I am typically not in Toronto come Winterlicious, so every year I say that I will go next year. This year, I was again not in town but as luck would have it did actually goto Winterlicious.

Winterlicious is part of Toronto’s annual Winter City celebration. The Winterlicious portion is a prix fixe menu at a variety of Toronto’s top restaurants. Typically a $15/$25 lunch and a $25/$35 dinner. Pauline and I headed over to The Restaurant at Le Royal Meridien King Edward in the heart of downtown.

Now being an avid blogger and photographer that I am, i tried to document everything. Unfortunately, the light was rather abysmal in The Restaurant so only a few of my photos turned out. Time to invest in a small tripod.

I had Peter’s Daily Soup Creation (which was a vegetable-tasting clam chowder) to start, the Lamb shank cassoulet, white bean ragout with merguez, smoked bacon and duck confit (pictured) and the Lindt chocolate cone with opaline tuile and pistachio anglaise. The lamb was very flavourful and tender. The other two were of decent standard.

Pauline had the “Northern Woods” oyster mushroom salad with wild plum and shallot vinaigrette (I thought this sucked — yuck!), the Novizio olive oil poached wild alaskan salmon on wild rice and corn cake with tangerine beurre blanc (the salmon had a hint of sweetness, almost like you could taste the butter), and the Moro blood orange tart and lavender ice cream to finish (lavender ice cream tastes like soap). Also a glass of Riesling white wine from the Niagara region.

Also as a bonus, our waiter brought out something which since it wasn’t on the menu, I have no idea what it was. But you can take a look at the picture and try and figure it out. All in all, it was a nice dinner although I am somewhat confused as to why the soup of the day was called Peter’s Daily Soup Creation when the executive chief is Daniel Shick.

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: food, toronto