waxingdeep's Profile
Lake Placid - need one restaurant choice and brew pub advice
I've just returned from the Lake Placid area and can offer some thoughts.
I found the Brown Dog Cafe to be atrocious value. I ordered off a menu without any prices that our waiter described as offering the day's special. My companion and I had a venison chop. The dish was merely competent: one chop, rather tough and over-cooked, with a gluey demi-glace, some decent brussels sprouts, three small and tender asparagus, and unremarkable mashed potatoes. Included with the entree was a version French onion soup that was excellent. The price? $40. I expect a great deal more than competence when a restaurant charges me $40 for a venison chop and bowl of onion soup (without warning me of the cost beforehand).
I was surprised by the lack of New York wines on their menu. I was keen to try something local, and while I know that New York wines may not be widely celebrated, I figured there’d be one or two on the menu.
So, my one Brown Dog Café experience left me with the impression that it’s a typical tourist restaurant: average quality and above-averaged prices. Aside from the view over Mirror Lake, there was nothing memorable about it.
Fortunately, the beer at Great Adirondack Brewery was phenomenal. The smoked stout is ridiculously good, and more than compensated for the giant but tasteless prime rib I ate with it.
Ruby Watch Co.
My party of five had a mediocre experience at Ruby Watchco this evening.
My primary complaint is this: with the exception of dessert, the restaurant serves the food communally. This means that the protein and accompaniments are on serving platters placed between the diners who are left to split the food amongst themselves. Perhaps this is supposed to encourage conviviality, but for us it added a superfluous step in the serving process and left it to the individual to decide how to plate the food. These were minor frustrations. The kicker was that only a double serving of everything was brought for a table of five. Aside from the the main protein for which five individual servings were brought, all the food was as if four people were eating. Tables of two got exactly half of what our table of five received. At $50/person, that's not cool.
I'm sure it wasn't intentional, but it rubbed us the wrong way.
Our second complaint was the acoustics. This is not a restaurant where you can have a conversation amongst five people--it's loud and frustratingly so.
Our third complaint was the food: we expect greater precision at this pricepoint and especially when aspirations are decidedly homey. The salmon--farmed BC "organic"--was overcooked. An otherwise superb risotto was slightly overcooked. That said, roasted romaine with chorizo was excellent (if very simple), the creme anglaise that accompanied an utterly pedestrian bread pudding was luxuriously perfect, and buttermilk biscuits that accompanied a competent pork shoulder salad were delicious.
Mediocre value, underwhelming food, loud room, and a feeling of having been ripped off--we won't be rushing back.
-----
Ruby Watchco
730 Queen St E, Toronto, ON , CA
Lardon Restaurant, Old Silver Spoon Location.
I ate there Tuesday night and was very impressed.
Lardon seems to be the sort of neighbourhood restaurant that I dream of having nearby. High quality ingredients prepared with creativity and precision served in a friendly, understated room. Unfortunately, it's not at all close to me.
Aside from the use of sous-vide preparation (to great effect with the superb carrot soup), the dishes are pretty classic. Amongst the appetizers, the highlight for me was Florentine tripe: perfectly cooked tripe in a well seasoned san marzano tomato sauce. It's really refreshing to see a classic dish like that prepared so well in a Toronto restaurant and at such a decent price.
My party enjoyed several stand-out entrees. Foremost was the poussin: this was the best poussin I have eaten in recent memory. Our waiter advised that the recipe involves marinating the birds in wine and then repeatedly air drying them. Somehow, this results in perfectly lacquered skin and moist, deeply flavoured flesh. In any event, the mere fact that you get a well-cooked deboned bird for less than $25 is reason enough to order it. It’s a destination worthy dish.
The ox tagliatelle on the menu was also excellent with interesting, well-combined flavours. The pork belly choucroute was solid, too. I look forward to trying their bavette when I'm next there.
Definitely order the fried pig ears for the table--like french fries only a thousand times better--and the bacon maple syrup ice cream is pretty much insane.
-----
Lardon
390 Roncesvalles Ave, Toronto, ON M6R, CA
Where's the bread pudding?
The bakery in the distillery does a very good bread and butter pudding. I recommend it.
Distillery District Restaurants choice advice?
I agree; Archeo is the best kids choice.
Unfortunately, all the Distillery restaurants are utterly mediocre. Soma is a great concellation, though.
