Restaurant Review: Grand Electric

As a continuation from my last post, I will write about tacos, as this seems to be a new fascination across Canada.

For my birthday dinner last year, my friends and I went to Grand Electric, located in Parkdale. At that time, it was one of the hottest spots in Toronto, getting attention from critics and bloggers. When we first got to the restaurant, the wait was quite long for a group of 6, despite being in the early evening hours. 8 months later, it still remains as one of the more popular destinations in Toronto.

We first started with Guacamole & Chips ($8 according to the menu online) while we waited for our orders of assortment of tacos. It looked like the chips were freshly baked, and guacamole and salsa prepared on the same day. 

Currently priced at $3.60 per taco, the prices at Grand Electric seems reasonable until you look at the portion size. When we first placed the order, we thought 3 orders of each taco (Scrapple, Baja Fish, Spicy Chicken, and what seems like Carnitas - Grand Electric's Chalkboard menu keeps changing) would be enough to fill our stomach. By the end of the evening, we had nearly doubled our original order with a few addition of other non-Taco items.

Although I did enjoy my visit, now that Tacos have gone mainstream, Grand Electric seems like nothing more than a Tapas restaurant where the bill adds up quickly and surreptitiously. As such, contributors to Urbanspoon recognize that this is a "higher priced" restaurant, reaching into deeper pockets of the patrons who frequent the up-and-coming Parkdale neighbourhood.