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Food & Recipes, toronto toursim, Vacation Travel

The Best Beer Gardens Toronto Offers

August 14, 2023
Beer Garden Toronto

Drinking and eating outdoors is a popular Canadian pastime. The weather is only nice for a fraction of the year, so we like to make the most of it before the snow starts to fall again. Why not spend every possible moment enjoying the sunshine? Plus, after a big day of sightseeing and wandering all over Toronto, there’s nothing more satisfying than settling into a chilled-out beer garden and taking a big sip of a cold frothy one. Here are a few of the best outdoor beer gardens Toronto offers.Here are a few of the best outdoor beer gardens Toronto offers.

Granite Brewery

This popular beer garden in Mount Pleasant and Eglinton has been around since before the hipster trend of craft beers in Toronto. It is a great chilled-out space serving a selection of classic English-style beers that are made on-site. You can choose to hang out on the outdoor patio on the front that faces the street, or the more private back patio that overlooks a lovely garden. If you really fall in love with the chilled-out atmosphere you could consider tying the knot here – the Granite Brewery hosts weddings.Beer Gardens Toronto

Mascot Brewery Beer Gardens Toronto

Located in the heart of downtown on Mercer Street, this casual and sunny beer garden in Toronto is a great place to grab a drink with friends on a hot summer’s day. There are communal picnic-bench style seats perfect for socializing and there is even a food truck to fulfil your beer-fueled appetite. The AstroTurf on the floor and the laid-back vibe make it feel like you are just hanging out at your buddy’s house for a weekend barbeque. If you are visiting with a larger group, it is even possible to order a five-litre keg of craft brew which you can self-serve.

Amsterdam Brewhouse

This great watering hole has a large beer garden right on the waterfront, which comes to life with laughter and conversation every summer. There are three different outdoor areas you can sit in, depending on how close you want to be to the water.

This Brewhouse also offers a superb selection of beer, including several special housemade brews. The selection changes every month, so Beer Gardens Torontoevery time you come back you will find something new on the menu to try. They also serve food – yummy bites that pair well with a cold glass of beer such as Honey Sriracha Chicken Wings, Amsterdam Pretzel and Crispy Brussel Sprouts with Bacon and Feta Cheese.

The Pilot Tavern

Check out the “Flight Deck” of the Pilot Tavern, a rooftop beer garden offering sunshine, great food, cold drinks and a great atmosphere. High on a roof in Yorkville, it is removed from the hustle and bustle of the street and it is fully equipped with retractable awnings and heaters so you can keep on drinking no matter what the weather. In fact, it has been around for more than 70 years and was named by the readers of The Globe and Mail as Canada’s Favourite Patio.

Enjoy these great summer spots and more when you stay in Toronto

If you are looking to enjoy living in downtown Toronto for a summer to enjoy all this and more that the GTA has to offer, be sure to find a furnished rental in downtown Toronto now.

Fitness and Health, Food & Recipes, Lifestyle talk

Healthy Eating Tips for Business Travelers

June 27, 2023

While business travel can be good for your career, it’s not always good for your waistline.

Traveling to another city for a networking opportunity, a business meeting or to attend a conference is a great opportunity. However, sometimes your packed schedule means that you don’t have the time to eat a healthy meal. Grabbing fast food on the go is convenient, but it will also leave you feeling sluggish rather than healthy and energized.

Here are some healthy eating tips for every business traveller to keep in mind.

Be Prepared

When you bring your own snacks with you, you’ll avoid being tempted by the quick and easy yet unhealthy options on the way. For example, bring along some fruit, a granola bar or carrot sticks that you can munch on while waiting for your flight. (Just keep in mind airport security and customs restrictions.)

Also, sometimes morning conferences and meetings run late, leaving you starving and more likely to overeat when you finally get to lunch. Having a banana or a bit of trail mix in your bag can be a lifesaver.

Stay in Self-Catering Accommodation

When you stay in a hotel during a business trip, you’ll have no option other than to eat all of your meals in a restaurant (or order room service). Since restaurant portions are often larger than necessary and include plenty of salt and fat, this is a huge factor in why many business travellers return home with their clothes feeling a little too tight.

When you stay in self-catering accommodation, such as a furnished apartment with a kitchen, you’ll be able to shop at the local supermarket and cook your own healthy meals. That way, you can make fresh and tasty recipes and you’ll know exactly what is going into them.

Have Protein for Breakfast

When you start your day, consider some eggs and wholegrain toast rather than sugary cereals or pastries.

The protein will leave you feeling fuller for longer so that you don’t get that mid-morning sugar crash and subsequent cravings. Plus, there are so many tasty dishes that you can make with eggs – from scrambled to fried to poached and much more.

