Not too long ago I signed up for an account on Yelp and I noticed Fabarnak ranked quite high for many things on their site, including being in the Top 5 on Yelp for “Best Restaurant in Toronto” as well as “Best Sandwich in Toronto“. As a lover of good food AND sandwiches, seeing that the price range was quite low as well, it was a no-brainer to go and check them out. About a month ago I headed there for lunch with my (now) girlfriend Amanda to try it out.

Fabarnak is located at 519 Church St. in the 519 Community Center. They state on their website that they are a social enterprise and that money made from the restaurant goes back to help support the community. This is even found on the inside of their menu:

The menu itself was quite interesting and had a lot more surprises than I was expecting for what I thought was going to be more of a sandwich place. From things like “bone marrow brulle” to “Nova Scotia halibut cheek” I knew I was in for a fancier lunch than I anticipated. For items like these you would expect to pay much more at any other place, but the prices at Fabarnak were extremely reasonable. Here is the lunch menu from when I visited about 1 month ago:

After some tough decisions looking over the menu I decided to try the potato salad and the beef brisket sandwich (served with a butternut squash soup). Amanda, on the other hand, was much more adventurous and opted to try the bone marrow brulle and the beet and edamame salad. Continue Reading »

When it comes to shopping online it seems most sites are targetted towards Americans, but there are many great places to go to shop online for Canadians if you know where to look. This article will show you the best sites to go to buy anything online for Canadians. From books to travel I will try to cover all the major areas of where to go to find the best online deals for Canada:

Books

Amazon.ca – In most cases I find Amazon has the best prices when it comes to buying books online. Though Chapters/Indigo is very close I find the rates on Amazon slightly better. They also have a section where people sell used books where I have managed to pick up some great deals (ie. book for under $1 and a small shipping cost around $5). Their orders typically ship super fast and are usually there in a couple days!

Ebay.ca – When I am comparing with Amazon I will always take a look on Ebay. Sometimes people sell brand new books for really cheap because they received them as a gift and just want to get rid of them so they have to sell lower than online retailer prices or sell as an online auction with no reserve price.

Clothes

Ebay.ca -Ebay is one of the best places to get deals on clothes or find clothes that are hard to get. The best strategy is to find what you are looking for offline then search Ebay to see if you can get a better deal. With designer names be weary for counterfeits as there are plenty of these to be found on ebay but for certain items you can get some amazing prices!

RedFlagDeals.ca – The apparel section of the Red Flag Deals forum is a great place to find out which brands and retailers are having sales, warehouse sales both online and offline. If you want to find something specific the best thing to do is become a member so that you can use the search feature of the forum to find exactly what you are looking for.

Computers & Electronics

FutureShop.ca / BestBuy.ca – These 2 are the biggest sites for electronics in Canada and where I look first when buying electronics online. Try to avoid buying anything at regular price as they rotate their sales every month or so which means what you are looking for will probably go on sale at some point in the near future if it is not already. Their biggest sale of the year is Boxing Day where you can find some great deals if you can put up with all the technical problems they experience due to a ridiculous increase of load from all the website traffic. Also most things ship free which is a bonus! Continue Reading »

For those that know me well the things I like most in life are good food, good wine, travelling and most importantly saving money. I started this blog as a place for me to talk about all of these things because with my only other major online outlet being Twitter, it is sometimes hard to really explain or fully say what I want to about places or things when limited to just 140 characters.

The main focus of this blog will be discussing food and because my favourite meals are the ones you can get without blowing a ton of money I will have a strong focus on “cheap eats”. I will review the restaurants I go to, do comparisons of different food iteams (ie. where to get the best sandwich) as well as share some of my great money saving tips that I have learned over the year. One of my other passions is travelling and I am usually going somewhere new every 3-4 months so I will also share my travel experiences on this blog.

I hope you enjoy reading about my experiences on this blog and get something worthwhile out of visiting!

Thanks,

Graham