Date: Saturday May 28, 2005 7:00pm
Group: 2
Reservations: None taken – just walked in from the streets
My order: Shrimp and spicey tomatoes ($7.50), Homemade lasagna with veal and mozeralla ($8.50), Side portion zucchini ($3), Nastro Azzurro Italian beer ($5)

Location: 343 Eglinton Ave. West, Toronto ON. 416-322-5183 – Look for the dark brown tent on a corner lot.

The quiet and rather bland looking exterior of 7 Numbers is misleading in a way, as the interior is nothing like what you would expect from a restaurant in such an odd location.

Stepping into 7 Numbers, I felt as I was transported back in time to when I was in a small trattoria in Italy. As I quickly looked around the area, I see the bustling waiters walking haphazardly in between tables, yelling back and forth in Italian, families with children, couples, and groups chatting loudly and happily amongst each other, and the sole bartender, bopping his head back and forth to the ambient chill-out music that is playing in the background.

The waiter sees my brother and I and quickly readies a table for us. He brings us the menu as my brother points to the walls and says to me, “the menu is on the wall.”

I take a quick scan of the entire menu. The prices seem half decent and the offerings are just so tempting. My brother raved about how great the grilled calamari was here. Unfortunately the only thing they had that night was the Pan fried New Zealand calamari.

Our waiter returns to ask us if we want something to drink. We order the Italian beer, and place our order.

Next in line comes the homemade bread shaped like an over-inflated puff pastry, and covered dearly with flour. The crust is hard, but the inside nice and soft. A soak in the olive oil and vinegar mixture does it well.

Wasn’t there a saying that said if the free bread is good, the entire meal would be just as good?

Our appetizers come after only a short wait. My shrimp and spicy tomato was just a great start to the dinner. Nicely presented, the shrimp and tomatoes sat on a bed of greens. The shrimp – not too large and not too small – actually tasted like shrimp and had the perfect amount of grill mark and flavouring to it. One bite and you could taste the flavour the grill has to offer. Just wonderful. The cherry-tomato like tomatoes were spicey with a sharp chili-pepper like spice hitting your mouth.

My brother’s tomato and bocconcini cheese salad looked equally tempting with the thick slices of succulent tomatoes and large, white plump bocconcini accompanied again by greens. I could tell he was equally satisfied.

While we waited for our main meal to come, I looked around the place noticing various things.

• There are six male waiters all in their mid-30s working hard, yelling Italian to each other, and weaving their way through tables.
• There is one male waiter quietly yet happily doing his job
• Rather than Italian music, chillout music is playing in the background, which makes it feel more youthful and hip. The waiters and bartender each bop their heads up and down as they weave through tables and clear plates. Rather comical.
• The restaurant is divided into two main areas: one dining area inside the restaurant and the other half outside the restaurant, covered in a tent
• There are 2 sets of 5 spotlights lighting the main dining area with one set having a green filter and the other having a red filter.

The main meal came and while my lasagna was very plain looking, the taste was far from plain. The thick cuts of pasta mixed in with generous portions of ground veal did wonders with the slightly spiced tomato sauce. It was in fact a very hearty lasagna. The cheese – not so stringy – but tasty and not overpowering so you can’t taste the tomato sauce.

My side portion of zucchini was equally delicious. The perfectly grilled veggies were a perfect match for the meal. I don’t know how they do it but everything they grill is done just right with that ever so slight hint of grill aroma and taste. It’s something I wish I could do with my barbeque!

Overall:
I have to say that this has to be one of the better Italian restaurants that I have gone to in a long time. Everything from the atmosphere to the food and waiters brought me back to the days of going to those bustling tratorrias in Italy.

The menu is priced right in my opinion, without having anything overly inflated. I believe the value is definetely there with the price.

What can I say, I was a happy camper after coming out of this place!

Rating: 4.25/5

Toronto Skyline At Dusk

I went on a boat cruise last night. Grouped with 3 other Japanese organizations in the Toronto area, the Canadian Japanese Society of Toronto rented a boat for the evening to go in and around Center Island for 4 hours from 8pm to 12am.

The ticket, which cost only $15 included one free wrap. Little did I know, there would be no other food on this boat other than this one so-called wrap. As I came straight from work, I didn’t have time to eat dinner anywhere else. I was relying on the boat to provide me with some sort of food.

By the late evening, however, I managed to get myself 3 wraps since I was starving and everyone knows that drinking on an empty stomach is not a good idea.

Meeting familiar faces and chatting about made the evening progress fairly quickly. It wasn’t until someone actually pointed it out that we were coming closer closer to the pier that I realized it was already 11:45pm!

It’s a shame the weather wasn’t as warm as we would have liked it to be. As soon as the sun set, it got fairly cold. No matter, I think most people had a good time, as did I. It was my first boat cruise on Lake Ontario so the night was a-ok for me!

I had my annual BBQ potluck dinner on Saturday night. It was a great day as the sun was shining brightly and things were going smoothly… until nightfall when the temperature dramatically plunged and it got cold. Cold enough to not want to eat outside on my porch unfortunately.

So, we all gathered in my kitchen where we ate and caught up on everyone’s news. Saturday’s fortune unfortunately comes with a price, as Sunday I was left suffering miserably with a cold and an allergy attack. Sniffling, sneezing, runny nose, itchy eyes, I was left to suffer all day long with it.

I had lots planned for Sunday, but only managed to get one thing done on my “to do” list.

Then Monday rolls around. It was a national holiday here in Canada, however I had to go to work. It was strange, though. Coming to work, I thought hardly anybody would be there. However as soon as I walked in, almost the entire room was busy with people going about their everyday Monday business. There was in fact more people here today than there were on Friday!

It was a relatively slow day for me at work, but I managed to get some things done. After hours, I stayed behind and scanned in some of my photos from Europe; it’s one step closer in my overall plan for the summer. Exciting, isn’t it!?

I also finally realized why I keep waking up with red eyes. It’s because of my allergy attacks that I have during the night. Because my nose is itchy at night, it keeps me from having a sound sleep, therefore when I wake up, I am often still very tired and not well rested. A coworker even mentioned to me once that I keep coming in with red eyes. I really don’t know how to rid of this as everytime I come home, my allergies begin to worsen. Every season it’s like this.

Maybe it’s time for me to move out.