Toronto Comic Arts Festival + Banh Mi Boys, Raijin, Tsujiri

Hello~
I'm finally starting to get back into blogging! Slowly catching up on posts before the summer festival season hits and I'll be even more behind. Time to backtrack to a few weeks ago... when the weather was actually decent and not humid and gross like it is now. I randomly went to check out the Toronto Comic Arts Festival (TCAF) held at the Toronto Reference Library at the last minute because it was free and seemed like an interesting event (I'd heard of it but never been). But before that, Fred and I went to have lunch at Banh Mi Boys:


I've eaten quite a few of these Vietnamese style subs growing up (we used to get them from Chintatown and then there's always been a store close to us that sells them) but I've never eaten anything quite like these fusion versions! Between the two of us we got two banh mi and shared an order of kimchi fries.


I ordered the kalbi banh mi and there was quite a bit of beef inside. Fred ordered the pork belly one and that had the yellow radishes that I love so much..



These kimchi fries were the bomb, like seriously it's all my favourite things combined into one, I could eat it everyday if I could, haha! But there weren't a lot of fries and a lot of toppings so the suggestion is to eat this right away so the fries do not turn soggy.


We headed to TCAF~ there were soo many people!


I'd never been to this library before... it had many floors and a lot of spaces and study pods perfect for studying and reading. Not sure why I hadn't come here sooner, it's such a beautiful space. It was nice to see so many talented artists in one place. I didn't buy anything but recognized a few artists, even though I haven't been on tumblr since forever... (I kind of miss the days in high school when one of my dreams was to be a comic artist, haha... I still have all the comics I drew when I was younger... )

After walking around a bit more we headed to the Eaton Centre to kill some time... coincidentally a new NYX Cosmetics store was opening... I'm not much into cosmetics but I do own a few of their products and I wanted in on the hype... xD


It was around 6pm and there was a line to get in!! It moved pretty quickly though... I only bought one thing though but it was nice seeing all the new shiny untouched products, all fully stocked and clean. *_*


We settled on a light dinner at Raijin for some ramen. Somehow we were seated right in front of this statue... nice.


I ordered the shio ramen (I think). It wasn't that salty but the noodles were harder than what I'm used to. The broth was nice and creamy but somehow I still couldn't finish it to the last drop, haha..

 
Afterwards to finish off the evening with some dessert, I'd been wanting to check out Tsujiri for a while now, located in what is being called the "Little Japan" of Toronto. I wanted to see what all the hype was about, and now I see. It was around 9pm and there was still a line out the door. The Tsujiri Sundae was sold out so I settled for the Shiratama sundae. I'd been wanting to eat shiratama and soft serve for a while and I'm so happy we have an authentic place downtown.


The mochi was chewy and yummy and the matcha soft serve was so flavourful, creamy and smooth. I'd definitely, highly recommend this place. Totally worth the wait! I want to go back and try some of the other items on their menu! Ps. Thanks Fred for modeling. ;) 

And this concludes this downtown adventure. (This ended up way longer than I intended...) Stay tuned next week for the second (totally unrelated) installment!