There are two things that I tend to search for when moving to a new city - one is a fabulous Indian take-out - this gets qualified with a range of dishes, but usually on the quality of their Chicken Korma, and a good chinese delivery - and this one is measured on the quality of their General Tao/Tso/T** Chicken.
Now, a bit of background, as for these qualifications... it's not so much of a "you make the best" it's more of a "I've had the best elsewhere, now try and live up to that" mentality. So, for the Indian, the standard comes from when I was living in the UK, I lived in the East end of London in an area called Ilford. It was a significantly large Indian immigrant community, and as a result had a wde range of Indian take-out to choose from. So, the place I found there managed to make a korma that was crave-worthy - to the extent that people used to come and visit me solely so that we could order from my local Indian! Sadly, the last time I looked for this particular Indian they appeared to no longer exist, and so my constant has vanished - not that ordering from the UK is the most practical thing from Toronto!
Moving on, the Chinese qualification... I was introduced to "Hot N' Spicy'" (I can't believe they don't have a website, but here's a link to the location) in Montreal in my 2nd year of university there - they have a few restaurants, but the one that I know best is the one in the Faubourg on Ste. Catherine at Bay. It's a small take-out and delivery that I used to live almost across the street from, and as such was quite a regular treat to get their general Tao chicken. I moved a bit further across town, closer to McGill, the year after that and would step up to pay their delivery fee, even as a student, simply for their chicken! In more recent times, I've taken my husband to Montreal to show him my student haunts, and of course had to visit Hot N' Spicy', well, wouldn't you know it, he's no addicted also! To the extent that the last time we were in Montreal we ended up bringing home about 4 ordered of General Tao Chicken to put in the fridge... no, we're not obsessed...
So, back to where I started this, finding local take-out. We moved to Toronto about 5 years ago now, and have lived in 3 parts of town, so have had a wide range of places to order from across the city. Indian is a tricky one to find, there is an Indian area of Toronto, but it's significantly further East than we have ever lived, so we haven't really managed to fully qualify all of those places, but generally, we've settled on a place that was close to our previous house called Siddhartha (http://www.thesiddhartha.com). We tend to work around that area sometimes, so still manage to pick up take-out on occasion - they're still not quite up to par on my take-out from the UK, but I'm beginning to accept that I won't be able to make the trans-atlantic comparison there.
The Chinese you'd think would be easy, it's only a few hours down the road afterall... but we've found there's a huge variation (almost as much as the spelling) on the old General and his chicken... but as of last night, the search is over. While they don't have their own website, the Wok Terminal (http://www.restaurantica.com/restaurants/7099/) has won us over. Not only was our dinner less than $20 delivered, but the General Tao could have been mistaken for Hot N' Spicy's version any day - oh, and they sent free mini-spring rolls, as well as fortune cookies - no more searching for us!
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