- When you open up to good food,
the world opens up for you.
(laughs)
- Is that Hallmark worthy?
(laughs)
(instrumental, bopping chill music)
- Hey guys, it's Candice, The Edgy Veg.
And I'm super excited because we are going to do this trend
that I don't know if you've seen, you probably have,
where we test out the worst and best vegan restaurants
in my city and today we're doing the best.
So we googled all of the vegan restaurants in Toronto.
We just put "vegan Toronto restaurant"
and looked up what their ratings were,
and one of the top ones is the new Planta
on Queen Street in Toronto.
- I'm excited.
Well, cause you were telling me about the menu
and I've only ever been to the original Planta
that was here in Toronto.
And it's more like traditional, vegan fast food,
but slightly more upscale food.
So this is, I think an interesting concept.
We don't have any other Izakayas in the city.
- No, we don't have any vegan Izakayas whatsoever.
So, I'm super pumped.
It's like an Asian fusion menu.
- I support this.
- Yeah, I'm pumped.
I'm pumped.
Can I say "pumped" a couple more times?
(instrumental, bopping chill music)
- [Anthony] Currently just got to Planta.
- Yep.
- [Man] It is obviously very busy,
but what makes this one special is that it's an Izakaya.
So for people who don't know, what does that even mean?
- So Izakaya is more like small plates and family style,
so you can do more tapas style.
That's more what people are familiar with.
So they're smaller, little, bite-size sharing plates,
and then also big family style stuff.
So we can get some mocky rolls and dumplings and vegetables,
and then for the larger sharing stuff,
like the family style, we can do noodles and rice.
So I'm super excited because you get to try
a little bit of everything on the menu.
This one is Asian fusion style,
so you'll see some traditional Asian flavors
as well as some non-traditional ones like truffle,
which I love.
And I'm hungry.
I didn't eat breakfast this morning.
It looks so much like fish.
It's ridiculous!
All right, so I'm gonna see if I can get this right.
This is the eggplant sashimi,
so it's eggplant to look and taste like normal sashimi.
And I can't get over how much it actually looks like fish.
It's crazy.
And then these are little seaweed cracker with sesame seeds.
And then we have a...
What did she say?
A sushi pizza?
- [Anthony] Yeah, a sushi pizza
with truffle shavings and avocado.
- Oh, yes.
Sushi pizza, truffle shavings, avocado.
Look at these truffles.
Oh my God.
Oh no, I lost my truffle.
Oh my God, it's so good.
It's very light and delicate.
I don't know what this base is,
but it's very very light.
Just tastes like summer!
Thank you.
- [Server] You're welcome, enjoy.
Thank you.
- Thank you very much.
This is my favorite part of my job.
Now we have the truffle dumplings,
the bang bang broccoli, and the crispy rice.
I'm gonna go for the bang bang broccoli first
since it's what everybody talks about.
That's good.
It's crispy with a slight little bit of heat,
but it's creamy as well,
and it has like a coating of...
I think it's tempura.
Yes.
I could eat a vat of this.
All right, the crispy rice.
This has the watermelon on it, right?
- [Anthony] Yeah.
- I love the texture on this
as opposed to the normal mocky roll.
And I love that it's crispy.
It's really light!
I was expecting it to be a lot denser.
It's chewy, it's light.
The watermelon is...
kind of fishy, which is interesting.
It's very good.
Dumplings.
Look at these truffled dumplings.
Getting some extra sauce here.
Truffle's my favorite flavor.
You can't go wrong.
It's not overwhelming,
which is good.
It's very tasty.
And they just brought us calabar.
- [Anthony] That looks so good.
- Might as well just go for it, right?
Oh no, is it going to be really hot?
What was this gener...
Oh, it smells like general style.
Whoa, hot.
I could not be happier.
Everything has been so good so far.
So we have another eggplant unagi.
This is a rainbow roll,
and they have the watermelon...
Is it tuna or salmon?
- [Anthony] Would be salmon typically.
- Salmon.
Yeah, so they have the rainbow salmon
and then truffled udon noodles.
And I'll go in for the unagi.
It's so good.
It's a little bit different
than the first one that they gave us.
But again, like buttery.
It just kinda melts in your mouth.
Just getting a little bit of wasabi.
Oh!
Something crunchy in there.
I like it.
Everything so far has been approved.
So tasty.
I'm just gonna go into this noodle situation.
- [Anthony] I believe in you.
You can do this.
- (screams) Okay, well we're going with the mushroom first.
Oh my God.
All right, Anthony, you need to try all of this.
Got it.
Don't fall.
That's amazing, that's amazing, that's amazing.
- [Anthony] So they just sent us a dessert.
This is a mango rice sticky pudding?
Sticky toffee pudding?
- It's a forbidden rice and mango sorbet?
This spoon has so much weight to it.
