Crunchy frog
Canada is, by definition, a multi-cultural society. Toronto, being such a huge loadstone for immigrants from all over the world, even more so. Just to throw a number at you - about 70% of the people who live in Toronto were not born in Canada. Make of that what you will.

One of the happy results of that is that you can find almost any type of food within walking distance of my downtown apartment. More importantly, given my fondness of weird food, is you can find almost any kind of weird food around. Today we went over to Kensington Market, once a thriving Jewish community which now proffers mainly stuff the very existence of which any respectable Jew will most likely deny.

We finally decided to stop and eat at a Vietnamese restaurant that seemed full (a good sign of a good place) and not too expensive (unlike a Portuguese place that was oddly pricey). The menu, once we settled down, included many delights: roasted frog, BBQ pigeon (not quails -- they had those too -- pigeons, the kind you could find outside in the street) and some stuff I didn't even know what it was. Despite really wanting to, I couldn't bring myself to eat the frog (do you think they take out the bones?). I took a normal looking entree, but, not to disappoint myself, chose for the first course a snail soup. L went all blachs at it, but she's aware of my little fetish, so she was supportive. Didn't agree to taste it, though.

The taste? The soup had a fairly strong tomato taste to it, and it was a bit spicy. The snails themselves seemed to be nearly tasteless in the face of all this. It reminded me most of the taste of eel, though the texture was much more... bulgy, I think, like it was comprised of little bubbles of harder stuff. It was nice, all in all.

We will come back there, I'm sure. We both very much enjoyed out meals, even if I disregard the creepiness factor. The food was very good. Next time, though, I promise to swallow the frog!