Evening take-out in the financial district
I think Petit Four is one of the best options, as much as it pains me to admit it. There is a horrific dearth of good take-out options in the Financial District despite the number of suckers like me who need take-out regularly. If I eat sushi from dismal places like Ninki one more time I think I’m going to, well, whine a little louder.
By the way, Szechuan Szechuan is only worth visiting out of nostalgia for the Chinese food of 30 years ago. That place is noteworthy only because it's so succesful despite its mediocrity..
Montreal Smoked Meat in Toronto
It may be that this thread should form the basis of a dissertation, but in the short-term I think it would be a fantastic article for a magazine like the Art of Eating. Montrealer70 and Embee, you are great scholars of deli and I'm grateful you shared some of your knowledge with us. I strongly encourage either one of your or both to pitch this topic to AoE. I would love to read about it further.
Dinner at Nota Bene - A Review
I had a lovely dinner at Nota Bene last night. In my opinion it offers excellent value.
We begin with the duck salad, the trout tartare, and a green salad. The duck salad deserves the accolades its receiving on this board, but I wonder whether it wouldn't shine more if plated differently, say on a plate less deep and less round. In a bowl the dish seems a little frumpy, especially compared to the lovely tartare. That's really my only quible with it. The tarter was excellent, if a little underseasoned--more shiso, please. The salad had a banal dressing, but the greens were nice enough. You can only expect so much from a garden salad.
For my party, the unquestionable highlight was the suckling pig with the boudin noir. It was a superbly executed study in textures--excellent flaky pastry , soft, moist meat, boudin, incredibly smoky bacon, and then cracklings. The only possible complaint was the richness of the dish, but what a dish!
Hangar steak was perfectly executed and seasoned. The lamb chunk steak was huge and, I'm told, excellent.
Yoghurt panacotta with wild blueberries was very good, although perhaps not especially good value at $10.
I'll be back.
Fredericton...
I hate to be such a critic about Fredericton's restaurants, but I would want to this info if I were visiting.
The only consistently competent rooms in town are in the Delta and Lord Beaverbrook. The Blue Door and Brewbakers offer mediocre food and relatively expensive prices. Sometimes their dishes are worse than mediocre. Just the other week I had "Vietnamese Market Noodles"--a banal bowl of rice noodles with a generic sauce. Dimitri's is the sort of Greek restaurant that can only exist in suburbs and small towns. Avoid it. Chez Riz is barely passable, as one would expect from an "Indian" restaurant that generally caters to people who are decidedly not from the subcontinent (and whose culture shuns spice).
Once upon a time, El Burrito Loco was surprisingly good "Mexican", but some years ago they expanded and declined substantially in quality.
Don't come here looking for good restaurants. This is a meat and potatoes town and little more. But if you have access to a kitchen, the market offers some really excellent meat producers and in the summer the produce is superb.
Is There Anything Good To Eat In Fredericton?
There really are no good restaurants in Fredericton. Worse, the mediocre ones charge well more than is reasonable.
Oscar's offers oysters, and so if I have to eat out, I generally go there. I've had adequate meals in the Delta and the Lord Beaverbrook, which are probably the most competent rooms in the city.
Pub food in this city is the pits. However, Fredericton is a fantastic scotch town. The Lunar Rogue's list is among the best in the country and very reasonably priced.
The market is great, but its ready-to-eat products are pretty lacklustre.
Visiting Toronto in August
I often find myself at Pangea for lunch and it is invariably disappointing. Indifferent food for expense accounts.
My first two meals at Cava, both in the first months after its opening, were underwhelming. Certain dishes would shine, but most seemed either unbalanced or unfortunate combinations. My last visit, about a month ago, was stellar. I'm a great fan of their charcuteries and I was consistently impressed with the kitchen's deft touch and sensitivity to ingredients. It's by no means authentic tapas, but that's a good thing as anyone who's spent any time eating in Sevilla will tell you. The bill is also significant, about $375 for four people and two bottles of cava. At the moment, it's one of my favourite Toronto spots.
GLOBE Restaurant...Have you eaten there?
I was at Globe about two weeks ago. I appreciated the attention to local products and the ambitious and relative innovative menu. Even though technique was at times a little wanting, on the whole the meal was superb and very good value. I look forward to a return visit.
Dimitris Greek restaurant In Fredericton NB Rocks
By Fredericton standards Dimitris may be acceptable, but it is nonetheless the Greek equivalent of Chinese food in Canada fifty years ago. I would sooner not eat there.