Choose One Treat – And Really Enjoy It

Part of the fun of travelling somewhere else on a business trip is the chance to try the local cuisine, so you don’t want to completely restrict yourself from enjoying the food. The key is to limit yourself to one or two indulgent treats on your trip and to really focus on the experience of eating them.

So, if you are on a business trip to Vancouver Island you might treat yourself to the finest, gourmet Nanaimo Bar. Or, if you are heading to Montreal you can dig into a huge plate of delicious poutine. Get the very best and sit down and really focus on enjoying it.

These are just a few healthy eating tips. How do you eat healthily when you travel for business? Let us know in the comments below.

Downtown Toronto Condos, Family Vacations in Toronto, Fitness and Health, Food & Recipes

Travelling with Dietary Restrictions: A Quick Guide

January 4, 2022
Dietary restrictions Photo by Lubo Minar on Unsplash.

How we eat is part of our everyday lives: what we eat, when, and where. But also what we don’t eat. And what we don’t eat shows up in whole new ways when we travel to a new place.

Travelling with dietary needs or restrictions can be difficult: Packing your own snacks, balancing medications, and hours of extra research on where you can enjoy a good meal without getting sick afterward—sometimes in another language. It’s an extra layer of work that can make it much harder to focus on your business travel, enjoy the neighbourhood, or just kick back and relax on that hard-earned vacation.

But whether it’s allergies, diabetes, food intolerances, religious and cultural diets, or just sticking with a lifestyle that makes you feel great, it’s possible to have the trip of a lifetime and still eat the way you need. When you’re visiting Toronto, DelSuites fully furnished short-term rentals is here to make travel with dietary restrictions not just possible, but the trip of your life.

The flexibility of a full condominium kitchen

When hotel rooms were a traveler’s first option, the advice for traveling with dietary needs was to find a room with a mini-fridge, pack lots of snacks, and do a lot of research.

But since flexible vacation rentals have become more common, we’re all exploring new ways to experience a destination, and the standard special diet travel advice has become much simpler: stay somewhere you have the option to cook. Even if new restaurants and nights out are the highlights of your trip, you’ll have cooking as a backup option—and can enjoy your trip without the stress of looking for your next meal.

Here’s where DelSuites fully furnished rentals step up: a chance to choose how you want to travel, eat, and play—without sacrificing comfort, convenience, or luxury.

Situated in residential buildings across Toronto’s diverse neighbourhoods, DelSuites short-term rentals are built for everyday living. That means all our suites have fully equipped—and full-sized—kitchens, putting modern appliances, pots, pans, cooking utensils, and a full set of dishes at your disposal. And if you have dietary needs where cross-contamination matters—celiac, kosher, halal, FODMAP, or a severe allergy—it means a private kitchen where there’s no need to stress about other travelers’ meals or a homeshare host’s preferences. You can bring in your favourites and relax with perfect confidence that you’ll be feeling great after dinner.

Eat the way you want

DelSuites’s convenient and dynamic services let you choose how you want to travel without stress—and let you change your mind once you’re here.

If you’d rather do your own cooking for one or every meal of the day, our booking concierges can help you prearrange a grocery order to be delivered on your arrival—and our buildings’ friendly staff will get it to your door. Toronto’s diverse, multicultural neighbourhoods mean you’ll have endless options to find essentials, whether it’s a favourite international snack, a holiday dish, or ingredients that are certified gluten-, dairy-, or nut-free. It’s a chance to skip border regulations about food and relax, knowing you’ll have a full fridge by suppertime.

If you’re used to carrying snacks, you’ll have the space and equipment to prep and store them for your day out—and stop relying on dry food or non-perishables. Or, with the city’s array of options, you’ll have a chance to discover new favourites.

And if you’re looking forward to trying Toronto’s dizzying array of restaurants—and leaving cooking at home for a while—our full-sized fridges will let you store extra helpings from your new favourite takeout place for those midnight leftovers snacks.

But best of all: If you change your mind and decide you’d rather eat in after all, you’ll have the flexibility to do it without fuss or consequences. And instead of thinking about meal planning, you’ll get to focus on the experience.

Enjoy one of Canada’s top dining cities—without breaking the budget

However you eat, Toronto’s an excellent city for food-lovers. It’s a multicultural, diverse, and curiosity-driven place to eat where you can find classic fine dining from top chefs on the same block as warm, generous Anishinaabe pow wow eats—and an enthusiastic lineup for both.

But everyone who eats a slightly different diet knows finding food that works can comes with a cost—paleo, keto, lactose-free, nut allergies, and celiac-safe foods can come with a serious price markup, and that cost can add up as you pile on restaurant meal after restaurant meal.

