The Best of Starbucks' Beverages

People tell me I should be in PR for Starbucks, seeing how I have unitentionally lured many friends to Starbucks, gotten non-coffee drinking friends ordering coffee mistos week after week, accidentally founded the T3C Starbucks 'Sunday School' session, and gotten good old Jenn visiting Starbucks at least once a day this past week.

Jenn and I went for coffee tonight, and given that it was at Starbucks (and the fact we were talking about drinks we'd recommend to people), I thought we should start of the "best of" series w/ our favourite Starbucks beverages. Sooooo... here is Jenn & Holz's top five Starbucks drinks - four of which are "secret" not on the menu drinks, which we highly recommend you to try the next time you're grabbing a java.... *drum roll please*

1) (Soy) Mild (or Bold) Misto w/ a Half Pump of Hazelnut
Jenn: Since I really hate having soy in my coffee, the drink tastes just as good w/o the soy, and the "half" pump of hazelnut makes it not as sweet so that the syrup doesn't overpower the coffee, but just to give the drink a little more flavor
Holly: I actually like soy w/ my coffee - I normally drink my coffee black, but only at Starbucks do I add anything to my coffee... i.e. soy. But to make it a nice, comfy drink that 1/2 pump does the touch in making it a nice special drink.

2) London Fog - Earl Grey tea misto w/ 1 pump vanilla
Jenn: this kinda tastes like the Japanese canned "Royal Milk Tea 紅茶花伝" but for for those who might find it to be too sweet, then I'd recommend the non-fat/skim milk version
Holly: Alternatively, you can go for the half pump to make it less sweet, but it is the coffee-alternative drink to the above coffee misto.

3) Java Chip Frappucino
Holly: Both Jenn and I love this drink - it's fun w/ bits of chocolate chips, blended with the Starbucks frappucino and ice, topped with whip & chocolate drizzle if desired. Comes in decaf & regular caffeine. Definitely a drink that will fully substitute the dessert after a meal; a must try for the sweeth tooth.

4) "White Gummy Bear" Shaken Iced Passion Tea - 2 pumps of melon, 2 pumps of rasperry, 1 pump vanilla
Holly: To my absolute surprise, the one who introduced us to this drink was our friend Mo, who was somewhat anti-Starbucks. :) However, it is definitely a drink just like the candy!!! A must try for the anti-coffee people out there. A bit of the passion tea flavour is still retained despite the numerous pumps of syrup, which goes to show the tazo tea line at Starbucks is fairly decent and gets my nod for approval, given that I'm pretty anal about my teas. (I normally dislike using tea bags... but the Tazo series is one of the few exceptions)

5) Shaken Iced White Tea Lemonade
Holly: This drink is only available at certain stores at the time of this post - the lemonade blends well with the White Berry tea, and complements the berry taste without an obvious hint of the sour lemonade-like taste (but still retains the same texture). A nice "secret" alternative to the shaken black/green tea lemonades.
Other honorable mentions include: soy green tea latte w/o syrup, caramel macchiato, hot chocolate, african red bush tea. However, feel free to suggest any of your favourite Starbucks beverage... :)

Sushi Kaji

The Place:

Extremely simple decor, with minimal decorations. However, very clean and neat.

Space is precious, just like many fine Japanese establishments. Sushi bar is the prime area to be at as you can observe Master Kaji at work, but make reservations early, as it only fits twelve patrons at one sitting.

Service is friendly, although waitresses' broken English makes it tough to understand what you're eating if the menu is missing.

The Food:

Menu - Takumi ($120)

Tomato stuffed sweet shrimp with Japanese tomato sauce

I didn't taste much of the shrimp, but nevertheless this cold dish was very refreshing with the jelly mixed in w/ the ingredients inside the tomato.



Grilled Japanese pepper stuffed shrimp cake

The shrimp cake balanced out the strong pepper taste and for someone who's usually not a big fan of peppers, I actually enjoyed this dish.




