Noshing in my old nabe

It’s been two months and I’m grad­u­ally set­tling into my new home located in my old neigh­bour­hood: down­town Toronto’s best village-within-a-city, Kens­ing­ton Mar­ket. (By the way, this down­sized ver­sion of my for­mer Kens­ing­ton house looks, said a friend recently on star­ing speech­less at my chandelier/mirror/and cherub-bedecked liv­ing room, “a lot like New Orleans.”)

After almost 30 years of liv­ing in the heart of Kens­ing­ton, I mis­guid­edly left in 2005 in search of what I then hoped would be a more peace­ful, serene, semi-rural life in Strat­ford, Ont. Erratic VIA rail ser­vice, lack of diver­sity, the 401, iso­la­tion, snow and other bad things I couldn’t change have brought me back to the Big Smoke — more specif­i­cally to the feisty, colour­ful, never-dull Mar­ket, this edgy hub of eth­nic food, mot­ley crew of eccen­tric peo­ple and, most recently, home of three fan­tas­tic food finds.

See an ear­lier blog for my raves about the new butcher Sanagan’s in the for­mer loca­tion of Max Meats on Bald­win St. His chicken and filet mignon (not usu­ally my favourite cut of beef but superla­tive here) are my new addictions.

On the other side of the street, a few doors to the east, is Akram’s Shoppe, a re-incarnation of husband-and-wife team Akram and Hiyam Dow’s falafel shop, for­merly in the same location,

The pair have expanded their take-out reper­toire to include a huge selec­tion of Mid­dle East­ern gro­ceries along with a fab­u­lous hot table where a deli­cious, fill­ing lunch of your choice is a mere $4.99. Sev­eral kinds of stew, with or with­out meat, a cou­ple of kinds of rice and var­i­ous superb sal­ads are always fresh and flavourful.

The price and warm wel­come are both bonuses at this must-visit spot.

North on Augusta, a block south of Col­lege, is the fairly new Debu’s: casual, mostly take-out sis­ter eatery to the more well-known Mount Pleas­ant reg­u­lar sit-down restau­rant by the same name.

My chef friend Deb­o­rah and I picked up din­ner for two the other evening as a pre-birthday cel­e­bra­tion for moi — I turned 64 on August 27.

The fare here is rea­son­ably priced and delec­tably fresh-tasting — a wel­come alter­na­tive to the brown-sauced, over­cooked, one-note brand of Indian food found at some places. Seated at my kitchen table, we dined on spicy lamb curry, yummy egg­plant with pep­pers, creamy dahl, per­fectly cooked bas­mati rice and properly-charred naan.

This place is around the cor­ner from my house and I’ll be back.