a bite of brownie

Ok. So this restaurant is a tiny little tapas restaurant. I had (yet another) groupon deal for this and I hadn’t seen my friend Connie in ages so we met there. I walked in at 6, it is early, and only a couple other tables are seated. It might seat a grand total of 30 people. The walls are white, except for a few spots painted black and marked up with chalk. I love that there is a “blackboard” you can draw on in the bathroom. 🙂

I’ve also noticed a bit of a trend… I only blog about restaurants where I have ordered shitloads of food to photograph. Perhaps it is because I don’t have anything really witty to say… just love eating. 😉

I started off with a French 75 which was made with a little Bombay Sapphire, some lemon, some cava and a cherry. Mmmm… tasty. (No photo. I drank it too fast!) By the time Connie arrived I was looking forward to our 6 course tasting menu.

Course 1 – Squid Ragu
So the first course was a squid ragu with a piece of garlic toast. This dish, was rather garlicky (which I LOVE) so it was good… but no kissing afterwards. I would have liked to have some more garlic toast to sop up all that ragu goodness. I was glad that there was still some of the baguette left that we started munching on (but at $3 for about a quarter of a baguette… I don’t know if the bread was worth it)

Ah… a well cooked scallop is one of the quickest ways to my heart! 🙂 This course was a seared scallop with crispy pancetta on a squash puree and I don’t remember what the foam was. The scallop was well cooked and the pancetta – sigh – when isn’t crispy bacon good? The squash puree, well, was a bit of an afterthought. It didn’t really add too much flavour, although it might have cut the saltiness of the pancetta a bit. And, like I said earlier, I don’t remember the foam. 😛

Course #3

I think this was one of my favourites. Sea bream (which is actually a rather ugly fish). Cooked beautifully. The skin was super crispy which is the only way that I will eat fish skin. Mmm. It was served over a bed of pine nuts, raisins and something else which my woefully short term memory has forgotten.

Course #4 was my least favourite.

This was the chef’s take on “Pork and beans.” It was a crispy pork belly seated on creamy beans topped with a quail’s egg. Issue #1. Quail’s egg wasn’t fully cooked. Now I understand that most people like their eggs this way, but I HATE runny egg yolks. Chalk it up to my paranoia about salmonella. Issue #2 the crispy pork belly, while flavour wise was good, texture wise it left much to be desired. The fat in this piece of deep fried pork belly was not cooked and so was soft and chewy rather than rendered down. 🙁 Finally, beans are beans, and they have never been my favourite (other than garbanzo beans in the form of hummus!)

But the chef saved the best savoury dish for last. Lobster risotto. MMMMMMM!!!!
This creamy concoction had loads of flavour and a surprisingly large amount of lobster. What a fantastic end to the tasting menu.

The dinner was summed up with a panna cotta topped with diced pear and a caramel almond crunch. The pear and caramel topper added a nice texture to the creaminess of the panna cotta.

I can’t say that this was the best dessert I’ve ever had, but it was better than the chocolate pudding that I had at the Market by Jean-Georges earlier in the day.

All said and done, I felt like I had eaten too much. Would I go back again? Absolutely! 🙂 I think next time though I won’t do the tasting menu and just go for some of their tapas items + the lobster risotto.

Rating: 4/5 Everything wasn’t perfect so no perfect score.. but a respectable 4/5 and definitely worth going back for.