» Reviews - Simon Lau

Summerlicious at Café Moroc

Twice a year many of Toronto’s top restaurants participate in winterlicious and summerlicious. This year there were 130 establishments offering a special 3-course prix fixe menu to give you the opportunity of sampling their delicious food. You can go for either a lunch or dinner with some places just offering dinner seating.
This summer Karen and I decided to go to Café Moroc, an establishment at 49 Front Street East. They have a $15 lunch and $25 dollar dinner. You can spend upwards of $35 for dinner at some places.
Café Moroc is one of two restaurants inside a single store, they are also known as the Sultan’s Tent. The difference is ambiance. Café Moroc is a little more casual and Sultan’s Tent is a little more private. At the Sultan’s Tent, the staff will teach you how to belly dance. The food is the same but the prices are more expensive at the Sultan’s Tent. They were not on the summerlicious menu.
Arriving for a 5:30 dinner, here were our options for ordering:
Appetizer:
Harira: A hearty tomato based broth, with chickpeas, kidney beans, lentils and a blend of Moroccan spices
or
Sliced Smoked Duck Breast Salad: Baby lettuces, dressed with a Champagne pomegranate vinaigrette, tossed with fresh fine cut vegetables, cherry tomatoes and sliced mango, finished with parmesan, asiago and romano cheese
or
Maftoul: Hand rolled “Moroccan Cigars”, hot crispy pastry stuffed with a mixture of mildly spiced beef, cashews and raisins, topped with chipotle aioli
Main
Moroccan Beef Ribs
Tender fall off the bone beef seasoned and glazed with Moroccan spices, served with sweet potato and carrot purée and roast garlic mashed mini reds, accompanied by grilled vegetables
or
Keskesu Casablanca: Moroccan seasoned couscous and tagine sauce* topped with oven roast fresh carrot, parsnip, zucchini, summer squash, tomato, red onion and sweet peppers
or
Mango Glazed Salmon: A pan seared 8-ounce fillet of salmon, glazed with mango chutney coulis, served with saffron basmati rice and traditional Moroccan root vegetables
or
Chicken Marrakesh: Supreme of chicken stuffed with chorizo sausage and Herbes de Provence, served with sweet potato and carrot purée and roast garlic mashed mini reds, finished with roast chicken demi glace, Accompanied by traditional Moroccan root vegetables
or
Braised Lamb Feast: Slow braised lamb shank served with tagine* seasoned couscous with a rich prune demi glace, topped with preserved lemon and toasted almonds
Dessert
Moroccan Treats: Traditionally made Moroccan cookie and pastry accompanied with Latshin, a light and refreshing traditional dessert of fresh orange slices sprinkle with powdered sugar and cinnamon
or
Creme Brulée: A rich and flavourful crème brulée

I ordered the Maftoul, Moroccan Beef Ribs and crème brulée. Karen had the Sliced Smoked Duck Breast Salad, Braised Lamb Feast and crème brulée.

The appetizers were delicious. The maftoul had a good spicy kick to it and was thoroughly enjoyed. I would have definitely enjoyed an extra cigar with my appetizers but it is only a starter.The duck breast was tender and the mango’s complimented it very well as part of the salad.

Coming quickly after we finished our appetizer was our main course. The ribs were no small order. There were four pieces of meat packed ribs and just looking at the picture makes me hungry again. The meat fell off the bone and the glaze and spice gave it a sweet taste. The sweetness of the sweet potato and carrot puree matched the flavour of the ribs and the roasted garlic mashed mini reds and grilled vegetables rounded off a very filling meal.

The braised lamb was made to the same quality as the beef. The meat fell off the bone and had a distinct but delicious lamb taste. Despite being a summerlcious meals where some restaurants often serve slightly smaller portions to keep costs down, the dinner at Café Moroc certainly filled us both.

To round off our meal, we both had crème brulée. The sweet light custard was a good change to the heavy meat dishes we just had. There was a good golden crust on the brulée clearly created by a torch.

