Mira Mira
Mira Mira serves comfort food like sandwiches and ice cream made using high quality ingredients, with lots of vegetarian and vegan options.
They also have a quick service location in Assembly Chef's Hall, and operate as a full-service events and catering company.
The corner space is bright and sunny with a warm colour palette and plants, but only has eight seats and no public washroom. An open kitchen is fully visible behind the counter.
A Honey Kimchi Chicken sandwich ($9) feels like it's poking fun at the KFC across the street in the best way possible.
Definitely opt for this instead if you can resist the pull of the Colonel: mildly spicy kimchi marinated chicken is presented on brioche with garlic aioli, hot sauce and lots of peppery arugula, a super-sour pickle spear topping everything off.
A Baked Falafel wrap ($7.50) is a vegetarian grilled wrap stuffed with dense and warmly spiced baked falafel, house pickles, arugula, heirloom cherry tomatoes and a spicy tahini aioli. All sauces are made from scratch in house.
Any sandwich can be made into a combo with crinkle cut fries and your choice of kale caesar salad or coleslaw for $4. A smoked paprika, garlic and lemon seasoning really makes the fries pop, as does garlic aioli and/or spicy ketchup for an extra buck each.
A kale sunflower caesar is actually vegan and gluten-free, made with a dressing of sunflower seeds that have been soaked and blended, and topped with nutritional yeast and crispy chickpeas for an extra punch of flavour.
The East Coast Donair is a $9 monster, halal ground beef used to make the donair meat, which is dressed with a sweet donair sauce and cradled in a whole wheat pita along with heirloom cherry tomatoes, arugula, onion and crispy garlic.
The house coleslaw here is the creamy, slightly spicy kind, and sides in a combo can be upgraded to onion rings, sweet potato fries or arugula salad for an extra buck. The beef can also be subbed out for tofu.
A Jerk Banh Mi ($9.50) is probably my fave, bringing together two quintessential Toronto comfort foods.
Spicy chicken made using jerk paste is stuffed into a crusty bun obtained through a local banh mi shop connection with mango puree, pickled carrot, cucumber and a green aioli of scotch bonnet, culantro, thyme and garlic. Tofu can be subbed in here too.
Ice cream is provided by Kawartha Dairy.
Otherwise, select a butter tart, carrot cake square ($2.75), or chocolate chip cookies (a steal at two for $1.50) from a case.
A snack section is stocked with lots of unexpected rare finds, like Sugo garlic adobo peanuts, Lay's lime chips and chocolate banana Pocky.
Fareen Karim