The creature in the sky
Got sucked in a hole
now there's a hole in the sky
And the ground's not cold
And if the ground's not cold
everything is gonna burn
We'll all take turns
I'll get mine too
Another Tuesday, another Taste. These ain't exactly cheerful times here at WC Street, what with the unending nightmare that persists on ruining our lives/killing us by either direct effect or influence via its existence. To be honest a big reason the TT was started up earlier this year was as way to deflect, at least for a little while, the troubles of the world, both for the enjoyment of you dear reader and for the author myself... well. It's real damn hard to call this, or any deflection, anything resembling a success.
I'm a stubborn asshole though, consistently desperate for anything resembling success... so lets keep this train wreck rolling as long as possible. This week I checked out Grillies!
Grillies is a taco/burger/burrito(?) chain with five locations throughout Toronto. Never heard of em? Hey, me neither. At least, until about a month ago... but anyplace open until 4am during weekdays on the Danforth that isn't an A&W gets my attention.
If you thought the history of Kibo Sushi House on their own website was vague... well Grilles has you checkmated, good sir or madam. The only tangible bit of information I got is: "they've been providing delicious food for years now". Cool. I'll be the judge of that subjective "delicious" term.
I don't get the opportunity to review tacos on the weekly show as much as I'd like, so upon seeing how Grillies has such an item... I simply had to. Add a cheese fries to this equation, much like the Taco Bell's 'Fries Supreme' I spent many a junior high lunch hour chowing down on? How could I not. For my three tacos I went pork, beef and chicken, as a curious carnivore would do.
Starting with the pork... the surface seems quite overdone, like fatty meat fried and done to crispy excessiveness. The exterior of the meat is damn chewy and oily, but also simultaneously has some give to it. There's no dryness, thankfully, more like an tough pork shoulder swimming in its own juices while also tough around the edges because it was cooked at a high heat for too long. We can all relate to that, right? Right? Bah.
It's honestly fine, not exactly great though and man it is sooooo greasy. You taste more grease/oil than anything, it oozes from each bite, which combined with the tough texture surrounding these little bits of pork... we're not off to an ideal start.
Onto the beef taco... which is clearly composed of just generic medium ground beef. Sometimes I think restaurant chains have caught onto my reviewing/assholeish nature and do this deliberately.
Actually, if that were actually true I'd definitely take it over my current reality. Despite that crumbly ground beef texture that screams "I can make this at home", I liked this one the best. The beef is cleverly seasoned, there's a bit of sweet and spicy to the beef itself, like it was pre-sauced or marinated in some way, and while it has some BBQ sauce tang to it there also isn't any stickiness or aggressive sweetness in play. A solid taco!
Finishing on the chicken offering... well. You know when you get cheap Chinese food, order a chicken dish and you get that dark meat and overly oily taste? That's definitely this. Quite juicy (you'd expect dark meat chicken to be so) but there's an odd salty taste to it. It's still enjoyable, though as drippingly greasy and fatty as everything else here. These three tacos all have different tastes, which is good, but all this meat is excessively oily in their own ways... I honestly can't tell if that's because of cheap ingredients or just a general recipe kind of thing. It's unfortunate, since there is clearly some care given to seasoning and concept towards flavour.
Oh yeah, the cheese fries. The fries themselves are very blah, your typical "frozen in a bag, fry when needed" cuts. What saves this somewhat is that combination of sauces: while there's very little cheese taste to this, the assortment of a sour cream and like a chipotle BBQ/salsa creamy drizzle genuinely saves this item from pointlessness. Much like the tacos, the texture of this is all wrong but the flavours jump out and make themselves known. There are sprinklings of tomatoes and cilantro etc but it's definitely that sauce dominating the taste.
Overall... I can't recommend Grillies. It's like they're almost there, they clearly have the right idea in regards of flavour and sauce... but the texture (of the tacos especially) is just off. It's so greasy, occasionally cheap tasting (the chicken and pork in particular) and price-wise not exactly a bargain either.
I certainly didn't hate eating this, unlike my Quarter Pounder review... and it's also unfair to call Grillies even average. It's a bit better than that: the taco shells for instance are of a good quality (nice crunch and a solid corn aftertaste) but the greasiness does the enterprise an injustice. It's like window dressing a cheap supermarket meat with an excellent supporting cast... and it tastes good but suspicious as a result. Unfortunately, I can taste the cheapness.
Burnt Ends -- I'm posting my ranking of the Led Zeppelin discography tomorrow (Wednesday). Gotta clear out my vault and the cobwebs while things are at least terrible.
Hey Doug -- Go Fuck Yourself.
Tuesday Tune -- It's 'Pixies', not 'The Pixies'. Glad we sorted that out for the 1/500,000 people who actually would give a shit. Anyway, great song. Was in a house band once and we would've covered this very tune for a show except it was March 2020 and everything soon went to shit, and is still that. This monkey's gone to heaven.
That's it for me. Things are pretty bad and I'm gonna forgo my usual farewell message of positivity because I, like all of us, am just done with this fucking virus ravaging not only ourselves but also our livelihood. Did my part, I'm vaxxed... still here we are. A lot of what got me personally through 2020 and much of 2021 was at least the idea of hope... that this would actually end eventually and these sacrifices would mean something.
Maybe they still do, yeah probably/definitely do... but me, I'm no superhero. I can only handle so much, on top of my usual problems. Hopefully I can keep this weekly thing going, I genuinely enjoy doing it... and so without diving deeper into my personal mental health lets say goodbye for now. Let's finish by admitting... I'm very sick of my hope being so misplaced... but I hope to be back next week, hope you read it when I do, and don't spill that fucking mustard. That's the last thing you wanna do.
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