Winterlicious 2015 - Trapper's Restaurant Review

Trapper's Restaurant is located just above midtown on Yonge Street, in between York Mills and Lawrence. It's a quaint and rich neighbourhood with small shops and wholly delicious baked goods (Butter Avenue is two stores away from this restaurant). The charm of this restaurant is the homey environment along with the good old (literally old) servers that remind you of a distant relative or grandfather. But be aware: they are quick on their feet and indubitably darling. Here you will see a photo of their ceiling chandelier and be curious enough to make a visit yourself to the lovely restaurant:

I know I should have cropped it, but bear with me, it's all part of the restaurant.
Just think of it as the bigger picture of the restaurant (literally).

So, it comes down to the food. For the first course, I had the "baked almond crusted Woolwich goat cheese on a nest of baby seedlings, grilled portobello mushroom, and honey raspberry dressing". I was shocked to taste this plate because the crust was just right, warm and toasty and the inside of the medallion of goat cheese was subtle and the aroma just spread through the rest of my mouth along with the earthy and meaty texture of the portobello mushroom. To top it off, this combination came with the sweet and tart raspberry dressing. Altogether, it oozed the perfection in my mouth. The first bite to the last bite, it was just... (insert delicious food groan here).

Baked Almond Crusted Woolwich Goat Cheese

The main entree for me, seeing as this was not my first time visiting this restaurant, was the "charcoal-broiled lamb shank in braised red wine, garlic, and fresh rosemary." This dish was delectable from last night. It tastes like your grandmother made your favourite lamb dish because you were coming to visit her. The meat just falls off the bones and is super tender and moist, as any slow cooked dishes ought to be. It's a comforting plate of warmth and just like the restaurant that makes it, it isn't perfect, but charming and homey. Good flavour combination (who doesn't like red wine with their meat?) and I personally adore garlic due to my Korean heritage. Their steamed vegetables taste like something my mom would make, their purple cabbage is soft and it's just a nice hearty plate of food. I didn't finish the entire plate by myself because it's just too much meat for me, but it's good. Trust me.

Charcoal-Broiled Lamb Shank

Last but not least, the dessert. I chose the "lemon coconut cake - moist layers of coconut cake, filled with alternate layers of coconut and lemon butter cream". I'm sorry, Trapper's Restaurant, but you do dessert horribly. It's pre-sliced and refrigerated as sliced on the plate which makes the cake really hard and I cannot taste any of these moist layers because it dried out while it was chilling. The only thing that slightly makes this cake taste like anything semi-gourmet is the raspberry and mango drizzle on the side. It's no excuse to serve dessert the way it was meant to be served a couple days old when you've already had your birthday celebration. It's pretty disappointing every time and I definitely don't go here for the desserts. The first two courses of the meal is what I go to this restaurant for, and if you wish to skip this last course, by all means - do so. One last gross thing about this cake? The butter cream while it is sitting in the cold room by its lonesome (highly unlikely, all cakes are nearly dried and frozen) gets hard and I already dislike butter cream as much as I am a dessert connoisseur. Not good. At all. It's just slightly citrus tasting lard in between dry layers of cake. Don't do it.

Lemon Coconut Cake

Overall, the atmosphere and the entrees are what make it worth your time to visit this restaurant and pay $35 plus applicable taxes and tips for a three-course meal here. Just as a warning, my photographs are highly saturated and over-exposed because the lighting absolutely sucks here and as much as I appreciate ambiance and semi-dark dining rooms in the evenings, it does not make for pretty food pictures. I know I could have used a flash from another phone and so on, but the company I was with forgot their phone. So. The results are as you have seen. Hopefully many of you will try out this restaurant for Winterlicious because their usual menu is more expensive than the value you get for the prix fixe menu. If you look at their menu online, their entrees range from anywhere between $14 pasta to $58 16-oz fillet mignon. I may just go back to try their regular menus. Let me know your thoughts when you try this restaurant! I'd love to know what you think.

Happy dining!

I have a dream...

