned and really flavourful.  The way I would have made them if I made them myself.  

Really authentic and tasty.

The people next to us ordered something that was very curious looking.  It looked like two flat white things skewered onto 2 bamboo sticks.  I asked our waitress what it was and she said it was BBQ steam buns.  So I decided to order it to try it.  I saw BBQ steam buns on the menu and thought it was the typical dough bun filled with BBQ pork and steamed.  But I was so wrong in this one.

It was a BBQ steam bun cut in half and then sprinkled with chilli spice and maybe other spices and then it was cooked BBQ style so it had a BBQ smokey flavour.  There wasn't any meat inside but you got the taste as if it was kind of meaty from the smoke.  I suppose this would be a great vegetarian substitute.  I never would have thought of something like that.  It was really interesting and so simple at the same time.

While it may not have been an adventurous new food sampling it was a good food inspiration on things I would never have thought to put together.

I am going to be on the look out for new things this week in my own hometown.   This new thing was right in my neighbourhood so you don't have to travel to China to try new foods,  just head to Chinatown North in Toronto.

FOOD GUILT

I started to get hungry at about 5pm and couldn't decide what to eat because my fridge is starting to get a bit empty and I didn't want to spend a couple of hours figuring out what to make, prepping, cooking and then cleaning up.  So I went over to the mall thinking I would get something there.  I wandered around trying to figure out what to eat and started thinking about WHAT NOT TO EAT.  I live in an area that has an over abundant amount of Sushi and Korean and other Asian type of restaurants.  I started thinking about Sushi.  I love Sushi Pizza and love raw Tuna and Salmon but I started thinking about a couple of things.

1.  Tuna isn't a sustainable fish.
2.  Lots of fish has mercury in it and also sometimes a risk if eaten raw.

Even though I was craving a Sushi Pizza and some tuna tartare I decided to skip that because I need to limit that to eating it less often.

Then I went down the street to get something and passed The Burger's Priest and thought a burger might be good for dinner.  But then I had a couple of issues with that.

1.  I just saw on the news another case of Mad Cow Disease and thought that there is always a risk of eating meat that clears the system but shouldn't.
2.  Eating red meat is bad for the environment because it takes so much resources to process beef.
3.  Eating red meat adds risk for heart disease.
4.  Eating charred red meat can also be toxic as some people have said in the past.
5.  Eating a burger has fat, and is placed in a white bread processed bun and topped with high salt and high sugar laden condiments.

Skip that idea.

Then I thought about getting Chinese Food.  Had a look at the food in the food court and changed my mind because:

1.  Most of the things that looked good were breaded and deep fried.
2.  Chinese food sometimes contains MSG.
3.  Chinese food is high in sodium because of the Soya sauce and other sauces used sometimes.
4.  A lot of the food didn't look very fresh and was mostly high fat meats and bland or sauced up vegetables.

Skip that..

Then I thought about having Greek Food,  probably the best of the bunch but I wasn't in the mood for that and in thinking about it there are still a couple of issues but not as bad as some of the other things.

1.  Pita bread is made with processed white flour and doesn't have much nutrition.
2.  Feta cheese is high in sodium and can be high in fat but luckily not loaded on to salads too much.
3.  The salad they use is typically just iceberg lettuce so there aren't a whole lot of nutrients there.

Skipped that because I just wasn't feeling it.

So after an hour of wandering around and trying to figure out what to eat I was not at the point of "I need to eat something now" stage.  So I gave up on the What is the best thing to eat hunt and broke down and just got the typical:

FAST, EASY and CHEAP dinner.   but Oh did I ever have a lot of guilt eating it, but at the same time it tasted so good.

What did I eat?

 

Yup I gave in and at a Pepperoni Pizza from Pizza Pizza.   The only saving grace on my food guilt was that I at least did it as a charitable act.  This week if you order a medium pepperoni pizza from 

Pizza Pizza they donate money to charity.

I never get Pepperoni Pizza's and would probably have gotten more veggies and skipped the pepperoni but after eating it I can see why so many people order Pepperoni Pizza's.   Because they taste GOOD.

I still have food guilt because the pizza had white crust, more processed bad white stuff, and then there's the mozzarella cheese,  let's add some more fat to the pizza and then there is the Pepperoni.. the worst offender of the lot with most likely some sort of beef and most likely nitrates and who knows what else in it.   The only semi healthy thing on this pizza was the tomato sauce but if it came from a can then there is always the BPA in the can and whatever else they used in the processing of it.

FOOD GUILT..   It's really bad but I can see why so many people give up on their diets or are challenged when they try and become Vegans.

I love Food,  I love a variety of Food, and I love Food that is sometimes bad for me.   

Sometimes it's just a lot harder to find fresh, organic, local, healthy, unprocessed, un junked food when you are hungry.   So if you are like me,  you just crumble and give in to your screaming stomach and eat what it wants instead of what you brain knows you really should be eating.

Maybe there should be a Food Confessional where people could go to confess their Food Sins.   Oh Yeah.. that's what this Blog is for.     

Feel free to confess your Food Sins here in the comments section.

There is always tomorrow to do better.