Dining Out: Christmas Dinner at Xiang Zi Hot Pot

Every year, my mom and I go out for Christmas dinner, usually a set menu type of deal. But I wanted something a little more comforting this year, and more warming because I've had a runny nose and nasal congestion since Sunday. And what could be more warming than hot pot?

Ready-to-serve dishes: Cucumber salad, lettuce stem salad, and marinated duck tongues

Premium item: Abalone

Napa cabbage, lettuce stems, king oyster mushrooms, and enoki mushrooms

Beef tripe, beef tendon, fish and beef balls, winter melon, daikon, and lotus root

Premium item: Tender beef

Angus beef, beef brisket, beef sirloin, New Zealand lamb, pork belly, and basa fillet

Cooking in mushroom and pork bone broth

Dessert: Fresh-cut papaya, oriental melon, honeydew, and watermelon

On top of their regular menu, they also had a Christmas-exclusive buffet-style spread around the main centre booth, which included ready-to-eat foods like marinated quail eggs, braised tofu, and stewed beef tendon; raw items already separated into dishes that you could pick up instead of ordering from the tablet; a huge variety of all-you-can-drink canned pop; as well as an assortment of cakes, Melona bars, and fruits for dessert. This was awesome. Kinda wish they had this all year round, but I know it's a lot to maintain and it makes the restaurant way more hectic than it needs to be since so many more people are getting up to roam. Still, the food was excellent, the service was excellent, and therefore, Christmas was excellent. 

Hope everyone had a similarly delicious and merry Christmas!

Xiang Zi Hot Pot

Uptown Market Shopping Centre

3989 Highway 7

Markham, ON L3R 5M6

(905) 305-9888

Take Out: Apple Cider, Tanghulu, and Churros at Holiday Fair in the Square

After our downtown adventure, Minji, Daniel, and I went to check out the Holiday Fair in the Square.

Tanghulu
Churros
Custard bungeoppang

It was... disappointing. We dropped by to see what kind of sweet treats we could get, and though Minji picked up a couple boxes of baklava and Turkish delight to bring home, we only got some apple cider, a skewer of tanghulu, and a couple of churros. There were no funnel cakes, no cookies, no crazy holiday-themed hot chocolates. Maybe it's because we went on a Friday, but there were only about 10 food stalls in total, so I'm guessing they open way more stalls on Saturday and Sunday. Either way, we ended up having to make up for the lack of food variety by getting some custard bungeoppang up the street. 

Sigh. This is what we get for not wanting to pay the admission fee for the Winter Village.

Holiday Fair in the Square

Mel Lastman Square

5100 Yonge St.

North York, ON M2N 5V7

(416) 338-3343

Bing Crosby x V of BTS — "White Christmas" Official MV

I'm not into Christmas songs, but when Bing Crosby's estate decides to collaborate with V on "White Christmas" (his most famous song and the world's best-selling single), it's a pretty goddamn big deal. 

Dining Out: Christmas Dinner at La Piazzetta Ristorante

My mom and I decided to switch it up this year and went for Christmas dinner at La Piazzetta instead of Maxim. It did take 30 minutes for our main courses to come out (the kitchen was way too understaffed for such a busy day, but they apologized profusely) and they don't offer an all-you-can-eat cake buffet like Maxim (which I can't take full advantage of anyway because I'm diabetic), but overall, the food was excellent.

Prosciutto honeydew salad
AAA striploin steak with red wine sauce
Tiramisu cake
I decided to get the salad to start instead of soup, and while they offer the same house salad all year round, they decided to serve it with prosciutto and honeydew today, a perfect pairing of sweet and salty. I originally wanted the duck breast for my main course, but they were sold out of it by the time we got there for our 7:30 seating, so I got the AAA striploin instead. It occurred to me that I pretty much got the exact same thing as I did the last time I went there, but this steak was significantly better — juicy, tender, flavourful, and cooked perfectly medium rare (like an actual red middle, not pink). They only have one dessert offering, which is their tiramisu cake, but I'm not mad about it because, you know, it's a freaking good cake. (They serve it cold so it actually tastes like ice cream, which I love.)

Anyway, a successful Christmas dinner — they have less options than Maxim and they're not as creative with their dishes, but it's cheaper and it's way closer, so I can't complain. Would definitely come here again next year. I hope everyone had a great holiday!