DelSuites helps you balance your travel budget by letting you save the costs on premium food and take care of easy meals on your own. With a chance to whip up a quick smoothie or omelette for breakfast, you can really savour your restaurant budget with a few high-end treats—instead of a lot of mid-range meals.

Eat, Play, Love

Most of all, everyone at DelSuites wants to make sure your experience in Toronto is a great one. Contact us at DelSuites by phone at (647) 370-3504 or email info@delsuites.com and we’ll help you set up diet-friendly accommodations—and make sure dinner’s on the table when you arrive.

 

Food & Recipes, Toronto Condos, toronto toursim

Eat the City: Toronto’s Best Specialty Grocery Options

December 15, 2021
Specialty grocery photo by Angele J from Pexels.

A huge fridge, a pristine stove, and a month or two in a new city—of course you want to do some absolutely amazing cooking.

Whether you’re recovering from a medical visit, sticking to a specific diet, or just absolutely on the go during your workday, there are plenty of reasons to check out Toronto’s grocery delivery options while staying in a fully-furnished DelSuites condominium. But for every Instacart buggy or supermarket-run service, there are a few delivery plans just off the beaten track: offering specialty grocery services, international products, or vegetables grown lovingly close to home.

We’re happy to profile a few of Toronto’s best specialty grocery delivery services—and help you make the most of that big, shiny, alluring kitchen.

Foodshare Toronto

Foodshare Toronto’s Good Food Box can hardly be called offbeat. It’s been delivering fresh, healthy, affordable fruit and vegetables across the city for over 30 years—and rolling the profits into community gardens, school programs, and incubators that nurture new Toronto food businesses.

But the box itself—a favourite among budget-conscious Torontonians—is infinitely adjustable: orders can be sized up or down, requested pre-cut for disabilities, and customized to arrive at your lobby weekly, biweekly, or monthly. You can also support racialized farmers with the Dismantling White Supremacy box, taste more diverse options, and support local agriculture.

The Good Food Box also offers add-on options like pasture-raised meat, bread, crackers, local honey, and coffee from fair trade Toronto roaster Alternative Grounds.

Iqbal Halal Foods

Locally-owned Iqbal Halal Foods, one of Toronto’s biggest halal markets, is enough of a neighbourhood hub that it hosted Thorncliffe Park’s pop-up vaccine clinics. But for shoppers outside Toronto’s Midtown, this halal superstore also delivers: not just their own meat and produce, but a huge swath of South Asian and Middle Eastern brands, from Pakistan’s Shangrila to Vimto.

Next-day delivery is free over a $129 order, and they’ll deliver up to 150km from their flagship store inside a week: everywhere in the Greater Toronto Area and throughout Southern Ontario.

Kosher City Plus

From North York to Midtown, Kosher City Plus delivers everything you need to set up a kosher household for a month—or a whole year. With an in-house bakery and deli including freshly baked challah, a line of kosher gluten-free products, and Cholov Yisroel and Passover brands, they cover the whole calendar. And it’s not limited to food: Kosher City Plus also brings affordable seasonal holiday supplies and Hebrew-language magazines and newspapers to your door.

With deliveries from Monday to Thursday—and no fee after a $100 minimum order—they’re the easiest way to set up your temporary kosher kitchen.

T&T Supermarket

It’s not exactly offbeat, but British Columbia-based East Asian grocery chain T&T Supermarket is a classic.

Since COVID-19 hit, T&T offers next-day delivery—and same-day pickup!—on everything from produce, meat, seafood and premade meals to the pantry staples you need to fully stock an Asian kitchen. If you’re outside their delivery zone? They’ll pop non-perishables in the mail to almost any postal code in Canada—which means there’s no reason to go without oyster sauce or gojuchang ever again.

Delivery is $7.99 for orders over $100, and a wide range of payment options including Wechat Pay and AliPay are accepted.

Dufferin Grove Farmers’ Market

One of west Toronto’s most enduring—and celebrated—farmers’ markets took things online when COVID-19 closed in, and they’re still bringing the farm directly to our doorsteps.

The Dufferin Grove Farmers’ Market webstore shows what its dozens of farmers, food producers, and diverse local brands are harvesting this week, and delivers your picks on market day.

As well as the usual seasonal produce, the market features sustainably-raised meat, fair trade chocolate, water buffalo and sheep cheese, Inuit-sourced fish, wild-foraged preserves, Tibetan, Mexican and Indian premade meals, and more.

Orders go in from 12pm Saturday to 12pm Tuesday every week, and Thursday afternoon deliveries—by cargo bike when possible!—cover most of downtown and Midtown, up to Lawrence Avenue.

