Feasting in the East 1- Toronto

The Pomegranate, at 420 College Street, Traditional Persian Cuisine, I'm looking at what appears to be a Persian tagine and order that. You can almost melt in it by looking at it here.

Last time I was in Toronto visiting my friend Bishop, in 1984, we ate well. This time, we were determined to eat even better.

At first, Bishop had suggested Thai, but I demured so he came up with this place they'd savoured before and thus, again. It was walking distance.

Vegetarian caviar, tapenade of green olives marinated in pomegranate/walnut sauce. I mean, it's called Pomegranate so how can I lose? With a generous amount of fresh garlic, intones the menu. Sounds healthy. Maybe it will do push-ups for me?

Back to the entree above, described fruitfully as dried apricots in a safron sauce with boneless chicken pieces, served with creamy yogurt. Are there non-creamy yogurts? Do some yogurts just sit there, yoga-like, motionless, yurt-inspiring. Yawning into health.

The specials of the day both involved lamb, one lime oriented, the other quincy. Bishop went Quincy.



I thought about the lamb lime but haven't the experience with this meat to choose to begin my culinary tour of the best of the east with visions of babyhood lamb wallpaper deconstructing my tongue's dreams so stick with chicken. I mean really, how much harm can you do with chicken?

This was so good I wished I could eat it endlessly. I stupidly ordered the olive caviar thing which was intriguing in a Sherlock Holmes discovered he's not dead kind of way and you wanted to go and pay BBC taxes for the best digitally delivered discovery of the things that can be done with olives when Alexander the Great is in need of a wife. So just a microslice of bread diminished my capacity to consume even more of the divine Iranian tagine with plums (careful of the pits, the server told us. she was well tipped) with was further diminshed by how tired I was from the trip.

Thankfully Deb enjoyed the taken home magic food, as Bishop and I caught up on our decades-interrupted conversations. Interrupted by a phone call from The Pomegranate, telling me I'd left my microcassette there. Great food. Greater service. Toronto welcomes me. The fruit tasted like it had been married to the species chicken since before the garden of Eden.