Walking round Wychwood & Halifax donair.

When I first moved to Toronto, I lived overlooking Christie Pits park.  Today, I went for a mooch around the old stomping grounds, and visited the Wychwood area, including beer and lunch at the Wychwood Barns, a stroll through Wychwood Estates, topped off with a wander around what is now the urban hipster hub of Ossington & Dundas.  Today, I had my first Halifax donair, which was something I'd never heard of, but apparently, I'm not up to speed on my Canadian delicacies.

Old signage at the Wychwood Barns, reclaimed transit garages which are now a community arts & environmental hub.

Halifax donairs:  we watched the pita bread dough being rolled out and cooked in a wood burning brick pizza oven.  The "Halifax" aspect of the kebabs is the sauce.....a very sweet concoction with condensed milk as a starting point.  Unfortunately, although the pitas and meat were delicious, I wasn't too keen on the signature sauce!

Eggplant and feta pastries - these were absolutely delicious (and I don't even really like eggplant that much).  The olives were served warm from the wood burning oven, and were smokey and delicious.

This is the oven in which our food was cooked, including little pitas which puffed up like balloons in front of our eyes.  Note the homemade catering cart - a Heath Robinson affair of plumbers pipe and bicycle wheels.  Food courtesy of "Hot Mess Hall"  

A beautiful house, with dramatic charcoal grey shingle front, in bucolic Wychwood Estates, a privately gated enclave in the heart of midtown Toronto.

Arts and Crafts style house 

Wychwood Estate is like a little private English village in the midst of Toronto's urban sprawl.

Love the exterior of this house...inspiration for my current renovation project at home.

My dahlias were flattened in the storm this weekend, but these on a Davenport Road garden were absolutely amazing.

The Ossington and Dundas area used to be Toronto's Little Portugal, but it now has more of an urban hipster feel.  This colour scheme would look charming and exotic in Havana or San Juan, but on a cloudy Toronto day, on a Victorian house, it seems a little out of place.