"Try Chicken," Grinned He

Before a matinee show on Saturday, I took advantage of the sunshine to walk around the neighbourhoods belonging to "Dovercourt Park" just north of Bloor. There was a number of quiet streets with a mixture of older homes and a few recent constructions. Dupont St itself has always been more industrial with its storage warehouses, auto shops, and the train tracks. There are gleaming condos a bit closer to Christie St. but even among the grittier section, it looks like gentrification will arrive soon. The Sobeys at Shaw is slated to become 9-story condo. The run-down glass building at Ossington has a proposal for a 13-story building. Locals are likely to welcome the latter development, though they might fight over the height. But I wonder how the current tenants feel about their changing fortunes.

I stopped for lunch at Vinny's Panini. This tiny joint has an equally small menu: your choice of panini or pasta. I picked the breaded chicken sandwich ($9.95) and a bottled water. It came out as two huge cutlet stuffed inside soft buns. This wasn't the pressed, crunchy sort of panini. I liked it except next time, I would pick either the sweet or hot sauce topping instead of the milquetoast medium version. Yes, the large size of the cutlet was achieved by pounding flat that chicken, but it was still quite a lot of meat for me. During my visit, I only saw regulars dropping by. This was like California Sandwiches on Claremont except the view wasn't as picturesque. But Vinny's did edge them out on flavour.

The 2-store building containing Vinny's is unlikely to be redeveloped soon. So it might still be around once those condo dwellers move in.