Summerlicious
Okay, so Summerlicious is upon us. Reservations started a week ago, and the festival runs from the 6th to the 22nd of July, and I’m busy from the 7th to the 17th. Geoff will be back from Churchill before I am back from my vacation, so the 18th to the 22nd is good for us. As usual, Ray is going with multiple groups, one of which is going to Canoe so we don’t have to go there, unless we wanted to.
Here’s the site: http://www.toronto.com/summerlicious
::edit:: - Here's the microsoft document I have for the meals, with all the menus and some of my comments, from my top 20 list. This might or might not make it easier to look at and compare the restaurants: Summerlicious MSWord Document ::/end edit::
So I spent a few days looking at the restaurants with $35 dinners, since that’s what Ray would’ve wanted :P I guess if I felt like it, I could look at $15 lunches too, but that comes later. First, I think we’d rather have some fine dinners over some upgraded regular dinners (I wrote about this in a previous blog update about Winterlicious; long story short, paying $15 for lunch is paying price of Hamburger+1 to get Hamburger+2; paying $35 for dinner is paying price of Crème Brulee-2 to get Crème Brulee; one is a discount for fine food, the other is a premium for upgraded regular food)…
ANYWAY, so I’ve looked at maybe 60 restaurants with $35 dinners, and I’ve chosen about 21 of them which have some sort of uniqueness in their menu, or the restaurant is super-well known. I haven’t looked at ambience or location or prettiness of restaurant yet, just the menu.
The problem is that most menus are the same, so for those ones, it’s hard to choose which one is better. Most entrees consist of choices between a fish, a steak, a chicken, and/or a vegetarian pasta, and those ones are hard to judge. So in my list of 20, there are a couple of those, but most of mine have more unique or more different menus.
In my 20, there’s a few famous ones, like Canoe, Truffles, and Rosewater Supper Club. Acqua and La Maquette made it into my 20, but it’s fairly unlikely we’ll be going back to those. Other top choices in my 20 are Flow, Monsoon, Zucca Trattoria, and Bloom.
I guess we won’t discuss much of the other parts of the top 20, but for those curious, they were Richlee, Trapper's, Sequel, Jump Café, Fat Cat Bistro, Celestin, Cataplana, Auberge du Pommier, Bistro 990, Bier Markt, Katsura, and Romagna Mia (Bier, Katsura, and Romagna were the lowest on my list).
If anyone wants to do a cheap weekday lunch, let me know… I can probably take an afternoon off work for that, heehee.
Anyway, I think we should pick 1 restaurant from the famous/past ones (Canoe, Truffles, RSC, Acqua, La Maquette) and one from my other top 4 maybe (Flow, Monsoon, Zucca Trattoria, Bloom).
Anyway, now what to do with this page… I could list all the menus, but that just takes up a lot of room, and you can just find the menus yourself, yes? Hmm… what to do… sentence… over?
Apple, Almond, Arugula Salad: Baby arugula, roasted slivered almonds tossed and tart Granny Smith apples tossed in a Salsero vinaigrette, or
Fried Chili Calamari: chili garlic crusted calamari, crisp diakon + cucumber salad, mango pickle and caramelized soy drizzle, or
Drunken Pappardelle (extremely spicy): seared veal and chicken dumplings, tat soi, Napa cabbage & Thai basil in a concentrated spiced kaffir lime broth
Sea Bream: pan seared bream with new potato and fennel salad, seared scallop + honey mushroom and kaffir lime-ginger water
Forbidden Parfait: Polynesian style forbidden dessert with pineapple + macerated coconut + sweet bean puree topped with Tahitian granita and clotted cream
I don’t know, I think I just want Forbidden dessert :) Anyway, Anyway, if you’re interested, post a comment, and look at the menus, and let me know… we should probably make reservations soon. Sentence Over!
