Some Imaginary Torontos

Two Saturdays ago I sat down on the bare floor of my friend's apartment next to her, and we talk about Toronto restaurants for three hours. She's lived here all her life and has nine hundred pins for food places on Google Maps. Two hundred make their way to my own map (she's a much more adventurous and voracious eater than I). My own intel on the food scene downtown is sparse and a decade out of date - Isshin was the best ramen spot, ten years ago, but every decade here the food gets a little more sophisticated, a little more complex, and it's not really in the game anymore. Patois is also still around + superceded, Bahn Mi Boys has held up surprisingly well. I bookmark good sandwich spots and brunch patios and cocktail bars. She tells me about the Chinese restaurants she won't set foot in, including a fairly well regarded eatery that's owned by a jewish couple who's never set foot in China. (I went there once. I had the very best fried rice of my life there, for thirty dollars.) She…