Bloor Street Market is the new Loblaws store that arised from the ashes of the Valu-Mart that was below the Manulife building at Bay and Bloor. The new store design does not really change the layout, but the store has gotten a fresh fascade with some stone facing, and new cabinets and counters. The butcher and fishmonger areas are much more approachable and there’s a large focus on convience foods (pre-cooked foods at the deli, salad bar, prepackaged ready-to-heat meals.

There’s quite a concentration of grocery stores on Bloor. With the new Market by Longo’s , a larger Rabba’s, the exclusive Pusateri’s and Whole Foods all a block away from this location. At least I have a lot of choices. What I like is that these are grocery stores, not supermarkets. There is no pharmacist, there is no 1 hour photo lab, no consumer hard goods – pure grocery. If they can concentrate on good, fresh product, they may get a lot of loyal customers who prefer to walk than drive to get groceries.

(pictures to be added shortly)

Stuck on the road somewhere? I’m not surprised. This new map of Toronto road closures, though still in beta, highlights all the problems you have getting around this city.

Koko Share Bar opened in Yorkville a few weeks ago. The reviews have been positive and I put it on my list of places to try. On a random afternoon I poked my head in and tried lunch at the new restaurant. The lunch menu differs from their dinner menu but I was offered both to take a look at. I tried a beef tenderloin sushi roll and the Maguro role of tuna and ‘kimchee’. The dishes shortly arrived and both were quite tasty. Both sets of rolls surprised me by being quite bite-sized – I’ve found many new sushi places make very complex rolls with so many ingredients it makes the rolls almost too big to eat.

The beef tenderloin roll surprised me by it’s freshness. By using an outer layer of beef and a very thin layer of rice, they allow the veggies like the garlic stem to come through when eating. It tasted crisp like a salad. The Maguro roll had a tiny star shap of okra on top, I don’t recall okra being part of Korean or Japanese cuisine, but it looked great. This reminded me of a “spicy tuna” roll but it got it’s spiciness from the kimchi and not from a mayo-hotsauce concoction.

The quiet lunchtime hour allowed me to talk with the owner about many of the dishes. Each one is carefully crafted and you can tell he put a lot of thought into creating some unique dishes – taking a bit of Japan and Korea in each dish. I was very happy with my meal at Koko and will be back.

Koko Share Bar
81 Yorkville Ave.

BlogTO wrote a “Best Soups” article. They mentioned two favorites of mine, Ravisoups and Soup Nutsy. The other selections are below:

• Ravisoups
• United Bakers Dairy
• Soup Nutsy
• Esther’s Soup Kitchen
• Hibiscus Cafe
• One Love Vegetarian
• Urban Herbivore
• Coffee Mill
• Utopia Cafe
• Le Gourmand
• Kalendar
• Cafe Polonez

The full list with descriptions, and a google map is at their site.

BlogTO launched a new look today. It’s a bit awkward but they have a good team and will iron out some of the bugs. I think this is part of a larger change in strategy of the site away from a pure “blog” to more of a “destination” site. There’s a large vacuum in the “Toronto portal” market with the mismanagement at Toronto.com (seriously, does anyone use this site anymore?) – BlogTO looks like they are positioning themselves to take up more of that space.

At the Toronto Auto Show, the Automotive Journalists Association of Canada chose the Volkswagen Golf GTI was chosen as car of the year. The a The full list of winners is below:

• CANADIAN CAR OF THE YEAR Volkswagen Golf GTI
• CANADIAN UTILITY VEHICLE OF THE YEAR Subaru Outback
• Best New Small Car (under $21,000) Mazda3
• Best New Small Car (over $21,000) Mazda3 Sport
• Best New Family Car (under $30,000) Volkswagen Golf Wagon TDI
• Best New Family Car (over $30,000) Ford Taurus
• Best New Luxury Car (over $50,000) BMW 335d Sedan
• Best New Prestige Car Porsche Panamera
• Best New Sports / Performance Car (under $50,000) Volkswagen Golf GTI
• Best New Sports / Performance Car (over $50,000) Audi S4
• Best New Convertible Audi S5 Cabriolet
• Best New SUV / CUV (under $35,000) Subaru Outback
• Best New SUV / CUV ($35,000 – $60,000) Volkswagen Touareg TDI Clean Diesel
• Best New SUV / CUV (over $60,000) Lexus RX450h

The Toronto area got a recent update in Google Maps yesterday. Judging by the state of construction projects near my place, I’m judging the new maps were taken this summer.

This may have been there for a while, but I just noticed it. The Toronto Star has a recipe archive and it looks to go back all the way to about 2006. It allows you to search by main ingredient, meal, cuisine, etc. It’s quite good. I find that Star recipes are usually very straightforward and well tested.

I’ve been searching for a place to store my winter tires. Previously I’ve used Steelcase tire but the 5-6 hour wait last fall was just too much. This year on a whim I phoned up Canadian Tire downtown and asked if they had it. They told me this would be the first year offering it and it would be ready in a few weeks. Well last week when they began accepting storage orders and everything went smoothly. They mounted my winter tires and stored my summers. The storage fee is $75 per season, or $150 a year.

They store the tires offsite, so when you want to switch in the spring, you have to call them two days in advance.

Fancy yourself to create a new Google Maps Mashup, or mine some public data? The City of Toronto has given open access to several datasets that they have. It’s a new venture, so don’t dismay the lack of data  yet. I’m sure as people create some new and interesting tools with it, that demand will rise and they’ll put their more valuable data online.

I’m quite happy they are doing this. Spending a career in IT has led me to lament the “it’s MY data” mentality and the unwillingness to share it. For a City to open it’s data doors, even slightly, is a great first step.