We don’t get out to eat and try new restaurants as much as we used to and for the times that we do, we’re looking for more kid friendly, noisy places where we can afford to have the children make a mess.  We recently tried two places that fit the bill and were reasonably priced with good food.

First was Tosto quick fire pizza and pasta.  It’s really casual and the pizza and pasta are great!  They have an interesting model where there’s no real wait staff and it has a sort of fast food atmosphere.  You go in, place your order at the counter, grab a buzzer (it rings when you can pick up your food) and take a seat.  Food comes pretty fast – I’d say within 10-15 minutes.  It’s not cheap but you’d pay a few bucks more at any Italian restaurant offering similar quality and style of food.  I found Tosto about a month ago and have been four 4+ times.  Good, simple, fast Italian.

Forgot the name but it’s a pizza with bacon, mushrooms and green onion. The crust is crispy, thick but light at the same time.

  Cherry tomatos with lobster linguini

Brasato – Rigatoni, braised beef, green pea in a ragu sauce

The second place we tried was something we stumbled on while killing some time before an appointment.    Mr. Tonkatsu has a few branches in Ontario and it’s really just breaded, deep fried porkchop.  Mr. Tonkatsu offers other meats, a variety of sauces, noodles and apps, but we tried the namesake pork cutlet.  Food was great, really reminded us of some of our cheap, fast food Tonkatsu meals in Tokyo many years ago.  Worth a try if you like your fried cutlets!

The standard pork loin katsu.

The Japanese curry katsu.