we the north

I've been going to Toronto since I was a teeny tiny child. I have Canadian citizenship, my grandparents used to live there (my grandma has since moved to Collingwood), and we used to spend days upon days there in the summer when I was young. As soon as I was old enough to appreciate them, my parents took me to all the tourist spots; the CN Tower, Chinatown, the Eaton Centre, games at Maple Leaf Gardens & the Rogers Centre, the Ontario Science Centre, Toronto exhibitions, reubens at Shopsy's...  But I haven't seen basically any of that stuff SINCE I was old enough to appreciate it.  A few months back my friend Kat suggested a trip up there for a Leafs game and had been filling my head ever since with all the super fantastic touristy things she'd never done, and I started getting really stoked to relive my childhood.....and drink more Canadian beer.

We both took Friday off work & I made a trip out to Ann Arbor to pick Kat up the night before....which of course required starting the weekend off with Miki sushi (during basically a tornado...) and a quick trip over to Arbor Brewing for some sour beer <3

I want all my sashimi to be salmon and all my sushi to be kanpyo + strawberries.

The most incredible thing I've ever experienced happened on the trip up (after a stop at Kelsey's for club sandwiches with PEAMEAL BACON <3 and to meet up with a friend of Kat's), which is absolutely zero traffic on the way in to the city. From London to Yonge & Gerrard in 2 hours. This will presumably never happen again in my lifetime.

Staying literally right on Yonge street was fabulous - we posted up the Delta Chelsea (I don't care if that's not what it's called anymore) for the weekend and it was completely fabulous. I used to stay there a lot with the family when we came up years back and it's only gotten nicer (but still has those mega-tall headboards I remember!).  We got there so early in the day that we decided to take a trip down to the Eaton Centre & do some shopping (ZARA!!!!!! Goodbye, $200....but one of my Toronto goals was to find this skirt, and I succeeded), sightseeing, and then back up the road to bar Volo for some Dieu du Ciel Rigor Mortis & Great Lakes Robohop (which is the closest to a DRIPA I have ever tasted in my life; A+) before coming back to the hotel to chill in the whirlpool(!!!).

My favorite building in Toronto <3

Saturday was tourist day, after a quick workout in the nicest hotel fitness center I've ever had the experience of using.  We took a nice walk down to the Hockey Hall of Fame, where I haven't been since 2007, ogled everything for a while & then set out again to the CN Tower where I gushed for like 45 minutes of standing in line about how excited I was to stand on the glass floor.

The view while I ran a couple miles.

 I MISS YOU PATRICK EAVESSSSSS :( :( :(

I LOVE this, and I was so happy to see this sort of recognition for such a horrible tragedy, but I did pitch a small fit in the middle of the HHOF over that glaring awful typo.

That ceiling, though...

Had to :)

Second favorite building in Toronto ;)

Highlight of the day - after watching my many attempts at getting a badass picture of both headstands on the glass floor as well as Eka Pada Koundinyasana, a random dude who I just watched do 61 pushups (on the glass floor) while his friend recorded him challenged me to a planking contest which I'm happy to report that I, in my faux cowboy boots and Zara-purchased shirt, sweating far more than I intended to do on my day out about town, kicked his ass at as was subsequently cheered for by this whole crowd I did NOT realize had accumulated around us, haha.

I see u Billy Bishop!

Nobody outplanks AMERICA.

Life goal: accomplished.

Glass floor selfie!

After the tower (and after a quick stop on Queen Street at the HBO pop up shop just so I could sit in the badass Game of Thrones throne), we hiked it over to & up Spadina for DIM SUM!  I haven't had true, authentic dim sum in....probably ten years.  Literally the best EVER, and it was so fun to introduce Kat to yet another super local Torontonian place (Rosewood will always have my heart when it comes to Chinatown Dim Sum).

Not pictured: like six other things, including bbq pork dumplings & the actual best sesame lotus paste dumplings I've EVER had.

Post-lunch we hoofed it the rest of the way to Ossington because BELLWOODS!  Got lucky enough to snag a couple spots at the bar where we partook in some Boogie Monster, Cat Lady, and split a Bounty Hunter. Mmmmm all the coconut.  I also bought beer for literally everyone I knew, which resulted in a street car ride back to the hotel rather than a 2.5 mile walk holding totes full of a case of bombers.

We cut it extra close on time, so we had to hop on the subway to take us back to the ACC, where we watched the Leafs eat it one last time for the season (super entertaining game though, plus my boyfriend Richard Panik was there), and then got to meet up at Jack Astor's with my lovely friend Bhavna who I honestly haven't seen in YEARS. Such a good time catching up and such a late night haha.  By the time we got back to the hotel & devoured ten pounds of trail mix, it was 2 am before we crawled into bed, which mean we did NOT in fact work out again the next morning (oops).

No salute-gate tonight ;)

Our beautiful reunion <3

Instead we went to Stockyards for breakfast!!  The red pepper citrus maple syrup was every bit as phenomenal as I remembered.  Leaving the city was depressing as always, but brightened by the fact that we had Nickelbrook Brewery to stop at on the way home, where we were served samples of literally everything that existed, and where a couple patrons told us to also stop at Railway City Brewing to buy some Dead Elephant, which I haven't sampled yet, but I heard is suuuuuper bitter/hoppy.