...where I'm in a group of protesters against a dictator who uses brutal force to rule the people and we are all gathered in a massive gymnasium of a random school campus. He kills off the rebels one by one by maintaining eye contact with that person, holding a weapon of great destruction. It's like a credit card with a magnetic strip and if you draw a line with the card anywhere on your body while looking at the other person, your body is cut in half wherever the line was drawn. So he started to execute people one by one, by decapitating these rebels, one by one. He drew a line at his throat and he had now killed off over ten rebels. One of the girls next to me spoke up and her head was sliced clean off her neck - bone, muscle, nerves and all. A bunch of us gathered together and told ourselves that we would steal those weapons and use them to fight back. So we did. I held down one of the guards and we fought him while he killed our friends. After few minutes of severe struggle, we yanked the card out of his hands and I held it up, trying  to find a rebel in need of my help. And I started killing off these guards so we could escape from the gym we were closed off in. One of the guards was attacking my friend, taunting them to beg for their lives as she laughed and started slicing off one of his limbs. I looked at her intently and started drawing a line across by throat. I could almost feel the pain she would have one her body. When I was almost done slicing her neck, I stopped and grabbed my friend's hand. Her head hung on the side of her neck, like an oddly broken tree branch. We ran. Around ten to twenty of us made a run for it and we headed out the gym doors and into the hallways, not knowing where the hell we were going. We felt like we were forcefully blinded and the suspense was almost enough to make everyone crazy. Then, an image appeared in my head and told me to go a certain direction. Like a CG hologram of a person's face. First, a figure of a woman's face like my mother' s, then a father figure like Morgan Freeman, and so on. I can't remember the faces very well because I was so busy running after them but it felt like I could trust them. They spoke to me in soothing voices. By the time I followed their direction, we were surround by a group of grungy bikers/hippies in this weirdly large room. The gigantic sign on the door when we were entering said NO SMOKING. We saw no troops of the dictator and we knew we could rest easy there. No troops would give up smoking and it was almost unlawful not to smoke under the dictatorship. Behind them, there was an entire outside world where we could live off the land. A whole ecosystem leading from outside of that room. We were welcomed by this strange group of people and we lived there for a couple days and had our first good night's sleep, ate well and even had time to play with the children in that group. (And everybody know when you plah with children, it means peace.) Sometime after those blissful days, while we were surveilling outside as we usually did, we noticed a group of soldiers who started following us. We luckily diverted them by running circles around them (figuratively) and made it back safely, but we were so anxious and almost gave up because the panic was so surreal... As it turns out, one of the guys from our rebellion actually contacted the dictator and sold information in exchange of his life. We were so incredibly frustrated but couldn't do anything to further jeopardize our situation. Shortly thereafter, we were fighting the dictator and his troops once again and he was decapitating all the men and women who were brave enough to fight against them. I hid behind a short wall from all his troops and watched as my friends fell, their heads separated from their bodies. Then it was my turn. I was fighting the soldiers with my slaying card this whole time. The dictator and I looked and each other and started drawing a line across our throats. I felt the warmth of my blood dripping down the side of my body and knew we would both die from this. As we drew near the spine of our necks, I woke up - confused and sometime proud of my sacrifice to save the rebellion from the terrors of this awful dictator.

I just simply cannot understand what this dream meant. It just seems like another one of thise crazy random dreams I have all the time. Thoughts, questions and comments are all more than welcome!

The Wind Rises: A Review

The moral of this story was very clear from the start when the film started rolling.

“The wind is rising! We must attempt to live!”

"Le vent se lève! Il faut tenter de vivre!”

— Paul Valéry, Le Cimetière Marin

This quote was repeated multiple times throughout the movie to emphasize its importance - by many characters who influenced the direction in which the wind blew. It was evident that this was going to be one of those quiet meaningful films Miyazaki Hayao was known less for. If you were a fan of his feature length animations like I am, you would have known it would be a very serious plot with  tragedies along the way. Unlike many of his past feature length animations based on historical events, this one focused solely around the main character - Jiro Horikoshi. Miyazaki tends to emphasize the importance of family and sticking together to accomplish their dreams, these sorts of morals more so than individual dreams. Surely he wanted to focus on the love of Jiro and Naoko. No. He did not. Instead, this story took the viewer to even deeper depths of emotion than his other films.

