Perfil de Grian1954

We stayed at the Days Inn hotel, London, Ontario for a few nights in mid-November. This is not in central London but more on the outskirts of the city. The hotel is surrounded by large drive-in retail outlets such as Wallmart and Best Buy.
We were located on the ground floor and found the room comfortable in every way as well being quiet both day and night. A fridge and microwave was available. We used the laundry service which was very handy. Our car could be parked right outside our window. Some tradesmen type vehicles appeared early evening and were gone in the morning which made me think the hotel was popular with travelling reps and people working in that area temporarily. We were very satisfied with the service at Days Inn hotel.

Offshore is a café on a corner of Gibson Street located very close to where the river Kelvin meets Kelvingrove Park. I have always admired the elegance of the curve of the tenement at this corner.
Knowing that Offshore offered free WiFi I had arranged to meet someone to give them a laptop with a wireless PC card I no longer needed. The café has some pleasant sofas but since it appeared to be quite popular with students with laptops all the sofas were occupied and I had to make do with an upright seat. I had a coffee which cost 1.90 and my understanding was that I could take up to an hour to relish it. Their WiFi connection worked fine [one guess what the passphrase is!]. I was using the laptop’s battery but I noticed some customers were plugged into the mains.
The staff were pleasant and friendly and the café was quite a nice, relaxed and comfortable place to be with a coffee and laptop for an hour.

The Three Craws is a pub and restaurant located on Crow Road, Glasgow, very close to Jordanhill railway station. My mum lives close by and we go for a pub lunch there every now and again. We last visited in early December. This is a popular place for lunches, the clientele typically drawn from the surrounding areas of Jordanhill and Hyndland. The atmosphere is relaxed and the interior décor and style, fresh and pleasant, rather more like a hotel than a pub by Glaswegian standards. But pub The Three Craws certainly is, offering a good selection of real ales. I had a pint of Landlord, an award winning British beer from Timothy Taylor brewery. We both had haddock in a beer batter with chips and peas which was on a special offer, an enjoyable lunch. The service was good and the bill moderate. My mum and I will be back before long!

Windermere’s Café nestles within the Windermere Manor complex and is virtually on the campus of the University of Western Ontario, London. The restaurant has a glass covered patio seating area. Although it was dark when we visited and a shade cool I imagine the patio could be very pretty in the summer. Naturally the place is very popular with academics and visitors to the university. A group of us met for supper one evening in late November. One deal offered which is popular and seems good value is the Prime Rib Dinner Buffet. Some of the group went for the buffet deal but not feeling hungry enough for more than one course I opted for a good old beef burger with fries and salad which was good and wholesome. I had a glass of Canadian dry white wine, the name of which I cannot remember, and it was ok but just a little bit acrid.
The service was typically Canadian, civil and pleasant and the bill was moderate.
This is a good place to eat if you are visiting London, Ontario and connected with the university in some way.

Novotel is part of the Accor Hotel group, a massive global chain. They are surprisingly reasonably priced places to stay.
Our last night in Toronto was spent in the Novotel Hotel on The Esplanade near the waterfront. We arrived to check in quite early. There were two receptionists present, one was reticent and the other talkative. For our sins we were served by the talkative member of staff. He could not find our booking. Finding it entailed going to another area which meant the other arrivals would not be dealt with promptly. So he asked us if we would mind waiting while he served the next customer. The problem was that a string of customers appeared in succession and formed a queue. He served the queue. We waited and waited... My partner was patient. My patience evaporated after the first customer had been served and he didn’t get back to us as we understood he would. I was quietly simmering for a period and eventually I became infuriated. Fortunately it was my patient partner who dealt with the receptionist so my steam evaporated from a safe distance away. Good customer service is something I know about, appreciate and respect. When we finally checked in some 30-odd minutes later I was already soured towards Novotel hotel, Toronto.
Everything else was OK. The room and bathroom was clean and the bed comfortable although the bed covers were just a little thin. This was ironic since we had turned down the heating to make the air in the room less stuffy through the night.
The hotel allows you to leave your car in their underground park until midnight of the day you have checked out. This saved us some bucks.

Visiting Richtree Market restaurant in Toronto in November was an unforgettable and unique experience for me. There is nothing I know of in Scotland and the U.K. that compares. The experience is difficult to describe by the standards of conventional reviews of eating houses. Make no mistake the Richtree restaurant is a market with a ‘carnivalesque‘ atmosphere. Panache, vibrant colour; heaps, piles and stacks of produce, hustle and bustle that presents anarchy and organisation side by side: these are some of the first impressions gleaned from a visit.
What we have here is a novel concept. Those who put it into practice deserve to be applauded.
So impressed were we with this restaurant that we ate there several times but since Qype rules forbid me reviewing the same business more than once I will describe only one of our visits.
A group of us went there for supper one evening late November. Usually in the early evening you have to queue to be seated. When allocated a table each person is given a swipe card. Then, when you select from a menu an assistant takes your card and the order is added to your account. There is a good variety of very tempting foods. I settled for some soup, beef barley broth, with a main course of some chicken, cooked Cajun style, served with potatoes and vegetables. We shared a bottle of Mundavi wine. The bill was moderate. I think part of the trick eating at Richtree inexpensively is to stick to a special offer or few items as I did. Once you start selecting portions right, left and centre (and it is very tempting) your bill will mount up rapidly.
The service was civil and efficient; utensils not being used are taken away as soon as you sit down. The restaurant appeared fairly popular for families with young children. An eclectic and interesting range of music was played, loud enough to be appreciated but not intrusive. I also really liked some of the music played. I am not knowledgeable of contemporary Canadian music but what we heard that pricked up my ears was similar to the sounds of a band like that of Les Cowboys Fringants: that is a fusion combining folk and country elements with rock music.
When you leave your table your bill is settled by your swipe card at a cash point close to the exit. As is typical in North America since our group comprised at least 4 adults the service charge was included. Since various Richtree employees may have been involved in serving you it may be that a fraction of the service charge will be allocated to each of them through the data processed by the swipe card. This seems fair.
If you have not been to a Richtree Market restaurant then it is an experience that you must try.

