Grand Electric

Grand Electric

1330 Queen Street West

Toronto, ON M6K 1L4

Tel: (416) 627-3459

Yes, folks, we're late. Most of you have already heard the wonderful things about Grand Electric and have eaten the delicious food there. It would have probably taken us until summer if circumstances didn't play out the way they did last Saturday.

Howard and I had hit the gym, had a very filling lunch of dumplings, and found ourselves wandering Sherway Gardens. We were about to head home to catch up on a week's worth of television shows, but thought, hey, we're in west end, maybe we should grab dinner here. Joyfully, we decided on Grand Electric at 5:30 pm and arrived at the restaurant at 5:50 pm. Keep in mind that it was a cold winter night. But as we walked toward the restaurant, we started to quicken our pace as there was already a line up! Counting the number of people in front of us, we knew we wouldn't be getting a table when they opened at 6. But, luckily for us, a few parties gave up and left before they started letting people in. Then, the ones who were just cut off when the restaurant hit capacity decided to leave too. The lovely, smiling, chirpy hostess told everyone the wait would be anywhere from an hour to an hour and a half. So we were the first to put our name down and proceeded to wander around Parkdale.

Our phone rang thirty minutes later. What! We were not expecting it, but cheerfully ran back to the restaurant and got seated at the bar. Again, greeted by another friendly face, we told her this was our first visit and she explained the various menus on the walls. Apologies for the quality of the photos, they're all taken on our phones as we didn't make advance plans to eat here.

Look at the delicious choices. Right off the bat, we ordered every single taco and a bottle of beer.

They arrived!! Excitement ensued! Pork tinga, spicy arbol chicken, cactus queso, and beef cheek tacos. My only complaint from the night was that the limes were hard to squeeze (a bit dry?), I gave up on attempting to get the juices out.

Here's the scrapple and baja fish tacos. What is scrapple? I had to look it up and the definition doesn't sound all that pleasing. Basically a bunch of pork scraps and trimmings, think spam? And it turns out, the baja fish taco was Howard's favourite.

Okay, we were hooked. We looked around and saw many tables with the tuna ceviche and ordered one ourselves. Delicious. An excellent combination of spicy, crunchy, and sour to go with the tuna. Would definitely order this again!

Still wanting to try more, Howard ordered the special of the day, shrimp 'n' grits burrito. Not a personal favourite of mine, but Howard enjoyed it.

Then, I remembered an episode of Munchies that we watched on Vice. In this episode, they featured the chefs of Guu Izakaya and they mention how Grand Electric has a version of their spicy squid rings. And well, I had to try it. All Howard and I can say is, yum!

Finally, we were pretty much full for the night, but I still wanted dessert. So we tried their key lime pie, which was served in a cute little jar and generously topped with whipped cream with lime zest. This was the perfect way to end our meal. After all of the delicious food, the lime curd gave us a good sour cleanse. And to top it all off, this was complimentary because the beer we originally ordered hasn't been chilled yet, so to make up for the more expensive beer we ended up getting, they took the dessert fee off!

So! Great food. Great vibe. And great service. When can we go back?