One of his last works before retirement, and I would say one of the most memorable films of his career. It wasn't the most creative or original plot. But his portrayal of this main character, whose eyesight was too poor to be able to pilot a plane, was ingenious to say the least. It was only a given fact that Miyazaki would take him to the depths of despair and make him rise to the height of the clouds throughout the film. The end was as delightful as it was a burdended sorrow. Naoko would pass away in the absence of Jiro. His role model Caproni appeared since the childhood dream of becoming an aeronautical engineer enveloped his mind. He showed him the horrors of his work and what would come as a result. His boss Kurokawa was a humorous man with a big heart whose presence drew out a chuckle with his overreaction and simplicity in expression of emotions. The audience kindled their hearts to him as he did to Jiro. His role was to be the missing parental figure he lacked in Jiro's immediate presence. Jiro's parents made very few impressions in the entirety of the film. Kurokawa was a more significant character as a father figure and Jiro's father was never seen at all. His mother was beautiful and elegant as the designs he came up with. His sister Kayo is an outspoken, strong, and independent woman whose sharp wit and generosity of heart reached out to Jiro and Naoko endlessly. Castorp, the German whose brief presence at the hotel questioned many, provoked Jiro enough to fill the void in his heart by approaching Naoko and pursuing her. Castorp was a mysterious foreigner who critiqued Hitler's regime and left much too suddenly. Honjo is a faithful friend to the end and an ever present reminder of Jiro's unfulfilled destiny. He challenges Jiro and they inspire each other to keep pursuing their career until they could finally succeed in designing their dream planes.

Naoko Satomi. She was destined to meet Jiro again from the way they parted near the beginning of the film. It was foreseen by the audience. For certain. Her role in this film would be that of a sacrificial lamb that gave her life to support a bigger dream of her husband's. He would continue to work and slave away even while she was sick and slowly journeyed to her deathbed alone. As tragic as this story seems, he rose above the wind and lived. He accomplished his goals and made his dream a reality through the desertion of his family and the love of his life. Some may look back on the comment made by Kurokawa in the cab when he stated that he thought Jiro would marry an airplane, and in some aspects, Jiro was more attached to designing planes than anything or anyone else. He neglects his health by eating sponge cake for dinner and constantly smoking. The only constant in his life from his childhood remains until the end, his dream of designing airplanes.

Ultimately, he succeeds in designing the perfect plane. Caproni congratulates him and invites him for wine - but not before relaying the message that planes are only dreams and will get lost in the sky where they belong, along with Naoko. This tragedy is bittersweet because Jiro is finally free of the burden of accomplishment and success. All the hopes of his supporters are met with grandeur. In a sense, Naoko is buried under the blueprints of his plane's designs. Her support and love gets Jiro the fuel he needs to soar above the clouds. As much as he needs her, he is painfully selfish in coming to his own conclusion as an aeronautical engineer and seeing his plans come to life as another passes on.

My final thoughts on this film linger between misery and happiness. As Jiro would feel, the loss of his love and the gain of his successful career. It is a complex feeling that induces much thought even after the credits have rolled and keeps me looking back to analyze his actions. The story has ended but the film leaves much thought to the viewer as unresolved murder scenes would to detectives and forensic scientists.

Dreaming of Another Dimension

It wasn't so long ago that I had dreams of food. Those of you that know me to the core know that I have an ever longing passion for food that cannot be denied. Just a dream earlier, I was infuriated by people hiding my food and I accused my boyfriend of stealing it. Then it turned out one of my friends had hidden my delicious steaming bowl of katsudon so I gave him the full Hanna Lee wrath that is inevitable when it comes to the obsession of food. I accused my boyfriend because he'd already downed two whole plates of donkatsu and we were at a quaint Japanese diner. They only served the most delicious meals there. Obviously I would get mad for someone stealing my food. Or worse, not even appreciating the flavour combination that is the infamous katsudon and denying me the same pleasure. So what was my dream actually about? Why does it involve a different dimension? You'll see.

