Extremely informal taco review

So last night I went out  for dinner to the only place in Toronto that, as far as I can tell anyway, will actually serve vegetarian tacos.

Yes I am vegetarian, have been since January. So far it's been pretty frictionless, save for the family potluck wherein every single dish featured bacon (my fault probably for forgetting to tell them I don't actually eat meat anymore).

Anyway, the place is called Kitch and I'm going to go ahead and cut through the tension and just say it sucks. Or rather, it's two vegetarian tacos (yam+chipotle+goat cheese and beet+walnut pesto+goat cheese+basil) suck. Maybe their meat selections are better but brother, for $9/per two tacos there are better options available.

The taco trend has pretty much exploded all over Toronto, so much so that Torontoist has begun a "Tacos of Summer" series that explores the different tacquerias in the city. Like the other current food trends (Izakayas and chacuteries) that are super hot right now you guys it's not terribly convenient for vegetarians.

And for vegetarian foodies/gourmands/whatevers? Forget about it.

I don't really want to talk much about the restaurant itself because I don't really care about how it looks, what music it plays, or what kind of tattoos our server had (I think she maybe had a half sleeve). The only thing worth mentioning there is that it's way the fuck out on Dupont, across from that bastion of sadness, the Galleria mall (not to be confused with the awesome Korean super market of the same name). I only mention that because if you really are jonesing for $9 meat tacos, there are probably better locations (hell, there's that little one in K-Town -- I don't remember what it's called, but it's got the sign that claims it's home to "Toronto's 'best' tacos" which is always great to see).

Instead I'd like to talk about the food because that is what I like to talk about all the time anyway.

First off is the yam+chipotle+goat cheese, which was the better of the two. It was warm, although the shells it was served in were not, and moderately flavourful. Now, it's hard to go wrong with the yam and chipotle flavour combo -- one of my favourite things to make is a yam chipotle enchilada -- but the addition of goat cheese to the mix is pretty weird. Like, I like goat cheese a whole lot, so I was intrigued, but the execution was lacking. There wasn't a very strong chipotle flavour, the yam mash was watery, and the goat cheese was just sort of weirdly over-powering.

The beet walnut though...  yeesh. I took my first bite, looked at my friend, and said "this tastes bizarre". That is probably the best you can hope for. The taco was cold, the beets were bland and watery, the walnut pesto was probably absent, the goat cheese was again too much, and the basil was just odd odd odd. This mix would probably be better served on a bed of noodles, where the flavours would be allowed to spread over a wider medium, rather than just being crammed in a tiny taco, where all of its subtleties are lost.

HOW I WOULD IMPROVE THESE MESSES

I would start by not buying my yam and/or beets in a can. I don't mind using canned substitutions as a time saver, but when you are a fucking restaurant and you are charging me nine goddamn dollars, you can maybe afford to buy an actual yam and some actual beets and fucking roast them yourself. Do you know how good roast beet tastes? They're goddamn amazing.

Ironically, I would then just buy some chipotles canned in adobo because I'm pretty sure they just used powdered chipotle which is ridiculous because a can of chipotles cost less than $3 what is wrong with you.

I would put some fuckin garlic up in that pesto because I couldn't taste any.

Finally, no goat cheese. It was ambitious, guy who designed this menu at Kitch, but it didn't really work in execution. I'm not really a cheese expert so I don't really have any suggestions on what to use instead. Maybe I'll ask my fellow veg pal who fuckin loves cheese.I bet she knows what's up.

FINAL SCORE: "don't go to that place unless they get a new chef maybe".