Nice haul....

The Zara haul <3 Plus a little Raptor pride!

And of course, the TRUE reason for going to Canada......

Every trip I take to Toronto feels painfully short and like I missed a thousand things I wanted to do, but it's such a short drive that I know I'm going to start going back far more often. If only because Bellwoods didn't have bottles of Witchshark for sale this time around ;)  And, bonus, next weekend is yet another trip to Austin!

late late beer updates

When I started this blog, I had this grand idea that one of predominant themes of it would be my quest to make it to every craft brewery in Michigan – brewery reviews, etc.  The only problem, I soon realized, was that I was a bit behind the times.  By the time this little old blog was born, I’d already been to almost 90 breweries, which means the trips to new ones were getting much, MUCH fewer & further between.  I mean, anything within a 60 mile radius of me (or of Kalamazoo) has at the very least been one and done.

So, scratch that idea –  guess I’ll just talk about random beer as I have/find/seek it??

To start, it’s officially OBERON SEASON!  Oberon is one of those beers I have more of a nostalgia connection to than an actual love for – I’m not and never have been a wheat beer person, but after going to WMU for four years and living in Kalamazoo, I look forward to that first sip of cold sunshine every year.  This year we actually had a work going away party at a bar with Oberon on tap that got moved to a different bar last minute – you can guess where I “accidentally” ended up.

Gimme that sudsy sunshine <3

Followed up with my first taste of Blushing Monk - VERY raspberry, VERY sweet, and VERY alcoholic.

I did get a chance last month to check out a new brewery in Saint Clair Shores & two new breweries in Detroit – Baffin Brewing, the long awaited Batch Brewing, and the newly opened, totally situationally weird Brew Detroit.

I checked out Baffin after an hour of suffering at a 4 year old’s birthday party, so I would have been happy even if the beer had been awful, but it was decidedly not!  The guy serving us (either one of the brewers, or at least involved in the process) was a gem – took great care of us, offered us a ton of insight about their beers, and was just a genuinely passionate person.  I LOVE when brewers get super excited about their craft & that’s the exact experience we had.  They had four beers on tap (one of which was named Roth IPA – as the daughter of a CPA I laughed for like five minutes straight), but they were ALL quality. Best yet – it’s near where I work, and also had some of the straight up best free brewery popcorn I’ve ever had.

A friend and I checked out Brew Detroit after grabbing some brunch at Brooklyn Street Local in Corktown (FYI – the owners are straight outta Toronto, and served me, for the very first time, peameal bacon in the States that tastes how peameal bacon is supposed to taste), which I would like to tell you more about, but I accidentally typed my year of birth in to the site as “2015” and no force on the earth can convince the internet that I am not browsing from the womb, so all I can tell you is they brew(ed?) Badass (the Kid Rock beer) at one point.

Brew Detroit is a pretty big production facility that just recently started brewing their own beer, of which we sampled everything.  The guys working were conversational and more than willing to give us samples of a bunch of stuff not even on tap yet (including a beer that literally tasted like peach rings), & it was a nice place to chill for a while before the Wings game we were going to.  Nothing was incredible (I enjoyed the ESB and the Belgian stout – although I didn’t think it really tasted like a Belgian stout – but they brew in small batches and probably won’t have any of that next time I’m there!), but I was more impressed than I expected to be.

The mug says "PRAHA". You get me, Brooklyn Street Local.

The whole upstairs is dead space right now, but the circular bar isn't so bad :)

Batch was actually quite busy when we stopped by later that afternoon, but they did still let us have a few samples (the guy pouring beer was super friendly & more than happy to provide – the guy manning the counter seemed rather perturbed about it; not the best impression to make, buddy).  I sampled the A-Rye, which had a really nice sweet touch that I’m not used to finding in a rye, and ended up going with the Son of a Batch IPA, which was a solid IPA on the verge of a double.  I liked their focus on slight twists on the standards (they seemed to be doing a lot of experiments with flip flopping the usual yeasts & grain bill on traditional styles – pretty cool, different tasting stuff), and I’ll definitely be going back.

Brewery #98!

Plus all that beer put me 100% in the mood for heaps of Indian food and the Decemberists concert I had lined up for that night (it was a busy weekend)!

Oh you, Royal.

This concert ended with the entire band being consumed by a giant presumably cardboard whale.

March also saw two birthdays celebrated at Rochester Mills, who have VASTLY stepped up their solid specialty beers lately – possibly because of the increased production at their new(ish?) production facility making room for more experimenting and smaller batches at the main brewery?  Either way, I washed down some steak & parsnips with a Newton’s ALEchemy, a Grand Cru, and a really roasty yet surprisingly hoppy black IPA & I’m thinking I ought to be paying a lot more attention to their offerings in the future.

Happy birthday you lovely lady <3

Yes, steak, but mostly PARSNIPS <3 <3 <3

Also got to taste (preemptively – this baby needs another couple months in the bottle before it’ll be at its prime) the Belgian quad I brewed way back earlier in the year.  I’m saving total judgement until I taste it again, but…it’s pretty damn good.  Nice body, a little less syrupy than some quads, and a slight added bitterness/subtle tartness from the currants right at the end.

Lazy girl brewer's uniform.

More to come……brew day Sunday!