By Kelly Skjerven

You know that feeling you get when you go out to eat and hate almost everything on the menu? I have always been a picky eater, and I have a pro tip for you: chicken fingers are my holy grail (unless you’re vegetarian of course, in which tofu nuggets are great). I’ve always been a picky eater, so chances are I’m ordering chicken fingers almost any time I go out to a bar or restaurant. After my many travels as a chicken finger connoisseur, I've come up with a list of three bars and restaurants that have Toronto’s tastiest tenders!

1. Duke’s Refresher + Bar

The atmosphere of this bar is amazing. Great music is always blasting, the drinks are delicious and the chicken fingers are of the highest stature. One day, I told my friend I was craving greasy pub fingers and we set off on a journey. We were in the downtown core and I had always wanted to try Duke’s, as it was recommended to me on countless occasions. I was not disappointed, to say the least. The menu describes the meal as “fresh, never frozen and breaded to order” and I believe it. The breading was so flavourful, and the chicken is so tender that the breading fell off of the meat completely.

2. Fran’s Restaurant and Bar

You can never go wrong with Fran’s. Or chicken fingers. Fran’s serves up some classic deep-fried chicken fingers whose flavours are only amplified when dipped in tangy plum sauce. There’s also an option to have them tossed in different sauces such as barbeque, honey garlic, hot and extra hot, which are an awesome way to vamp up your meal!. Whatever your preferred eating approach, you’ll definitely be licking the plate clean.

3. Imperial Pub

Last but not least, the ‘campus’ pub. Imperial is a great place to kick back after a long of day of lectures and labs. They’re known for offering up some of the best comfort food, such as burgers, nachos, fish and chips and much more. Their chicken fingers are the perfect amount of greasy that you’ll want to soak up after a long day. You can get them with golden-crisp fries or on a combo platter which also includes mozzarella sticks, onion rings, fries and a cheese quesadilla. You might want to bring a few friends to share with you if you’re going to opt for the platter, or eat it all on your own, no judgement here!

All three of these restaurants are perfect spots to satisfy any fried chicken craving. With individual elements that make each place’s chicken fingers unique to their menu, it’s hard to pick just one to go to! I hope you give all three of these diners and pubs a try, you’ll thank me when you’re fighting the urge to lick your fingers after.

This piece was edited by Sukaina Jamil.

By: Julia Mastroianni

When you picture a vegan breakfast, I’m sure all you see are fruit bowls and green smoothies. My mornings look a little bit different. By 12 p.m., I’ve eaten one Clif bar and a peanut butter cookie. The plan for lunch is whatever I find in the fridge, but I usually wake up too late to pack my lunch so I have to wait until I get home to eat.

“Whatever I find in the fridge” depends on the week, but usually there’s half an avocado, some hummus or if I’m really lucky, leftovers -- which means I won’t have to actually make anything. I’m living at home this year, so dinner is mostly whatever my parents are making. Luckily, I have parents who go out of their way to make food that is suited to my diet.

Exhibit A: The picture below is of my mom’s pizza twists, which is essentially pizza dough twisted with sausage and olives and then cooked.

She’s nice enough to not only now make my pizza twists with just olives, but also to make my sister’s with just sausage because she hates olives.

And then there are regular ones for everyone else. This is the life of luxury I’ve been living since I decided to go vegan.

Well, sort of. My parents are good humans and therefore do their best to provide me well-balanced and delicious meals when they’re cooking for me. But when I’m feeding myself, which is less frequent now but was every day last year when I was living on my own, my meals look a bit different. These generally involve peanut butter out of the jar, frozen bananas and buckets of pasta. And don’t forget the Clif bars. Lots and lots of Clif bars.

Because I chose veganism for purely ethical and moral reasons, health never really factored into the equation. In what ended up being a slight miscalculation, I jumped into veganism knowing very little about how to sustain myself. I kept eating what I always ate, but with some modifications. I found out pretty quickly that a lot of the regular food I used to eat was easy to change with some milk and egg substitutes.

See? Sometimes I eat actual food. Risotto--no cream-- and Brussels sprouts with mushrooms (I guess part of why veganism wasn’t so hard for me was because I’ve always been the weird kid who loves vegetables).

But I also realized that a lot of the junk food I used to eat still fit my new lifestyle perfectly. Turns out the best junk food is so processed that there are no real animal products left in them. Fries? Oreos? Chips? All fair game. So for someone like me, who wasn’t really thinking about the healthfulness of the foods I consumed, that stuff turned out to make up a large portion of what I was eating. Sure, I could’ve theoretically made healthier versions of everything, but on a student budget—actually, on any budget, healthy veganism is still not the most affordable option.

I never understood why so many of the people I speak to about veganism assume that I’m healthier. I actually didn’t know until I moved to Ryerson that people went vegan for health reasons alone because every vegan I knew was just concerned about the ethics of their food.

It’s cool that people have chosen a more eco-friendly lifestyle to improve their health, especially when there are so many conflicting ideas out there about what a healthy lifestyle looks like. For me, health-based messages have often been riddled with a lot of judgement that accomplishes nothing for people’s self-esteem, so I like to stay away from being swayed by the “healthiness” of particular movements.

I realize it’s objectively not great to be consuming large amounts of processed sugar or packaged foods, but for vegans who care about the earth, health will often come secondary. This applies in particular to individuals with varying identities and access to different resources—someone who doesn’t live in a city, for example, or someone coming from a low-income family will face different challenges in accessing vegan-friendly food.

Recently, my dad found me this vegan cookbook that focuses on uncomplicated recipes with ingredients anyone might have in their kitchen, and I’ve decided to try to make my way through it little by little. I haven’t had Oreos in a while, but there is always a bag of all dressed chips in the cupboard and I’m always game to finish them off. I still haven’t figured out the best way to be vegan yet, and I suspect that’s because there isn’t one way to do it. I guess you just have to find what works for you—Clif bars and all.

This piece was edited by Sukaina Jamil.