While the service can be flaky at times, the dining experience at Café Moroc was one that won’t be easily forgotten. It took a while to get the bill after dinner and we had to ask for refills of water. However, the food was great, the ambiance while more casual than Sultan’s Tent was still very nice and well kept.

If you have the opportunity to visit there for summerlicious or winterlicious, I’d definitely give it a try. At $50 + tax and tip, it’s definitely a good deal.

Tags: appetizer, beef ribs, cafe moroc, creme brulee, dessert, dinner, lamb shank, summerlicious, winterlicious

. 31 Jul 08 | Reviews, Toronto, fine dining | Comment (1)

Overclockers Online Report – April 2008

I dropped the 8 ball on this post, it’s almost the end of the first week and I haven’t filled everyone in on how Overclockers Online performed for April 2008.

We kept the same pace as March 2008 and published a total of 9 reviews:

Tagan BZ900 900W By Anthony Hong
Samsung CLP-610ND By me
Biostar GeForce 9600GT (V9603GT52) By Jared Thomas
mStation 2.1 Stereo Orb By Jared Thomas
Mitron Duplus DUP-35 HDD Selector By David Luu
PowerColor AX3650 512MD2 By Jared Thomas
Logitech MX5500 Revolution By Jared Thomas
HIS Radeon HD3650 IceQ (H365Q512GNP) By Nived Manohar
Thermaltake M9 VI1000BWS By Jared Thomas

It was definitely a good month of Jared has he wrote over half of those reviews! He’s been doing a great job and turning out to be one great reviewer. The month of May will be a bit slower as the backlog I’ve had has been cleared and I will be in Europe between May 7th and June 10th and unable to get everyone review samples during this period. I hope I’ve given the guys enough work!

We have a few motherboards and video cards to publish still and we’re looking forward to getting a bunch of new samples to work with. One of the new exciting toys is the Samsung 2263UW, this monitor just arrived in Samsung’s QA lab last week and Anthony has already set it up. With luck we’ll see the return of some Antec cases: Antec Three Hundred and the Antec Twelve Hundred. We also have our first OCZ power supply and Anthony is also building his own PSU load tester. The DDR3-2000Mhz review samples have dried up pretty quick but a few sponsors will inform us when new ones are available.

For the month of April we served 54,220 visitors for a total of 204,696 page views. That’s a respectable 3.78 pages per visit. Our feedburner subscription rate hovers in the high fifties – low sixties range. If you haven’t already done so, I encourage you to subscribe via RSS or email.

The biggest improvement on the server side was the addition of dynamic headers. Now everything you read our reviews, the title will appear on your browser’s title bar. This should greatly help search engine indexing!

If you’re interested in joining Overclockers Online, please visit our job opening page and contact me!

Tags: April, Overclockers Online, Reviews, summary

. 05 May 08 | Reviews | Comments (0)

OCZ 4GB Rally2 Turbo USB Flash Drive

If you already haven’t done so, please check out my review of the OCZ 4GB Rally2 Turbo. There are only 2 things wrong with this drive, first I didn’t get the 8GB model but more importantly the packaging is really a waste of material. With petroleum at record high prices, I encourage OCZ and all manufacturers to simplify their packaging and get rid of the plastic clamshells!

The performance of the Rally2 Turbo is quite good. I hit a maximum write speed of 29MB/s and a maximum read speed of 32 MB/s. During practical testing, I was average a write speed of around 25 MB/s. Very respectable.

From the concept of the Rally Flash Drive family, OCZ has done everything right: a sleek slender body with fast performance. As the series matured and evolved to the Rally2 Turbo, the drive has had a few cosmetic changes and the performance has kicked into a higher gear. The curved edges with no protruding parts and overall small body makes it an easy fit into pockets while the 25-30MB/s performance guarantees you quick copy from hard drive to flash.

