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Hooray! It’s another Foody article! Now this time we’re once again focusing on something i would consider to be an evening meal restaurant.
Swiss Chalet is a chain of Canadian family restaurants originally founded in 1954 in Toronto, Ontario. There are currently over 200 restaurants in Canada and the United States, as of 2008. The name Swiss Chalet originates from the design of its original restaurants, which featured exposed beam architecture, resembling a chalet one might find in the Swiss Alps!

Now although i have probably managed to capture this restaurant in one of the least desirable ways, on a dull rainy day – (for which i apologise!) These restaurants usually actually look pretty unique and stylish.
Now, remember what i said about all these restaurants generally having a unique point about them, if it isn’t the general style of their restaurants, Swiss Chalet’s unique point is their chicken. Swiss Chalet is best known for rotisserie chicken and smoked barbecue ribs, which are traditionally served with such side dishes as french fries, baked potatoes, salads, rice, and vegetables. Chicken dishes are also served with Chalet Sauce, a dipping sauce that is somewhat similar to barbecue sauce gravy.. well .. that is one interpretation of it. Their dipping sauce, something which Swiss Chalet are very proud of, is one of the strangest dipping sauces I’ve actually come across. It is fairly runny, rather than thick so it will coat anything dipped into it – lightly. I would probably describe it more of a light tomato sauce with a hint of BBQ, with possibly a cinnamon and or nutmeg twist. I think it’s for the spice’s reason that the sauce isn’t necessarily to everyone’s taste, though i like it – and that’s all that matters to me! — If you go – why not try it and let me know what you think to it!

When i went i had the chicken sandwich and soup. The menu states you can choose what chicken you can have on it, so you can choose either breast meat or brown meat. The only problem is that you will have to pay extra for the breast. I did kind of find that a little bit odd, since breasts are nice big chunky pieces easy to cut up, where as leg meat, which lets face it is where the majority of the rest of the meat on a chicken comes from – is fiddly, having to debone it first. But still i think we all know why you pay a little more for it.. because more people prefer breast meat! So hey – why not pay the extra for that extra special sandwich?
The dinner came, as a nice big sandwich, along side a nice big bowl of soup.. Now is it me or is the idea of a meal consisting of a bowl of soup – AND a chicken sandwich, the best idea for a lunch? It’s the best of both worlds, soup giving you that warming feeling, and then a chicken sandwich to finally fill you up! I don’t really understand why more places haven’t taken it up! They’d sure get my custom!

Still, for evening meals you can’t go wrong here. They have a really nice, varied menu which offers a number of things that give it simply a fresh feel to other places. It includes completely new ideas such as for starters, their Cheese Perogies: Cheese and potato filled dumplings served with Cajun sauce for dipping, or what about their Garlic Cheese Loaf, also on their starters menu: Oven-baked sundried tomato mini-baguette topped with melted Cheddar Jack cheese, diced green onion and tomato!

There’s also another little bit of intelligence gone into their menu, for example in addition to the genius that is Chicken sandwich and soup, If you can’t decide on whether you want to try their chicken, or their ribs – why not get both?! They do BBQ Ribs and Rotisserie Chicken Combos!

So, to sum it up, If you want to try somewhere different, with a fresh unique style, with plenty of choice and thought gone into its menu, as well as somewhere which serves great food and will also leave you with a unique experience – Swiss Chalet is definitely worth a visit while you’re out on your holidays!

The map below shows the actual restaurant i photographed above, though if you don’t get chance to go to a Swiss Chalet before you head to the airport going home .. and you’re flying from Toronto – there’s actually one in the airport, before you go through security – so no excuses to miss out!

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This entry was posted on Friday, July 30th, 2010 at 9:10 am and is filed under Places to Eat. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.