It wasn't quite evening yet. The sun was still up and I was walking around my bedroom with my huge walk-in closet and the obscurely large beautiful bed was just the sight anyone would want to see before falling asleep to the most peaceful and beautiful slumber. Then, I heard gun shots. See, this is the part I know is a dream since I live in a fairly large room but my closet has not enough space and never will have enough space because I tend to buy a new outfit ever so often, thinking I need it. But the truth is, I have enough clothes (including underwear) to not do my laundry for at least 2 months, considering I would change every single day into a different outfit. So, when I heard gun shots, I did what anyone would do and ducked out of sight and peered into my windows. Then I heard someone climbing a ladder. Don't ask me how I hear people climbing ladders, I just did. This is a dream after all. Our family mansion was being invaded. By several robbers? A horde? I wasn't sure. So I stayed out of sight and looked outside the window of my closet. Yeah, I know - it's a dream closet complete with windows! Through the windows came barging in a handsome fellow. He looked like Taylor Kitsch. Although I don't personally fancy him, so I really have no clue why I would have him appear in my dream.

He's got quite the physique and the utmost pleasing of appearances, I know, but don't be fooled. He was leading an alien army into my family mansion. Just then, when he came in, I decided to do what would result in a sickness. I tried to seduce the man to make time for my family's escape. By this time, I had shouted loudly to the members of my family that someone was going to rob us and maybe kill us, so it would be wise to hide. Taylor Kitsch walked up to me with a gun and pointed it at me. I don't recall what he sounded like or what he said. I was blinded by fear. Then, ever so slightly, I hugged him and said something along the lines of, "Why don't we enjoy ourselves a little? You've got me at gunpoint. I'm not going anywhere." So I led him to my bed and sat on top of him. Yes, there was definitely no nudity because as soon as I started to kiss him, I threw up on him. Ergo the aforementioned sickness. He was utterly shocked and disgusted that I had thrown up all over him. He shoved me off, muttered something negligent, and left my bedroom. Well, that was easy, I thought to myself. I'm free of him, at least.

As I made my way along the corridors of my family's mansion, I looked for my brothers. I did not see them or their dead bodies. It was going well, or so I hoped. Then came in the aliens. I did not see them closely, only shadows because I hid behind something. Alas the futuristic creatures have revealed themselves. My dad is a pastor/reverend in real life, so in this dream, I had no idea what they could possibly want with my family or these worldly possessions. Perhaps they wanted something else? Perhaps I could negotiate with them? I had all these thoughts inside my head, brewing for answers and escape.

All of a sudden, I was swarmed by special forces sent by the government to assist in our survival. They were trying to send me somewhere safe through a vortex. They shot a gun and it created a vortex on someone's body and we had to leap through it to get to the otherside. As bizarre as it sounds, it was quite realistic in my dream. So I climbed in and the officer beside the commanding officer (or so it seemed) climbed in with me and away we were swirling into this man's gut - through to another dimension. Taylor Kitsch appeared again, and found scissors somehow. This vortex could not be sealed, so the commanding officer was trying to sew up the man's gut and by doing so, he would deliver us from the handsome evil that was Taylor Kitsch and his horde of aliens. He gnawed away at the thread and ripped it open. I leapt out of the vortex and trying to be the heroine again, fought him for the scissors. I feared being stabbed. But right then, the scissors split in two and I grabbed the other end and as fast as I could and as hard as I could, I stabbed him in the gut.