Cold shabu-shabu salad with sesame dressing

The name confused me. When I think "shabu-shabu", I think of a hotpot and then when I think "salad", I expect some type of leafy vegetable related dish. This was basically a beef roll, which wasn't really anything out of the ordinary, so I would say from looking at the name of the dish on the menu, it's quite misleading.


Sashimi

The sashimi was very fresh and better than most of the sushi establishments opened by Chinese people around the city. The shrimp heads were still moving when the plate arrived - which was then taken away to be fried.

Simmered bracken rolled with tofu-puff

This was an interesting dish. The vegetable added some flavour to the normally bland tofu and the sauce (which had a slight sweetness to it) added to the flavour.



Roasted duck & chrysanthemum salad

The duck was very tender (unlike many restaurants that tend to be on the dry side) and the chrysanthemum was a nice garnish for it.




Grilled black cod with yuzu sauce

The Cod was to die for... and it came with a side of lotus w/ shrimp paste with a mint leaf. Very delicate and intricate preparation was made for the lotus side, as it was thinly sliced into half, to sandwich the shrimp paste. The lotus was then grilled until crisp; the mint complimented the shrimp and lotus extremely well.


Sushi & soup (soba noodles w/ green onions and wasabi in broth)
(Sushi served (in order): Toro, Lobster, Scallop, Unagi, Toro w/ croquette & ikura, King Crab, and Mini unagi sushi)



We were warned by the waitresses not to have the scallop and unagi sushi with soy sauce. We soon discovered why as it was noted the scallop sushi was drizzled with a slight touch of olive oil, with salt and pepper - what an unique fusion of the east & west!




Dessert

Mint with the pampelmousse dessert is required!





Other must-note items:

Kaji makes his own soy sauce and wasabi. Very distinct soy sauce with a slight sweet taste. Wasabi is made with finely chopped raddish - in fact, once it is placed in the soy sauce (which is a no-no for the avid Japanese diner), you can see the wasabi break off into very tiny raddish pieces, unlike the powdered alternative. Yet, the hot, burning effect is just as strong, if not even more than the powdered wasabi.

They serve two types of tea - green tea during the meal, and a black tea right before desserts.

Our two-cents & opinion

Jenn: 4/5 for creativity and variety of the dishes; 3/5 for the price and the amount of food - I was still a bit hungry afterwards.

Holly: 3.5/5 definitely tops Hashimoto, although extremely on the pricey range.

Wanna try it out for yourself?

Sushi Kaji
860 The Queensway
Etobicoke, ON
M8Y 1K8
416.252.2166

The "Best of..." Series

I'll introduce myself - I'm Jenn's foodie-wannabe friend Holly. I've always wanted to blog about food, but never had the time to (nor do I really have the time now) but with Jenn kickstarting this initiative, I thought I'd hop on the bandwagon and join her.

I'm a big fan of making lists, let it be to-do lists, lists of things to buy, etc. I figured the same approach can be used for this food blog for different food items/types of food I like... so here's the ribbon-cutting blog for this new "best of..." series. So look out for the top picks of spicy salmon rolls, croissants, gelato shops, coffee, tea, etc. in the near future :)

Orange Mocha Frappuccino!

I think I'm slowly becoming a Starbucks junkie thanks to Des and Holly...and to clarify, that doesn't mean I'm a caffeine addict, but just that I've become an avid frequenter of Starbucks. There are all these secret drinks that I didn't know about before, i.e. London Fog and White Gummy Bear, and all these other combinations of yummy drinks that I never knew I could get before! Where do people find out about these drinks that are not on the menu? Maybe I should just name off random drinks when I go to Starbucks next time and see if it actually exists.

Also, I've always thought that the Orange Mocha Frappuccino was a made up drink from Zoolander. I've never actually seen it on the Starbucks menu until I saw it written down as one of its special summer drinks. I think Des and Kenric were a little shocked to see how excited I was to see that on the seasonal drinks board. Yes...I know I'm a dork, but being a big fan of the movie, I had to try it. Now, would I get the orange mocha frap again? Probably not. Well...unless I can find someone who has a white Jeep and drive around in it, flashing the drink in my hand with Wham's Wake Me Up Before You Go Go playing in the background. Now THAT would really make my day. :P