I liked the matzoh ball soup from Free Times Café. The soup on its own is $8.50 Cdn)
They have a soup and latke combo ($16.95 Cdn), or soup and latke slider combo ($18.95 Cdn). It’s also possible to add extra matzoh balls ($3 Cdn each ) Free Times is on the Ritual App
It’s hard to believe a bowl of avgolemono or fakkes now costs $12 Cdn a bowl at Mezes. My friend recommended the avgolemono yesterday. I make it at home so I haven’t ordered it recently. The last bowl I ordered on the Danforth would have been at Soula’s in 2019.
Lhasa Thukpa at Tibet Café in Kensington Market. This Thukpa soup contains beef, vegetables, omelette, noodles, ginger and garlic. $17.99 before tax for a litre.
I enjoyed the borscht from Borscht Kitchen on Lipincott, which is operating out of Sushi Hub, in the old Aunties and Uncles’ space.
They have one table outside. The restaurant is mostly set up for take-out or delivery. It’s possible to order online. Orders take around 30 minutes to prepare.
It’s a chunky borscht with a fair amount of potato and carrot. Less salty than the borscht served at Hoyra and Heavenly Perogy.
The sorrel borscht intrigues me. I was how to make a “summer” borscht by my wife’s mother, from the Ukranian/Russian Mennonite tradition. It is based on smoked pork sausage, lots of sorrel, dill, and green onion, potatoes, and is finished with buttermilk. I have never seen anything like it served at a restaurant, even in some of the Mennonite places in rural Manitoba.
Sorrel is in season in the spring, so it tends to be on menus from late April to June . I suspect any restaurants serving it now are using frozen sorrel or serving soup that has been frozen.
I have seen sorrel borscht available at Polish restaurants and stored, and I have eaten a French sorrel soup at L’Express in Montreal.
My first time trying an Eastern Euro sorrel borscht was at a cultural festival in 1999, in Toronto, where several dozen cultural clubs opened their doors to the public one weekend. London, Brampton, Saskatoon, and Mississauga used to have similar festivals.
At this point, I can’t remember if it was at the Russian Club or the Ukrainian Club.
I think some Polish stores still sell a frozen sorrel borscht year round.
This looks fairly similar to the Mennonite style summer borscht