The blade of the scissors were quite long and I could no longer see the metal. Only the plastic of the handle could be seen. At this moment, the officers seized him and the aliens disappeared. I saved our family! We were free at last! I was rejoicing at our battle with outer dimensional creatures and ran all the way down the corridors to the escalators and started to descend multiple levels and finally reached the basement. I walked past the media room with thousands of books and movies and televisions into the kitchen. My brothers and my mother were standing around the long dining table discussing the events that had occurred within the past few hours. My mother was suggesting dinner options. It was only dinner time? It had seemed like an entire day had gone by. My mother kept urging me to go find my father so off I went, up the stairs where I could see the rack of bicycles on the wall, all the way up to the ceiling. Of course our ceiling was sky high, considering it was a mansion. But something was off. The bicycles stopped a third way up. They were missing. I sensed tension in my stomach as I kept climbing up the stairs. There they were. Two female aliens laughing and chatting away over glasses of wine. I was mortified. They glanced at me and continued chatting. I ran back down the stairs and informed my mother and brothers that there were remaining aliens looming about the mansion. Just then, the aliens walked down with laser guns that were the size of Super Soakers. Then they shot my family, one member at a time. I could only hear the sound of my screams as I ran off, tears running down the sides of my cheeks. I ran past our maids and remaining special forces officers. They were lurking around a hidden bathroom. I rushed past them. The door of this hidden bathroom were like those of my own closet. They slid like wall dividers. The magnet at the end snapped shut and I sighed with relief as I tried to shake of my fear. I pulled the string to give myself light. Then I heard them approaching. The aliens. I quickly shut off the light by pulling the string once again. A collapse was seen through shadows beneath my feet. I manouvered my feet ever so slightly to avoid them seeing my shadows. The door was not long enough to cover my feet and I could not risk them finding me. The tension crept up to my stomach and up to my face. I was dead meat in no time, I thought. What surprised me was not my death, but how many of them had sprung up out of nowhere. There were lines of them, an entire army of them marching along my lovely decorated basement. Their shadows marched one by one to the stairs. I froze my eyes shut. Majority of them had gone by already. Maybe I would survive. But I would be a lone survivor out of my family. I had no more hope. No will to live - there was no one to live for. Then I made eye contact. They had changed appearances and now looked human. A primped up human with their blown up voluminous hair and doll eyes, complete with the beautiful long lashes. She sneered as she shot. I felt no pain. I raised my middle finger at her and she called to her comrades as I died. She shot my middle finger multiple times as I drew my dying breath. Then all was black.

And I awoke in my room, staring at the ceiling, and at my sliding door closet. All was well again. My family was not massacred and we did not live in a mansion, but we were living and sound asleep.

A Conversation with Mohamed

It was a cold and dark night when I stepped outside of the apartment building in which I spent majority of the evening at. Niell Wycik, it read on the side of the building. I started dragging my feet across the pavement. It felt sore and cramped inside the leather boots but good at the same time. The click clacking of the heels cleared the thoughts inside my head. As I ran over the occurrences of the night, a yellow cab pulled up in front of me. The cab driver motioned for me to hop inside. I obliged.

"Where are you headed?" He asked, bright and chipper as can be. He looked me up and down and assumed I lived around the block. Scantily clad in fishnet stockings and thigh high leather boots with Minnie Mouse ears atop my head, he could tell I had a good night of partying. Quickly closing the door shut behind me, I asked for a flat rate to Yonge and Finch. "How much do you want to pay?" I counter inquired, "How much is the lowest rate you can give me?" He said nothing so I stated "Thirty dollars." He pondered for a brief moment and said, "For you, thirty-five dollars!" and held out his right hand. Firmly taking his coarsely chaffed hand in mine, I said, "Deal." He then took my hand and kissed it. And with that, we ventured forth into the unknown journey that is the most memorable cab ride of my life.

