My wife and I are going to Toronto in early August. We're in our early 50's. Looking for things to do and recommended restautants. Interested in eating in Little Italy one night.

Also interested in your post as we are going in Oct. We were there in May, but just for the day. We enjoyed the Bata Shoe Museum.

Toronto is a big place and has several restaurants.

Perhaps a bit more info about interests would be of assistance to us.

I like Swiss Chalet chicken myself, and it's a bargain.

A gaggle of Foror Toronto advice givers is going to the Hot House CAfe at the corner of Front and Church one day soon. If it's good enough for us, it may be good enough for you.

On the other hand, there are smaller Italian restuarant s like Kit Kat that are very good, reasonably priced, amd smaller than Hot House, so they may seem more special.

Hockey Hall of Fame or the Joe Fafard exhibit at McMichael Gallery? We need more info.

BAK

But what about Little Italy, BAK? Row upon row of Italian restaurants. Our favourite, though more pricey than some others, is Grappa, at College and Grace. It's one of the older, less trendy Italian restaurants in the neighbourhood but I think it's recently been redecorated (thank heavens!).

What's your timeframe and are you looking strictly in the city itself or are you open to further afield?

We're going from 8/5 - 8/8. We'll have a car so we travel outside of the city but prefer to limit our traveling. We're staying in the downtown area.

Little Italy (College Street from about Palmerston to Grace) is a nice walk. You could just stroll along looking at restaurants and reading menus till you find something you like, have dinner, then have an on-the-street gelato for dessert. There are a couple of good gelato places. The Sicilian is the oldest I think, but no longer the only one.

It's a lively area with a lot of nice patios.

There are also rows of bistros and restaurants along Queen St. W and King St in the Entertainment District.... we love Kit Kat and had a good meal last week at Fred's Not Here... and also like the quirkey patio and menu at the Queen Mothers Pub... just walk either stretch as well as College... you won't be disappointed ...

Sorry, I thought we were just talking about Italian. If not, another nice walk is the Danforth (otherwise known as Danforth Avenue) from Broadview to Pape.

Allen's has a nice patio in the back. There are tons of other restaurants as you go east (mostly east of Chester), quite a lot of them Greek but there's a variety. For Greek (casual) we usually go to the Pantheon (around 401 Danforth) and then walk a block east to the Athens Bakery for dessert and coffee. The Danforth is a nice walk too.

(p.s. if you can stretch your vacation by one day, you could come to the GTG on the 9th!)

The baked lobster and crab soup at Fred's Not Here sounds great. What are the prices like? (website does not say).

Fred's isn't cheap but if you go downstairs to the Red Onion (check the website) before 6 pm, they have a menu of 'small dishes' that are inexpensive. I'm assuming they still do that, but check just in case.

I thought I read somewhere (tripadvisor probably) that Fred's Not Here has lunch specials. I think it was two courses for $14, but the review might have been over a year old.

I've been there for lunch and it was a very nice menu. The lunch menu (and the others) are here but I don't see anything about a $14 special.

http://www.fredsnothere.com/

Sorry, I said the Red Onion (downstairs from Fred's Not Here) and that's wrong -- it's the Red Tomato and the two course special is now $19.99. Here's the website:

www.redtomato.ca

All the menus are on here including the happy hour one.

Freds has several fix price specials as do several of the bistros along that strip... they range from $20 to $30 and include two or three courses... my wife had gnocci and I had an excellent maple chipotle Lamb rack... Yum!