“Life is a combination of magic and pasta.” – Federico Fellini

Yesterday we had a hankering for Indian food so we strolled along Dupont to the newly and freshly painted Indian Rice Factory, a neighbourhood staple. Unfortunately we ended up getting there an hour early, at 4 p.m. instead of 5 when it opened.  Hmmm, a restaurant that opens only at 5 on a Saturday doesn’t work for this spontaneous group.  Part of the reason is that we’d spent the day at the Niagara Street Public School’s Spring Fling and then yard-saled after so we were really peckish and yours truly had to go to the bathroom so strolling through the neighbourhood to kill time was out of the question.

A quick stop at home to use the loo remedied one aspect of our anxiety but we were still hungry so we headed down to Bloor St.  Nataraj was one of our long-time favourites but it’s changed to the ‘Indian Kitchen’ which is almost as unimaginative a name as the Indian Rice Factory.  For restaurants from a country so rich in culinary tradition as India, where’s the imagination?  Rice factory?  Kitchen?  B-o-o-o-r-r-r-r-ing!  Anyway, when we got to the Indian Kitchen we opened the door and realized that the lights were off inside.  Two guys were sleeping on the chairs, one jumping up and taking out his ear phones when he heard us.  It was so weird.  We kind of stuttered, “Are you open?” which was silly because it was obvious that they weren’t. They were still sleeping after all.  We left and looked at the time – it was 4:52. So, in 8 minutes they were apparently going to be prepared to welcome us in and seat us, then serve us food. To me, if you’re asleep 8 minutes before the restaurant opens, ON THE CHAIRS AT THE TABLE I’M ABOUT TO SIT AT, then I don’t want to eat at your stinking restaurant anyway.

So, we crossed the street and went to Mt. Everest, home of North Indian cuisine, but it too was still closed.  I guess Indian food wasn’t on the menu for us that day after all.  We were too damned early, and too hungry.

We were too impatient to wait so we went to a pub, which was ready to serve us beer and food. An old standby, The Pump was thankfully close and we really, really enjoyed the beer and the food. Jaybird had Spaghetti Pomodoro and ate the whole serving.  It was a very generous adult-sized bowl and she ate it all.  She’s got a heck of an appetite but we were still shocked, as was our server AND the bartender.

Then we went for ice cream after and she had some and then signed, “All done” with one hand over the other.  No kidding!