As we departed the intersection of Gerrard and Jarvis, he inquired what nationality I was part of. I stated I was Korean. He said I don't sound like I'm Korean. He asked if I spoke Korean. To that I remarked, many Koreans are very proud of their nationality and keep their heritage strong. "I speak, read, and write Korean fluently. I came to Canada when I was 11. It's funny because a lot of Koreans you face in Toronto tend to neglect the heritage that is Canadian and refuse to speak English. They maintain their sole heritage as Korean and refuse to adapt this culture as part of their new heritage." He drove thoughtfully. I asked where he came from. He stated Bangladesh. Then asked what I do for a living. I started to explain the line of work I was involved in. "I work for an iPhone application company." He replied to that statement with this. "You mean an application company that develops applications compatible to iPhones. You don't actually develop apps for iPhones because they have their own developers that come up with default applications already installed on the iPhone, like iTunes. You probably develop apps that are compatible for the iPhone, like Pizza Pizza and their order and delivery service." I did not understand what he was saying until he repeated it the second time around. I laughed. He was an intellectual who was interested in more than just money. I could tell he wanted an engaging conversation. "Ironically enough, Apple applications are not the most popular applications on the app store. They often receive terrible reviews due to the fact that they are not designed and developed with various users in mind. People complain they do nothing but drain their battery lifespan over the usage history." He said he understood their pain. "You open many applications running and your phone dies within half an hour." I laughed again and said, "Maybe if you had thirty different applications running simultaneously, yeah." "Are you the owner of your company?" "No," I said, laughing, "I work for someone else." "Well, you seem very knowledgeable about your work. You are very smart. Are you sure you don't own that application company?" "No, I'm merely the editorial manager. I only get to decide what we put out on the application, I don't develop or design." He seemed satisfied with that response.

The conversation was starting to get a little more interesting. I decided to divert his attention. I asked him what he did in Bangladesh before he came to Canada. "I was a journalism major. I mostly did editorials for international affairs." This immediately sparked my interest. "I have a question for you then. What is your opinion on how news is portrayed through the media? If you've worked in media, you know enough about the politics  and the bias that goes behind the scenes of every news story, right? I know a lot of broadcasting companies have their own political views and opinions. Does that always shine through or can you actually state what you think and know is happening?" He looked greatly amused. His eyes twinkled with further knowledge and wisdom I did not know of and I was curious to know more.

"What is your name?" "Hanna." "Well, Hanna, it is funny you should ask that. If you work for a media company, you are bound to make revenues through advertisements. These investors have their opinions and political parties they support. They get to decide what content is published and produced according to their wants and needs, so really, no media company is independent if they want to make revenues." Aha, I thought. Great insight that reaffirms my beliefs about the mass media biasing the content that is ingested every second by the world! "How do you make revenues on the application? How does the business stay afloat?" "We also run advertisements on the application. That in turn generates revenues for us." "See? Advertisements."

At this point I haggled him to drop me off at my apartment for $5 more on the agreed price. He accepted and continued to give me his two cents on the world of broadcasting media. "Say I wanted to publish or broadcast something: I met Hanna, a Korean who immigrated to Canada when she was 11 years old. In order for me to get this story out, I need 2 viable sources." "ONLY TWO?!" "Yes, two credible sources is all you need. For example, I will ask someone from the Korean embassy to confirm the information I recorded with the intention of broadcasting. I told you I would record this conversation and broadcast it, you agreed, and now I am confirming these facts you have told me are true. If they tell me that this story is false, I will then need two more sources that confirm that this story is false." I was really giddy with pleasure from having such an unexpectedly pleasant conversation with this spectacular taxi driver. "You, Hanna, supplied these facts to me, Mohamed, and I decide to make sure this information is true. Let's say one day you become a celebrity. You tell the media that you were poor and grew up having nothing when in actuality you grew up wealthy and lived comfortably all your life. I go to your family and they tell me the story you gave me is false. Now I've got a different story than the one I started with."

We had already arrived in front of my building and I was wishing I lived further away so this conversation could continue. I smiled at him and handed him three bills. He looked confused. "We agreed on $40. You gave me more." "Yes, the rest is your tip. Thank you for your insight and thank you for the ride." As we were saying our goodbyes, he took my hand, shook it and kissed it again. "Thank you. You have a good night and I will see you around." And thus concluded the amazing conversation I could never forget with two strangers in a foreign land.