Tags: 4GB, OCZ, Overclockers Online, Rally2 Turbo, Review

. 04 May 08 | Reviews, Technology | Comments (0)

HIS Radeon HD3650 IceQ Video Card

Nivedh published his review of the HIS Radeon HD3650 IceQ yesterday and when I first read it, I was pleasantly surprised by the overall package. For starters, it comes with an Arctic Cooling Silencer which has been known for its superior cooling powers. At some point, I hope HIS upgrades there cooling technology to the Accelero which appears to be have the option for a much quieter performance.

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Overall, the HD3650 IceQ was a great performer. It allowed for moderate overclocking games and for a mid-range performing machine the $90, at time of writing, is not a huge investment.

I wouldn’t recommend any 3650 for high resolution gaming or for playing games of the newest title. If you’re the occasional gamer or multi-media type of guy, this card should suit you nicely.

Throughout the tests, the HIS Radeon HD 3650 performed well. It is not a top-of-the-line card but its performance should be satisfactory for all but the most extreme of gamers. If you don’t care for too much eye candy or extremely high resolutions, this mid-range card should fit the bill in terms of value. For its price, it is a great buy. Also, it supports CrossFireX so you can upgrade later if desired.

Tags: ATI, HIS Digital, Overclockers Online, Radeon 3650, Review

. 26 Apr 08 | Reviews, Technology | Comments (0)

Mitron Duplus DUP-35 HDD Selector

This is a guest post by David Luu of Overclockers Online

Manufacturer: Mitron Interlink Inc.

Mitron Interlink Inc. is a new face on the computer component industry, manufacturing PC modding gear to hard drive enclosures. Based in Taiwan, this company is giving us a first hand look at their HDD Selector (Duplus DUP-35).

This hard drive selector device is aimed towards the crowd which uses two hard drives which have issues with booting and O/S isolation. Although this is not a completely new idea on the market, it is rare to come across these in a PC hardware store.

Package

The unit that was sent to us is a pre-production model, so it did not come in a retail package. However, everything included was shipped.

The selector comes with the switch, power cables, and screws. The selector is designed to fit into a standard 3.5″ bay.

Tags: Hard Drive, Mitron, Overclockers Online, Review

. 15 Apr 08 | Reviews, Technology | Comments (4)

mStation 2.1 Stereo Orb

This is a guest post by Jared Thomas of Overclockers Online.

Manufacturer: mStation

mStation is a relatively new company with a newly focused mission based off of three concepts; Sleek and Clean in Form, Compatibility in Function, High Standards in Sound. While their main focus is on designing accessories and speaker systems for all of the various iPod’s, they also aim to keep their products functional with other MP3 players as well.

Today I get a chance to try out their 2.1 Stereo Orb. Aiming to bring a lot of performance in a small package, can the Orb deliver? Read on to find out.

Package and Specifications

The box has a familiar style to it, with a simple layout and solid black background.

Tags: 2.1 stereo, mStation, Overclockers Online, Review, speakers

. 13 Apr 08 | Reviews | Comments (0)

Biostar GeForce 9600GT (V9603GT52)

This is a guest post by Jared Thomas of Overclockers Online

Manufacturer: Biostar

NVIDIA has had the performance crown in the high end market ever since they released their 8 series of video cards nearly 2 years ago. Often lost among all the hype of the high end cards are their little brothers in the middle of the pack. Our expectations were never really high for these mid level cards, but lately this has changed. Since the release of NVIDIA’s 8800GT and ATi’s 3870, you can get quite a bit of performance and features for very little. Following on the heels of the very successful 8800GT, NVIDIA has released the first card in the 9 series, the 9600GT.

Today I have the pleasure of taking Biostar’s 9600GT card for a spin around the testing block. With the release of the 9600GT, NVIDIA’s model lineup seems to get even more confusing for the average user. Where does the 9600GT stand in line when looking at performance and price? Coming in at roughly $30 cheaper than the 8800GT at launch, is your money better spent on the older series? Read on and hopefully we can answer some of these questions.

Package and Accessories

Let’s start out by exploring the box Biostar’s 9600GT comes in.

Tags: 9600GT, Biostar, GeForce, nVidia, Overclockers Online, Review

. 09 Apr 08 | Reviews, Technology | Comments (0)

Simon Lau

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