100km Foods

Sometimes you’ve just got to pull out all the stops, and if you’re the kind of diner who likes to know exactly where your beets came from, 100km Foods has you covered: a wholesale local food distributor that turned to home delivery when COVID shut its high-end restaurant clients down.

100km’s organized produce, meat, and dairy boxes offer a rotating weekly sample of its farm-fresh products. But there’s also a regular selection of seasonal produce, meat, seafood, cheese, charcuterie, snacks, and pantry goods, as well as chef-made meals from some of the fine dining restaurants they supply.

With their products mostly grown in Niagara and Prince Edward County—and overwhelmingly organic and ecologically-conscious—it’s a true taste of Ontario regional foods.

Deliveries go out Wednesday to Saturday in most Toronto neighbourhoods, with a $6 delivery fee; free if your order’s over $100.

Fresh City Farms

Fresh City Farms started as an urban farm on decommissioned military land by Toronto’s Downsview Airport, and a veggie stand. Inside a dozen years, it’s bloomed into a homegrown grocery chain with multiple downtown locations, a dizzying selection of organic, local-grown, and small artisan-brand products, and an unswerving commitment to showcasing sustainable, healthy food. And that includes a bottle shop that focuses on Ontario wine, beer, and cider.

With most of its products labeled local, sustainable, and certified organic, you know exactly what you’re getting on Fresh City’s online shop—which is a real help if you eat gluten-free, keto, vegan, or dairy-free. And they still offer the organic produce boxes that transitioned them from farmstand to supermarket, weekly, biweekly, or on demand.

Deliveries go out seven days a week: $4.99 for a specific timeslot or $2.99 if you’re not choosy.

Roll your sleeves up in the kitchen

With full kitchens, full-sized fridges, and friendly concierges, a DelSuites furnished apartment rental makes trying Toronto’s best flavours easy. Contact us at DelSuites by phone at (647) 370-3504 or email info@delsuites.com to book your food-friendly accommodations.

Downtown Toronto, Food & Recipes

The Best Bakeries in Toronto

October 11, 2019
bakeries in Toronto

There’s nothing quite like the irresistible aroma of freshly baked bread. 

There are several excellent bakeries in Toronto where dedicated bakers are kneading dough at the crack of dawn, pulling their soft, warm loaves out of the oven before most city-dwellers are even awake. At these fantastic bakeries, you will find fresh pastries, crusty baguettes, handmade cakes and so much more. 

Here are just a few examples of the best bakeries that Toronto has to offer. 

The Rolling Pin

The Rolling Pin is one of the most well known bakeries in Toronto, famous for their elaborately decorated over the top donuts. The owners of this bakery, Isabelle and Vanessa, are truly passionate about creating innovative desserts. They experiment with new flavours all the time and they always offer creative taste combinations – such as a Key Lime Pie donut or a marshmallow Fluff filled donut topped with Rice Krispies and drizzled with Nutella. The Rolling Pin also offers baking classes, so you can learn how to make your own unique cake creations. 

Through Being Cool Vegan Baking Co. 

If you don’t eat animal products, that doesn’t mean that you have to miss out on the bakery fun. Through Being Cool is a vegan bakery that serves up everything from cookies, doughnuts and scones – harming no creatures in the process. They believe that vegan food doesn’t always have to be healthy salads and other “rabbit food” – it can be sweet, indulgent baked treats as well! They also serve great coffee, made with high quality beans from Anchored Coffee. 

Sweet Hart Kitchen

In a fantastic location just a few streets away from bustling Kensington Market, Sweet Hart Kitchen is a friendly, welcoming bakery serving up gluten-free, allergen-free and entirely vegan options. Everything they make is 100% vegan and uses real, whole ingredients. They avoid artificial flavours and colours and they make sure their ingredients are fair trade, organic and locally sourced whenever possible. 

bakeries in toronto

Roselle Desserts

From coffee caramel cakes to lemon tarts to Earl Grey infused cakes, you’ll find a delightful selection of treats at Roselle Desserts. The bakers, Bruce Lee and Stephanie Duong, honed their dessert-making skills in Hong Kong and Paris before they set up shop in Corktown. There is a strong Parisian influence here, with dainty and delicate French pastries decorated with toppings that are as delicious as they are beautiful. 

Bakerbots

Located on a side street near Ossington Station, Bakerbots is a friendly and welcoming bakeshop that offers sweets such as cookies, macarons, cupcakes and fruit pies. One of their specialties is ice cream sandwiches, with surprising and delicious flavour combinations such as cocoa and French mint, Burnt marshmallow, Guinness stout and Maple bacon. 

Planning a trip to Toronto?

These are just a few of the many delicious bakeries you can check out when you visit Toronto. For a warm and welcoming place to stay during your trip, take a look at our furnished apartments