La Piazzetta Ristorante

Monte Carlo Inn Toronto Markham

8900 Woodbine Ave.

Markham, ON L3R 5K6

(905) 513-8100

Winterfest 2023 at Canada's Wonderland

For some reason, I didn't know that Canada's Wonderland was open during the winter. For years, I thought they closed right after Halloween Haunt and then re-opened in the spring. But I saw someone's post on IG about the Winterfest funnel cakes at Canada's Wonderland a couple of weeks ago and I was like, "I MUST GO." So I asked my friend Iris if she was interested in going since she loves all things Christmas, and she immediately agreed. 

Winterfest at Canada's Wonderland
Winterfest at Canada's Wonderland
Winterfest at Canada's Wonderland
Winterfest at Canada's Wonderland

Even with a discounted price through Perkopolis, one admission ticket with parking still added up to $48 per person. Pretty goddamn steep for a three-hour visit, but once we walked in, we were met with a truly spectacular sight. And I gotta admit, with the amount of time and labour it took to set all of those lights, it's worth the price. It's once a year, after all.

Turkey Dinner Ball at the Holiday Dining Hall

Our main goal, aside from looking at all the pretty lights, was to eat as many Christmas-themed foods as possible. Of the main dishes, the Turkey Dinner Ball ($14.99) surprisingly ended up being the unanimous favourite. It's exactly as it sounds: turkey meat and stuffing shaped into a ball, battered and deep-fried, and then sat atop a bed of mashed potatoes, with gravy drizzled on top and cranberry sauce on the side. I do wish there was more gravy on the side because the batter ends up absorbing most of it, but the cranberry sauce was a saviour to keep the turkey from getting too dry. 

Turkey Dinner Poutine at the Holiday Dining Hall

The Turkey Dinner Poutine ($14.99) was decent; the quality of the gravy and the cheese curds were great, but the turkey meat sitting on top was a little too dry and also way too smoked. To the point where it overwhelmed all the other flavours of the poutine. Even the cranberry sauce couldn't save it. We ended up taking the turkey off and just ate the poutine as it was meant to be. (Surprised that we found such a good poutine at Canada's Wonderland, of all places.) 

Turkey Maple Cranberry Stromboli at the Holiday Dining Hall

We also decided to get the Maple Turkey Cranberry Stromboli ($13.99), which actually sounded really promising, like a turkey dinner pizza pocket. Except when we got our stromboli, which is made to order, it didn't have maple or cranberry. Upon first bite, we found tomato sauce, cheese, and turkey as expected, but also... beets. Yes, beets. I'm not that mad about it because I love beets, but did they really think we wouldn't notice the replacement of cranberry sauce for beets? (NOT ALL DARK PINK FOOD IS CREATED EQUAL.) So it was basically a pizza pocket with turkey and beets. Like the poutine, you're better off getting the original. 

Gingerbread funnel cake at Festive Funnel Cakes

Finally, we lined up to get a funnel cake — the main reason for our visit to Winterfest. There are three Winterfest options on top of the original Strawberry, but we decided to go for Gingerbread since it seemed the most festive but also the most enticing. Like all the funnel cake options, it comes with the vanilla soft serve ice cream, but this one is topped with gingerbread pieces, drizzled with caramel sauce, and then topped with sprinkles and a sugar cookie. (It was supposed to be a gingerbread man-shaped cookie, but they ran out, so we got a tree-shaped one instead. A little disappointing when gingerbread is actually the theme of your food.) I don't need to tell you that it was hecking delicious, but I do think that it could have benefitted with more sauce because the addition of gingerbread pieces made the funnel cake a little dry. Then again, it probably has two days' worth of calories, fat, and sugar so... maybe not.

Winterfest at Canada's Wonderland
Winterfest at Canada's Wonderland
Winterfest at Canada's Wonderland

We did want to end the night with some hot chocolate, which was surprisingly inexpensive (for a theme park) at $4.99 a cup, but then we saw that they were using the instant Carnation hot chocolate and realized why it was so affordable. We refused to get it because you can literally get a 7-sachet variety pack of Carnation hot chocolate for $5.99 at any supermarket here, so we decided to get some apple cider instead. But upon closer look at the menu board, we saw that one cup (with no alcohol, mind you) started at $11.99, which is just highway robbery. So we refused that, too. But we made up for our failed drink quest with getting some ginger molasses cookies (3 for $10, a total steal) in the Christmas Market, which turned out to be one of the best cookies I've ever eaten in my life.

Overall, I'd say that Winterfest was a success. This is as Christmassy as I'm gonna get.

