Neighbourhood #20 - Yorkville

NEW ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: 20 Neighbourhoods visited. It feels like an achievement but looking back Sim and I have been at this for over 9 years.  So coming in at just over two neighbourhoods a year, here we are. The weekend started with the promise of a trip up to Orillia to watch the Super Bowl with Dana and Dave (and Alex +1). I said I would stay over on Saturday night so we could leave together.  And that turned into a Great British Bake Off Marathon, but more importantly the great idea from Sim so pick a new hood. We're probably only half done to be honest, but it does get more difficult to choose. Finally I suggested Yorkville and Sim said YES as she had a few ideas already for us.

After humming and hawing about transit vs driving we hopped into my car and zipped over to Yorkville. The parking was as to be expected in the North Downtown business core. Also known as the Nodobuco. We started with a bucket list restaurant stop of mine, Sassafraz. Sim had mentioned earlier that Winterlicious was on so hey, why not do Winterlicious lunch at Sassafraz!! The options were amazing.  Sim went with the Moroccan Lamb starter with the Atlantic Salmon Main and the Creme Caramel for dessert. Accompanied by a "Frostbite" cocktail. I forget the ingredients but it was YUMMY. My fare was the exact same, sub a beet salad to start. Sim looked at me during lunch and said, "This is a place I would have picked, so thank you." It's true. She goes for the classy class, and I roll my eyes and say fiiiine.  This time she didn't have to drag me kicking and screaming. Other than the fact that I didn't have any nice clothes and I hadn't washed my hair in two days and it looked a TOTAL MESS. But as I don't have to look at myself during an outing I let that go from my mind.

A quick walk down Yorkville Rd brought us to a cute little paper shop, The Papier.  I could spend hours in a shop like this. I could spend hundreds of dollars. And then I would have hundreds of dollars of paper at home that I'm doing nothing with. BUT, I do hope that stores like this stick around. As we seem to be losing the brilliant landscape of brick and mortar stores that has graced our Toronto streets (streets that I walk, very often, used to be daily).

Next we flipped over to what was going to be another tick for me, Hemingways bar.  I went once many moons ago and seemed to remember it was great.  It's kind of not what I remembered.  And not what one might expect from a Yorkville pub.  It was cute enough.  Half pint each and off we go.

Sim has been talking about The Oxley and Frank Oxley being friends with Don and we have to go to the Oxley, for months.  As we approached the pub Sim was about to say "Oh this place looks so cute can we please come back here", and she looked up and here we arrived at the Oxley. When you walk in you are greeted with an old styled classy pub. With a gorgeous mosaic tile front fireplace, with a super comfortable couch to the side, and seating extending to the back. The upstairs was also quite adorable, but as there was a party of three having what seemed to be an intimate discussion we decided to settle on the couch. I had the Vanilla Sour, which is essentially a whiskey sour with a vanilla liquor added in. Sim had the Kitty Hawk which was an exceptionally tasty cocktail with some ingredients that escape.

When that was wrapped we popped over to Kitchen Stuff  Plus to look for some bake ware for Sim.  She's planning an EPIC cake for Pips in April. And thoughtfully starting the prep now. Even a practice run that turned into a grump fest over getting a cake instead of a toy (Pip-pa). I had to step outside as I was starting to overheat. Popping back in only to remind Sim to look at the spinning cake trays, of which the selection was unappealing.  She smartly said no thank you to those.  Our next destination was Over The Rainbow, a long establish denim store that had moved from Yorkville Rd. down to Bloor. I was really not feeling well so we took a pass and head to the last planned stop, Cafe Bora.  They had some interested purple yam confections that we were going to dig into.  And as we approached they were CLOSED. At this point I was full on gassing out, for whatever reason. I could almost barely breathe and felt like an energyless lump. We tracked down the entrance to the Green P and headed home.  With one more quick drive by another kitchen store, that was closed, we pulled back into chez Heath and cooled down with a few more baking episodes.  That show, is amazing.  I mentioned it to Sim like 3 years ago that I thought she'd like it, and this particular weekend she said, "Lets find a way to watch that baking show."  Which I loved.  And she loved.  And we loved Yorkville! 

And they all lived happily ever after.  While Mahomes laid back dreaming of sugarplum offensive linemen in his head.