Toronto-good, affordable restaurants recommendations?
 

We are going to be in Toronto Friday and Saturday (July 19 and 20) and would like some restaurant recommendations. We are staying in the Renaissance SkyDome hotel. We'll have a car but will probably be relying on public transportation. We dont like very expensive restaurants and while I will eat pretty much anything my husband is not as adventurous. We'll be seeing baseball game one day and Tony 'n Tinas Wedding one night. Other than that we have no definate plans. Any advice?

In the Eaton Centre (shopping mall downtown), I like City Grill. Also like several restaurants along Queen Street West. I was at the Queen Mother the other day and the food was terrific. They also have a cute little patio in the back. Another nice restaurant in that area is Le Select. There's loads of restaurants along the Danforth - many Greek places, but others as well. It's very lively in the evenings and there are lots of patios for outdoor dining. You could get to all those places by transit, and none of them are expensive. <BR><BR>The Beach Jazz Festival is on this weekend. You could take the Queen streetcar there (which might be better than trying to find parking). It's not just jazz - or if it is jazz, they have a fairly liberal definition of jazz! It's all free and outdoors. I enjoy the Thursday and Friday evenings the best - all the bands are stretched out along Queen Street between Woodbine and Neville Park - but there are actual concerts on the weekend.

I was just in Toronto with my 2 kids, one of whom is a very fussy eater. We liked the Old Spaghetti Factory, which was very inexpensive. We also liked Movenpick in the BCE Place, by the Hockey Hall of Fame. This restaurant is set up like a market with different food stations. You get a card when you come in and then as you select food at the different stations, they stamp your card and you pay when you leave. You could get things like sushi and stir fry while your husband could get more basic stuff. We thought it was fun and the prices were pretty reasonable.

I'm on your husband's side, and am willing to skip goat's eyes or baked turnips dipped in turkey blood. (Or whatever it is they feed you in fancy restaurants.)<BR><BR>You have picked a great hotel for easy, good, tasty, reasonabley priced, semi-adventurous eating.<BR><BR>The hotel is very close to Front Street and Blue Jays Way, which changes it name to Peter Street as it gets further north from SkyDome.<BR><BR>Several blocks north, at King Street West and Peter, you'll find a solid block of good to excellent restaurnts, almost all with patios, and all with posted menus, stretching from Peter Street east to John Street. <BR><BR>You can look at what people are eating, read the menus, compare prices, and make your choices. There's everything from a couple of Indian restaurants (I've skipped them -- too spicy for me) to a corned-beef deli, several italian restaurants, some french, and more.<BR><BR>If you walk two blocks east (toward downtown) on King, past the Princess of Wales and Royal Alexandra Theatres, again, you find another half dozen restaurants, includng a Swiss Chalet, whoich is a bargain-priced but very neat and tidy rotisserie chicken restaurant, and Il Fornello, a mid-priced Italian small chain.<BR><BR>Backtrack to King Street West and John, and head north (look for a giant Rubik's Cube ahead of you on top of a book store)<BR><BR>As you go north from King on John you pass two pubs with good food before arriving at Adelaide. <BR><BR>On the north-east corner is Avalon, very expensive and extremely good, but maybe not what you are looking for. On the other side of the street is Hooters, where the wings are great.<BR><BR>Just west of Hooters is Alice Fazooli's, another excellent casual restaurnt with decent prices. Continuing north on John you pass Club Lucky / Kit Kat Too (there's another Kit Kat on the King between John and Peter block) with a smallish patio and a good kitchen. It's one of my favorites, and there's a wide variety. In the next block, there are three more causal steak - burger - big salads - pasta kinds of places. Al Frescos (part of the Alice Fazooli organization) Montana's (not part of the Montana chain) and Milestones. I've eaten at them all in the past month, all a fine, reasonably priced, wide variety, etc. but none are restaurants you'll be talking about two or three years from now. <BR><BR>And it's another block to Queen West, where there are some places you have already been told about. The Queen Mother has some sort of asian fusion food, by the way, and Le Select is, to me, just like eating in Paris, except I don't have to try to speak French. Le Select, Club Lucky, most of the John to Peter places are all going to provide you with memorable meals at decent prices.<BR><BR>All this is within ten minutes walk of the hotel. Gretsky's sports bar is even closer to the hotel.<BR><BR>East of the hotel, on Front Street, you'll find, during the day, hot dog carts and French Fry trucks. They are great places for good food at low prices. Same thing in front of Toronto city hall, too.<BR><BR>I'm going to a ball game tonight and will feed a street hot dog to a seven year old and to myself before the game.<BR><BR>BAK

Wow! Thanks for all the suggestions! We always prefer recommendations from actual people rather than books, travel websites, or hotels. This is the first time we are traveling somewhere that none of our family or friends have been to. And we're a little nervous about not having it as planned out as we usually do (when we went to Disney World we knew exactly where we were going each day and where we were eating before we got there). Im going to print all of your replies out to take with us!