Canada's Wonderland

1 Canada's Wonderland Drive

Vaughan, ON L6A 1S6

(905) 832-8131

Dining Out: Christmas Dinner at Maxim Restaurant

It's only my mom and I celebrating Christmas together this year, but we still upheld our annual tradition of Christmas dinner at Maxim this evening:

Jumbo prawn with avocado, aburi salmon, and mushroom arancini with seaweed and tobiko crab salads

Tournedos Rossini: Filet mignon with pan-seared foie gras on top of mashed potatoes with roasted vegetables and Madeira sauce

Totally satisfied with this year's menu. (There was also lobster bisque au Cognac for the soup course, but a bowl of brown soup looks really boring and isn't particularly photogenic, so there is no picture. But all you gotta know is that it was rich and full of delicious lobster flavour.) Their appetizer course is always interesting to me because it includes three of the most random selections, ever, and you wouldn't think they would be cohesive at all, but they're always really delicious. Speaking of which, I was pleasantly surprised that my steak was actually cooked such a perfect medium rare, because usually only steakhouses can keep the centre a full red instead of veering into pink. I'm also not usually a huge foie gras lover, but there's so little fat in filet mignon that the foie gras added a really nice buttery flavour and perfect creamy texture to the meat. The heart-shaped puff pastry on top was also a super cute touch.

Black sesame mousse cake

Hazelnut mocha mousse cake

Strawberry almond meringue cake

Of course, the main draw of the Christmas menu at Maxim is the all-you-can-eat cake buffet, which only occurs once a year. Maxim, while having a really decent and varied continental menu, is really known for their cakes. Both my mom and I have to watch our sugar intake, but we still managed to share three slices: the black sesame mousse, the hazelnut mocha mousse, and the strawberry almond meringue. Both mousse cakes were sadly really underwhelming — the black sesame literally had no flavour (I thought it was just me because I was also drinking coffee, but my mother confirmed that there really was no flavour), and the hazelnut mocha mousse had some flavour but literally did not taste like either hazelnut nor mocha (the best adjective I could use is "nut-milky"). The strawberry almond meringue saved the day, and is why it has been my go-to for the last 20 years. It just never disappoints.

I hope everyone had a very merry Christmas and got to eat as much as I did! 😁

Maxim Restaurant

Village Gate Plaza

9665 Bayview Ave.

Richmond Hill, ON L4C 9V4

(905) 883-1465

Unboxing: My Christmas 2021 Haul

I got some Christmas presents! For myself!

Basically, I had some intense retail therapy sessions over the past month, you know, to practice self-love or something, and I used Christmas as an excuse.

Apple iPhone 13 Pro Max 256GB in Silver

Firstly, I finally got myself a new iPhone 13 Pro Max, which I actually wanted to get for my birthday last month but the 256GB silver model was sold out EVERYWHERE, so I had to just keep checking Apple to see if there was a location I could reserve it at. It finally became available at my nearest Apple Store just in time for the holidays, so I snatched that baby up quick and traded in my iPhone 11 Pro Max.

BTS x Casetify "Butter" iPhone 13 Pro Max Cases
BTS x Casetify "Melted Butter" Floaty Case for iPhone 13 Pro Max
BTS x Casetify "Pancake Medley" Case for iPhone 13 Pro Max

Obviously with a new phone comes new phone cases! Okay, not gonna lie, I bought these BTS x Casetify "Butter" phone cases for the 13 Pro Max before I even secured the phone. The collab cases were released in October and I HAD TO HAVE THEM, so I just bought them because I knew I was going to get the 13 Pro Max anyway. I might be the only person who buys phone cases for a phone they don't have yet, but as if I would miss out on BTS phone cases featuring butter and pancakes... 

Saint Laurent Black Grained Calfskin Monogram Bi-Fold Wallet
Saint Laurent Black Grained Calfskin Monogram Bi-Fold Wallet
Saint Laurent Black Grained Calfskin Monogram Bi-Fold Wallet

I had worked quite a lot of OT over the past two months and as a result, I thought I would finally splurge on a YSL wallet. I wanted something classic and compact since I've been wanting to downsize my purse, but would still hold my essential cards, cash, and coins. This one checked all the boxes. And thus, it became the second designer purchase I have ever made in my life. (The first one being the Miu Miu wallet I bought over nine years ago.) I've never been someone who collects designer items (let's be real, I spend all my money on BTS instead), but I'd been using old, worn out Kate Spade wallets that I bought at the outlet store years ago and I thought, "I DESERVE THIS."

