Meet "Rooster Coffee"

If you want to have a nice tea or coffee in a very unique café then you should definitely visit Rooster coffee house on 343 King street E.

This wasn’t my first time there, but when my friend Ziad - who arrived yesterday from Lebanon – asked me to go for a coffee, automatically I told him let’s go to Rooster coffee house, and I felt happy that I started recommending places and getting to know nice cozy places like that one.

Not only the staff is very friendly and the place is esthetically beautiful with lots of art and vintage pieces which made it very homey, but their coffee, muffins and croissants are delicious, and you can’t but get tempted to try some.

It’s always busy there but we still managed to find a corner to enjoy my chat with my friend, my peppermint tea and my blueberry muffin.

I love to have such places around, where I can escape for a little bit of “me” time, a “tea” time, or even better “let’s catch up my friend” time.

Meet "The Red Bench"

What a fantastic concept, and a great place..

My friend Ian recommended we go for a tea at The Red Bench, but what I didn’t know is that at The Red Bench you can create your own cookies.

The Red Bench is on 611 Yonge St, very close to Wellesley Subway Station. It's a self-serve frozen yogurt shop, a loose leaf tea cafe, but the best part is The Red Bench's made-to-order cookie station.

So after we picked our flavor for the tea (I had the Coco Mint),  we definitely wanted to "create our own" cookies, so we were asked to start by selecting our choice of dough, either original, chocolate, oatmeal, peanut butter, or gluten-free, then choose two ingredients of mix-ins, which include options like raisins, mini M&M's, almonds, vanilla chips, chocolate chips, peanuts and coconut sprinkles.

I picked the peanut Butter as dough with peanuts and coconut for my cookies.

After three minutes in the oven, they served us 5 mini cookies, that are hot and fresh, and super tasty.

Outside the store there is a red bench.. It seems that it’s a replica of a bench the owner found in Paris, on which he proposed to his wife a few years ago.

Inside, the place is beautiful as well but a bit tiny and was very busy and the smell of the cookies was superb.

I enjoyed my tea, enjoyed a great chat with Ian, but I enjoyed most my cookies experience, and now I’m thinking when I’ll be going again. 

Meet "Yoti"

Habibi.. Habibi.. That was maybe the only word in Arabic that Yoti knew, but it's still interesting to see people trying to be closer by speak your language...

I met Yoti through our common friend Hadi, who lives in New York and put us in contact by sending an e mail to both of us asking us to meet so I can know more people in Toronto and I can start having more friends..

After couple of phone calls with Yoti we agreed to meet for a morning coffee, and we met at Summer Hill subway station.. half way from his place and mine and we walked to Terroni on Yonge St.. It was sunny outside but extremely cold.. So I couldn't wait to get in and order a hot drink..

Yoti is Canadian Greek, which was a good start for our discussion as I'm a big fan of Greece, and I have two Greek friends one lives in London and the second in Lausanne, and we have what became a tradition of meeting in Athens and the Greek islands every Summer, we've been doing this for 6 years and every year it's lots of fun.. So we talked about Greece and Canada a lot, and he gave me insights and tips from the gym to where going for grocery shopping, to where to go for a nice message (as he saw me stressed with the move and the change and some of the difficulties I was facing to settle in properly in my apartment)  and ended our discussion about London (UK) and his dream of moving there and finding a good job..

The grass is always greener on the other side.. We always wish to move to different places and believe that our life will be much better.. And that was one of the main motives that pushed me to move to Toronto.. so I wished Yoti the best of luck and we agreed that next time we re meeting for a drink.. time to get wasted..