On Sunday, we joined a few of my Iroquois friends at Woodbine racetrack, thanks to Lisa who works for the racing association. She got us in to the press box and the Steward's room, where they check videos of each race before calling the results official. The main race of the day was the Pattison International, featuring horses from all over the world. The day was cold but clear and there was a lively crowd. Unfortunately we did not win on any of our bets.
We had dinner on Monday night with the Yangs and Huangs and they mentioned there was a new open air mall in Don Mills so we went to check it out on Tuesday. It's kind of strange to have this type of mall in a place with cold winters. Unlike most of the ones in California, this one had mostly driveable streets. The stores lean more upscale, with lots of eating places, movie theatres and a public square. They are building an apartment building next door. We had lunch at Fabbrica, an Italian restaurant run by celebrity chef Mark McEwan. The food was really good and Ma particularly enjoyed the heirloom tomatoes that came with the buffalo mozzarella. The almond cake was also particularly good, small, a little crispy on the outside and not too sweet. McEwan also has a high end grocery store in the mall (like a smaller Gelsons or Whole Foods).
On Wednesday, we went to Roy Thompson Hall to hear the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. Beforehand, we had dinner at Luckee, another restaurant by a celebrity chef, Susur Lee. The restaurant is in the Soho Metropolitan Hotel and has a casual but striking decor, with cafe type tables and chairs in a modern Asian inspired setting. Fang Fang joined us and we tried three of the dim sum dishes and three larger plates. While the dim sum items were incredibly beautiful, the flavours were good but not exceptional. For example the savoury fried sticky rice was shaped like a golden pair with a small piece of dried fruit as a stem. The main dishes, however, were spectacular. The 'char sui' was sous vide beef cooked for two or three days and so tender it almost literally melted in your mouth, with an intense rich flavour. The cod was flaky and perfectly cooked with a delicious sauce. The mi fun with crab had a lot of good sizes chunks of crab. On our way from the restaurant to the hall, we ran into a happy crowd of baseball fans after the Jays saved their series with the Royals by winning a game (although they ended up losing the series). The symphony hall was quite nice and we enjoyed the program, although the cheap seats we had did not have very balanced sound.
On Thursday, we went to check out the Pompeii exhibit at ROM. But first, we met up with Cynthia and Lynda from the Italy trip! We had a lovely lunch at the cafe in the Gardiner Museum. It was fun to see the Pompeii exhibit laid out a little differently and with the context of having been to Pompeii. We also stopped in to see a small exhibit of export art from China, suggested to us by Cynthia. It was quite interesting to see the Western influence on the Asian style art. They had some paintings done on pith paper which puffs up when wet, so it gave the pictures a slightly three dimensional effect.
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