More Veal

Yesterday I didn't go downtown because of the TTC strike, so I decided to try the Chesswood outlet of California sandwiches. It's located on Sheppard just north of Downsview park, basically in the middle of nowhere. If you look up the location on their website you get a sense of what the place looks like...total suburban blah. Anyway, inside there's a lady taking orders, a lady frying up the veal, and a lady wrapping up the sandwiches, all in the area that you can see. In the back, there are more ladies dusting and breading up the veal. The veal frying is such a process. There are 3 different pans of oil and the veal frying lady is moving the meat from pan to pan. I never really figured out what was going on in the end.

So anyway, I ended up getting a sweet veal sandwich ($5.65+tax) with an eggplant topping ($2.xx+tax) which ended up being a $9 sandwich. The eggplant is a breaded and deep-fried slab of eggplant, not the marinated stuff you get at San Francesco or whatever. The result is a pretty huge sandwich - no feeling hungry after this one. This is a good thing, because a $9 sandwich is pretty much blingin' it.

However, having eaten the Calif veal twice now, I'm going to have to reverse my previous stance and conclude that the veal is inferior to what you get at San Francesco. Somehow it's crispier (good) but less flavourful (bad). The veal at SF has some nice meaty taste to it whereas the veal at Calif is more like an institutional veal cutlet at the mental hospital's cafeteria - bland. Maybe having the hot peppers last time covered this fact for me; the texture of the Calif veal is a bit nicer, but it doesn't make up for the lack of flavour.

Of course, it was a veal sangwich so I can't complain - still a good lunch.