- [Anthony] I love it.
- [Candice] Also, can we talk about the fact
that my manicure matches perfectly?
- [Anthony] You're just so coordinated.
- I am just this good, guys.
I choose my manicures based on the meals
I'm going to eat that day.
Imagine if that was the case.
I'd have to get my nails done every single day.
That sounds awful.
Mmm.
Oh wow!
Okay.
The sorbet is cold, obviously,
but the rice is warm.
And there's like three different textures here.
So it's creamy, it's fruity,
it's not all really sweet, which is nice.
Mmm.
That was unexpected.
I don't know what to think here.
- [Anthony] So like sweet meets savory somewhat?
- No, there's no savory.
It's just sweet, but it's not overly sweet.
It's like...
You know when you have fruit and you're like,
"This is the perfect amount of sweetness,"
compared to if you eat, I don't know, a chocolate cake,
which could be too sweet, or something with icing.
It's like the perfect balanced amount of sweetness.
But it's also warm and cold at the same time,
and that's fine.
I like that.
Mmm, mm-hmm.
Look at this natural lighting.
We look great!
- Yeah, just dead on the inside.
- We kinda look like siblings.
Hi.
- Hey.
So how do you feel about that? - So
I'm very full, like in a good way.
Not uncomfortably full,
just I won't have to eat for a few hours
and I'm satisfied.
I'm sufficiently suffoncified.
- Suffoncified?
- Suffoncified.
- I'm mostly shook at how realistic the sushi was.
I still can't stop thinking about that rainbow roll
(laughs)
cause, I don't know, the texture of it
was just so accurate to what a traditional rainbow roll was.
- Your face changed so dramatically,
like you were just so confused.
- Yeah, I think it was the crunch,
but also the texture of the watermelon on top.
- Yeah.
- It really did taste like sashimi.
It was wrapped on the sushi.
- And that one that was supposed to be kind of like eel.
- Yeah, the unagi.
That was like dehydrated mushroom they were saying.
- Yeah.
- You've never had it.
- No.
- I can say it does taste very accurate.
So if you're someone who has
either gone plant-based or have been vegan for a while,
but you seed sushi and love sushi,
your mind will be blown cause you could eat that everyday.
- Yeah.
- You wouldn't miss sushi at all.
- What I loved about it too
is it has that like high-end feel of a restaurant,
but it doesn't...
I would say it's probably,
if we were to rank restaurants
from one dollar sign to four dollar signs,
it's kind of like a two and a half to three.
- Three, yeah.
- But you get that like high-end feel, which is amazing.
And you're not...
I wasn't disappointed in any dish.
- No, none at all.
- They were all winners for me.
There were some that I was like, "Yeah, okay.
"This is really good,"
but it's not my favorite.
So I kinda like that.
You get that high-end feel
without the high-end ticket price.
- Yeah.
- And everything is good, which almost never happens.
- I'm still thinking about it.
- I would have that every day.
- The cauliflower was good too--
- Yep.
If you like general, tau sauces.
That was really good.
- The udon noodles.
- The udon was ridiculous.
- Oh my God.
Best shrooms, man.
- I would've never picked...
Imagine putting truffle...
- No.
- With udon noodles.
- But now I'm going to.
I can definitely see why this was one of the
top-rated restaurants. - Yeah.
- It hit everything for me.
The price was right for what you get.
It's a really nice sharing atmosphere,
perfect for group meals.
The wait staff was on point. - On point, yep.
- I find a lot of the time with vegan restaurants,
you can get really bad service.
- Yeah, I agree.
- So that was amazing.
I wasn't disappointed in anything.
- The drinks were really good, too.
- Yes.
So it just hit every note for me,
so I'm glad that we did this.
And I'm really scared to try the worst rated.
- I was literally about to just say the same thing.
I'm like, "Maybe we should've reversed this
"so that the end result would be positive."
(laughs)
Not like go from such a high standard
of "Wow, this is great," to "Wow, this is trash."
- Yeah.
Well, we have some googling to do when we get home
to find out what the least...
or lowest rated?
- Lowest rated.
I don't think any...
I've been to a lot of vegan restaurants in Toronto.
There aren't any that are terribly bad.
Are there?
Maybe I'm wrong.
- All right, so should we
get out of this hot car and go home?
- I'm sweating.
- (laughs) Maybe it's the food sweats though.
(laughs)
- If you like this type of video,
give us a big thumbs up
so that we know to make more like this.
If you just want to see us eat food
and test out internet trends,
we are all here for it.
We're having fun.
So give it a thumbs up so we can make more.
And let us know in the comment section
what the top-rated restaurant is in your city,
and maybe, if we go there--
- We could try it.
- We can test it out and see what we think.
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And we'll see you next time!
Bye!
- Bye.
(light, groovy bopping music)