Here’s the site: http://www.toronto.com/summerlicious
::edit:: - Here's the microsoft document I have for the meals, with all the menus and some of my comments, from my top 20 list. This might or might not make it easier to look at and compare the restaurants: Summerlicious MSWord Document ::/end edit::
So I spent a few days looking at the restaurants with $35 dinners, since that’s what Ray would’ve wanted :P I guess if I felt like it, I could look at $15 lunches too, but that comes later. First, I think we’d rather have some fine dinners over some upgraded regular dinners (I wrote about this in a previous blog update about Winterlicious; long story short, paying $15 for lunch is paying price of Hamburger+1 to get Hamburger+2; paying $35 for dinner is paying price of Crème Brulee-2 to get Crème Brulee; one is a discount for fine food, the other is a premium for upgraded regular food)…
ANYWAY, so I’ve looked at maybe 60 restaurants with $35 dinners, and I’ve chosen about 21 of them which have some sort of uniqueness in their menu, or the restaurant is super-well known. I haven’t looked at ambience or location or prettiness of restaurant yet, just the menu.
The problem is that most menus are the same, so for those ones, it’s hard to choose which one is better. Most entrees consist of choices between a fish, a steak, a chicken, and/or a vegetarian pasta, and those ones are hard to judge. So in my list of 20, there are a couple of those, but most of mine have more unique or more different menus.
In my 20, there’s a few famous ones, like Canoe, Truffles, and Rosewater Supper Club. Acqua and La Maquette made it into my 20, but it’s fairly unlikely we’ll be going back to those. Other top choices in my 20 are Flow, Monsoon, Zucca Trattoria, and Bloom.
I guess we won’t discuss much of the other parts of the top 20, but for those curious, they were Richlee, Trapper's, Sequel, Jump Café, Fat Cat Bistro, Celestin, Cataplana, Auberge du Pommier, Bistro 990, Bier Markt, Katsura, and Romagna Mia (Bier, Katsura, and Romagna were the lowest on my list).
If anyone wants to do a cheap weekday lunch, let me know… I can probably take an afternoon off work for that, heehee.
Anyway, I think we should pick 1 restaurant from the famous/past ones (Canoe, Truffles, RSC, Acqua, La Maquette) and one from my other top 4 maybe (Flow, Monsoon, Zucca Trattoria, Bloom).
Anyway, now what to do with this page… I could list all the menus, but that just takes up a lot of room, and you can just find the menus yourself, yes? Hmm… what to do… sentence… over?
Apple, Almond, Arugula Salad: Baby arugula, roasted slivered almonds tossed and tart Granny Smith apples tossed in a Salsero vinaigrette, or
Fried Chili Calamari: chili garlic crusted calamari, crisp diakon + cucumber salad, mango pickle and caramelized soy drizzle, or
Drunken Pappardelle (extremely spicy): seared veal and chicken dumplings, tat soi, Napa cabbage & Thai basil in a concentrated spiced kaffir lime broth
Sea Bream: pan seared bream with new potato and fennel salad, seared scallop + honey mushroom and kaffir lime-ginger water
Forbidden Parfait: Polynesian style forbidden dessert with pineapple + macerated coconut + sweet bean puree topped with Tahitian granita and clotted cream
I don’t know, I think I just want Forbidden dessert :) Anyway, Anyway, if you’re interested, post a comment, and look at the menus, and let me know… we should probably make reservations soon. Sentence Over!
Labels: summerlicious
posted by Unknown at 12:39 PM
4 Comments:
Why don't you also cross off the ones you've already been to?
Well I personally would go for the famous ones, providing there's still summerlicious bookings left.
After last time I think I'd rather go to the well known places where you know you're getting a solid discount rather than some place where you save like $5.
It's not even the issue of "saving $5"...when we base selections largely off of menu items (and their potentially misleading descriptions) we end up neglecting many, many, excellent restaurants like Nectar, whose menu went something like:
steak
ribeye | mushrooms | truffle
The above sounds far less captivating than the menu descriptions at other restaurants. All accounts from friends of mine who went to Nectar, however, said the steak was nothing less than spectacular.
Menus can be beautified whimsically, but the reputations of these ultra-high end restaurants among Toronto's self-important elite is far more difficult to fake.
Judging from past experience, the more reputable restaurants (EPIC, La Maquette, Rosewater, etc.) definitely raised the bar on food quality, whereas Acqua and Pangaea were, in my opinion, no different than (in fact, inferior to) The Keg.
Oh, as far as where I'd like to go:
Auberge du Pommier, Bymark, Celestin, Centro, Ultra Supper Club.
All famous, all rated $$$$ on dine.to. :)
...and probably all fully booked by now, heh.
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