I caught up with some friends from my advising days at Our Town Cafe on East Broadway and Kingsway.

I hadn't eaten yet and got a panini that had bacon, cheese and other goodness as well as a Henry's Americano(which was a chocolatey mocha espresso).

Here's my review:

Food: 21/25
Service: 19/25
Ambiance: 18/25
Value: 19/25

Total: 77/100 Above Average

A small cafe yet fairly popular with locals. The panini and Americano were both delicious. The panini came with a hot sauce dip which worked quite nicely. And there's also self serve cold water available which is nice.

Service was decent though the barista had to check what the soup of the day was... French onion so I didn't get that, and they also forgot about my friends chai latte all together until she reminded them.

The cafe itself is fairly small with older style tables, chairs and benches- not really suitable for larger groups. And the place seems to attract an interesting clientele.

As for value, it's fairly on par with other cafes. My panini was $7.77 and my mocha Americano was $3.50 I believe.

Recommendation: Nice little cafe to have a quick bite or coffee with a friend. Also a selection of vegetarian and gluten free snacks too! Try it out.

So in search of a Chinese restaurant for dinner my friend Betty and myself, with the assistance of yelp, headed to Dinesty Chinese Restaurant.

After a 15 minute wait we were seated and since Betty and myself are quite the whales, we ordered deep fried soft tofu, duck in brown sauce (we wondered what this brown sauce was), prawn and pork dumplings, a chicken+ham+asparagus pinwheel type thing, and an interesting noodle dish with salted? Soy beans+eggs+cucumbers.

So for my first re-vamped review:

Food: 19/25
Service: 12/25
Ambiance: 20/25
Value: 19/25

Total: 70/100 Average - Above Average

Overall the food was good. The steamed dumplings were the best which does seem to be their specialty while the others were just alright.

Service on the other hand was severely lacking. Perhaps it was because neither my friend or myself spoke any mandarin but we essentially got our order taken after a long while, food came out very quickly as do most Asian restaurants, but after that nothing. We had to ask for our tea to be refilled multiple times.

The restaurant itself is fairly nice and has a modern feel especially considering how sketchy some other Asian restaurants can be.

Value isn't too bad, we ordered more food than the average 2 people would probably eat and costed us about $40. Just depends on what you order.

With a score of 70, it's about average though would have scored above average if the service was even a bit better.

Recommendation: Try it out. Don't expect too much quality service though. Get steamed dumplings! Go early to avoid waiting.