Nespresso Vertuo Next Matte Black
Nespresso 12-Capsule Discovery Set
Nespresso Coffee Capsules (Left to right: Double Espresso Chiaro, Diavolitto, Altissio, Il Caffè, and Jamaica Blue Mountain)

Then I finally splurged on a Nespresso Vertuo Next machine. One of the first things that you'll learn about me is that I love coffee and need it to function. I had had a Keurig several years ago but wasn't impressed with it since every single cup, regardless of brand or type of coffee, never tasted the same as its original format. (For example, Starbucks or Tim Hortons K-cups are never as good as getting it from the store.) So I gave up on the automated coffee makers and went back to manual ones, and have just been making regular drip coffee for the past five years.

But my workplace has Nespresso machines, which I use almost everyday, and every single cup I make — whether it's espresso or coffee — is always excellent. They just produce a richer, better quality cup of coffee. There's no need to fuss around with adding an exact amount of water per cup — you just pour water into the big reservoir, and the machine will automatically dispense the perfect amount of water depending on the capsule you use. So I'd been eyeing Nespresso machines for the last couple months. And finally, I saw that they were offering $100 off all of their machines! Which includes a free discovery pack of 12 capsules! And a $25 off voucher for 50 capsules! So I got a brand new Nespresso machine, a 12-capsule discovery pack, and 5 boxes of capsules for under $150. I AM SO EXCITED TO MAKE COFFEE EVERYDAY.

Dr. Martens Sheridan Combat Boots in Black
Kamik Rogue Mid Waterproof Winter Boot in Black
SoftMoc Topanga Black Lace Up Ankle Boots

I also got myself some new boots from SoftMoc. 'Cause it's winter. And they're cute.

 BTS x AmorePacific Laneige "Permission to Dance" Lip Sleeping Mask
Fresh Sugar Lychee Eau de Parfum and Sugar Advanced Therapy Recovery Lip Mask
Anastasia Beverly Hills Sultry Eyeshadow Palette
Anastasia Beverly Hills Lash Brag Volumizing Mascaras and Brow Wiz Skinny Brow Pencils in Medium Brown
Marvis Toothpaste in Whitening Mint, Classic Strong Mint, Aquatic Mint, and Jasmin Mint

I did get some Christmas gifts from my friends, too. Two jars of the limited edition BTS x AmorePacific Laneige "Permission to Dance" Lip Sleeping Mask (it's BTS, it's purple, it's gummy bear-flavoured, and I've been using this lip mask for years, so obviously, I AM OBSESSED). A 100ml bottle of my favourite Fresh Sugar Lychee Eau de Parfum and a jar of Fresh Sugar Advanced Therapy Recovery Lip Mask. The Anastasia Beverly Hills Sultry Eyeshadow Palette plus three Brow Wiz Brow Pencils, plus two tubes of Lash Brag Volumizing Mascara. Four tubes of my favourite Marvis Toothpaste (seemingly random but I mentioned it in passing to my friend one day, so she snatched up four for me because she saw it on sale at The Bay).

But the present that my brother gave me takes the cake.

Autographed BTS You Never Walk Alone album (front)

Yes, it is an autographed copy of BTS' You Never Walk Alonealbum, signed by all seven members.

About a month ago, he texted me out of the blue to ask me who my favourite BTS member is and what my favourite BTS album is. I told him that Jimin and Jungkook are my biases and my favourite album is You Never Walk Alone because it's the Wings album but with "Spring Day" and "Not Today," which makes it the ultimate queen. He tried to be all smooth about it and told me, "Well, Jungkook is obviously my bias because of his incredible soothing voice," and, "My favourite album is Skool Luv Affair. All the tracks are great, so I obviously can't pick a favourite..." I was like, "Chris, I've been an ARMY for years. Stop Googling shit and reciting the BTS Wiki page." I mean, I did find it suspicious that my 36-year-old brother, who is most definitely not an ARMY, tried to converse with me about BTS all of a sudden. I figured it was for a Christmas gift. 

Autographed BTS You Never Walk Alone album (back)

But I would never have expected this in a million years. As it turns out, he asked some of his business partners in Seoul to see if they had any connections to BTS. And as it turns out, one connection has a connection who has another connection. And he somehow procured me a completely authentic, fully signed copy of my favourite BTS album. I don't know how much it cost him, but I will surely be buried with this album. And in case you're wondering, yes, I did buy a shadow box frame for it so I can showcase its magical aura.

Suffice it to say, this has been the best Christmas, ever.