Hav­ing grown up in a fam­ily that refused to stay put, I’ve spent much of my adult life try­ing to put down roots. I found them in an instant when I walked into Toronto’s feisty, colour­ful and inim­itable Kens­ing­ton Mar­ket one sunny day in the late 1970s and knew imme­di­ately that this was home. Its eth­nic mix, Jew­ish his­tory and cheaply cheer­ful warmth proved irre­sistible and I lived hap­pily in the heart of this won­der­ful place for more than 25 years, nearly all of them in the same house on Augusta Ave. fac­ing a lively park.

You know those mag­i­cal moments in cook­ing — when you put some­thing together, almost hap­haz­ardly, and it turns out to be sublime.

That hap­pened to me recently when a friend came over to cook din­ner at my house using the con­tents of my fridge as our guide — pos­si­bly my favourite way to spend time.

As a long­time food writer and one-time restau­rant critic, I dread the oft-asked ques­tion: “Which is your favourite restau­rant?” My usual response to this query about Toronto, my for­mer home of 30 years (these days, the same info is asked of Strat­ford, Ont., where I now live — more of that in a future blog) is to request that the per­son name a cat­e­gory: high-end or cheap and cheer­ful, eth­nic­ity of food, area of town etc. etc. Even then, as I rifle through my vir­tual restau­rant rolodex, I’m often stumped.
But happy day, I now have an answer that’s sweet and sim­ple: Le Par­adis, 166 Bed­ford Rd. (near Avenue Rd. and Dav­en­port), 416–921-0995.

I’ve been eat­ing that deli­cious Viet­namese soup called pho (pro­nounced feu) for at least 10 years, mostly at one of my favourite Viet­namese restau­rants in the heart of down­town Chi­na­town: Sai Gon Palace, 454 Spad­ina Ave. just south of College.

Recently, I had a Calvin Trillin moment at this pop­u­lar, spa­cious no-frills eatery with the semi-open kitchen. A crea­ture of habit, I am a reg­u­lar here with a reg­u­lar menu choice.