The brand name Tim Hortons is ubiquitous in Canada. Driving along Canadian city main streets it seems a Tim Hortons outlet appears every several hundred yards. There are some 3000 branches, the majority located in Canada with around 500 in the U.S. They began in the 1960s initially only offering coffee and donuts. Now they do soup and sandwich style lunches offering combo deals as well as a range of bakery goods. Good coffee has been a consistently strong feature of the brand.
We were travelling east towards London, Ontario on Highway 401 and feeling like a bite for lunch stopped at Ingersoll, a fairly small town close by. The Tim Hortons Ingersoll branch is strategically located being one of the first retail premises encountered as you enter the town. We noticed people eating there who appeared to be truckers and delivery drivers.
My partner and I both had some chicken noodle soup which at 2.59 Canadian dollars [equivalent of 1.47 GBP] was very reasonable. The soup, served with crackers of course and not bread, was just a little greasy but still very good. I had a chicken sandwich too was quite wholesome. It had some vinaigrette dressing which I would have appreciated knowing about beforehand. In Canada the sandwich default tends to be with dressing rather than without as is the case in the U.K. We both had a tea as refreshment poured in a Tim Hortons container, a familiar sight in Canada.
The bill in total was moderate and the service, Canadian style, was once again civil and cordial.

Scotland Yard is the name of a homely pub located in downtown Toronto close to the harbour front area. We visited the pub for supper one evening towards the end of November. The pub’s style and design resembles a typical Scottish [but of course!] or British pub. I found the music a little too loud and the pub itself just a shade too dark but relaxed and atmospheric nevertheless. It’s quite a ‘sportsy’ place. Some darts enthusiasts were seriously involved in a match close to our table. In front of me was a large TV screen showing a game of basket ball between, I assume, two Canadian teams.
I ordered a Guinness stew from their menu as did one of our friends. My partner opted for a macaroni dish. The stew, typical pub grub, was fine. I washed it down with a pint of Guinness. The food was moderately priced and the prices of the drinks were on a par with those of central Glasgow and Edinburgh in Scotland.
The service was civil and cordial in the Canadian style to which we had become accustomed.

The Elephant and Castle is a pub in central Toronto. Part of a small chain of pubs and restaurants of the same name across Canada and the U.S., the first E.&C. was opened in Vancouver in 1977. We went to the one in Toronto for a light lunch and a beer towards the end of November. The pub interior is not unlike that of a typical Scottish or British pub. E.&C.’s vision emulates British pub style offering a range of beers and traditional meals like fish & chips.
The customers present seemed quite a varied bunch. The atmosphere was relaxed and quite pleasant. My partner and I ordered some beef barley broth. The soup was great with plenty of beef chunks, so many in fact that it resembled an Irish stew. On a cold Canadian late-November afternoon it was just what we both needed. The soup was very reasonably priced too. My partner had a half pint of Guinness and I was going to have a Guinness too until I spied Kilkenny on tap. Not having had a pint of Kilkenny ale for a good while I decided to try one. The creamy head is similar to that of a Guinness but the beer is more like pale or red ale. The prices of the beers were on a par with those in pubs in central Glasgow or Edinburgh in Scotland. We were served with typical Canadian civility.

The Knotty Pine restaurant is located on Wellington Road, London, Ontario. The hotel we were staying in was close by. Feeling peckish one mid-November day around lunchtime we decided to try it out.
The seating area is quite large but a section was closed and of course I happened to stray into it which was rather naughty of me [geddit?]. OK, that’s enough of these kinds of corny jokes. The lady serving told me that the area was only used in very busy times and I was ushered into the main eating area. This was laid out in typical North American economy diner style with the utilitarian, vinyl, upholstered units that can take four adults. I expect much of the trade to the Knotty Pine came from passing truck drivers. We ordered some soup of the day, a beef barley broth, which was quite filling.
Cultural difference no. 1: In Canada, like the U.S., soup is served with crackers. In the U.K soup is invariably served with bread. I found crackers with soup a little odd but quite pleasant. I took advantage of a soup and sandwich deal which was bumper value. The sandwich was a chicken salad.
Cultural difference no. 2: Canadians by default will serve such a sandwich with some dressing – typically some vinaigrette mixture like caesar dressing. In Scotland and the U.K. the default would be a salad sandwich without dressing. I got kind of irritated with this Canadian presumptuousness on occasion. Despite that the sandwich was good.
Cultural difference no. 3: Instead of a sandwich my partner ordered a salad. In Canada and the U.S. they nibble like rabbits on a salad before having their main course. I can’t get my head round this odd habit! In Scotland and the U.K. we would have a salad with our main course hence the name – side-salad. I mean a side salad adds contrast and variety to a main dish: that is the whole point! Instead of being a herbivore and then a carnivore you must be an omnivore, all at once!!
The lady who served us was great. She worked very hard and yet again I was genuinely impressed with Canadian restaurant service. The bill was very reasonable. I put some notes on the plate and was waiting for change but it never appeared within a reasonable amount of time so I assumed it had been taken to be a tip. We were not bothered in the least having had a very good value for money lunch.