Tuesday 4 September 2012

Summer's over... or is it?

I finished off the last long weekend in a blaze of sucking up the final moments with absolute gusto.

Friday night we packed the kids and one extra into our car and headed here....



ahhh the drive in... I had a few dates here while I was in high school.. but that's a whole other story.  The evening was perfect for sitting out and there was a blue moon... it looked much cooler in real life.



On Saturday Dan and I headed to Toronto for an evening. 



It was our anniversary earlier this week so we decided to celebrate.  In the afternoon we hit the shops on Queen Street West.  I also picked up some much needed new workout clothes from Lululemon.

We spent the night at The Grand Hotel which was fun, I have stayed in hotels which have larger rooms, but they had great customer service, excellent parking locations, free breakfast and wi-fi so I was happy.







For dinner we went to George Restaurant and had an amazing dinner.  Dan and I both had the tasting menu... Dan had the 5 course and me vegetarian.  We were so happy to go somewhere that offered a tasting menu for both carnivores and vegetarians.

My first course was salad, grated carrots on cashew cream and some other stuff - I didn't take a picture.  It was OK, but a bit bitter.  The next course (no picture either) was delicious.  It was quinoa topped with greens on yellow gazpacho. 

This was the third course, which I thought was my main.  Grilled artichokes, mashed carrot topped with farrow.  The grilled artichokes were so tender and perfectly flavoured.  The farrow included almonds and were perfectly balanced with the carrots.

Then surprisingly for Dan and I we were presented with our main course...



I was pretty full at this point, but I managed to eat everything.  This was grilled tofu, vegetable falafels and grilled zucchini rolls topping citrus infused spatzle.  I'd never had spatzle before and this was so delicious.  The falafels were pleasantly crispy on the outside and creamy and almost cheesy tasting on the inside.  The tofu was grilled to perfection as well.

After our main course, we were served our cheese and fruit course.  I had a 10 year raw milk cheddar which was again delicious.

Between this course and dessert we had some time to digest our meal.... thankfully. 

My dessert was white chocolate mouse on a chocolate sponge topped with ginger and chocolate chip cookies and presented with a lovely message.



I also had the cucumber grapefruit mojito which was the perfect blend of refreshing grapefruit and cucumber and mint.  Nothing was too overwhelming in this drink.

The food was phenomenal and the service was impeccable.  My only complaint with this restaurant was our table.  We were seated in the middle of the restaurant which did provide me with a view of the kitchen and was very interesting to watch.  Dan however was watching the wine preparation.  We had a lot of traffic around our table.  However, we have been married for 14 years with two children and we have eaten in New York on several occasions and have become quite skilled at tuning distractions out around us during meals.

Busy table or not, I would recommend this restaurant to anyone who wants a fantastic evening out with fabulous food.

My fun continued throughout the rest of the weekend... Sunday evening we spent the evening on a patio listening to great live music.... and we squeezed in one last camp fire complete with s'mores.  All around A+ weekend...

but its not quite over for most kids school starts the day after Labour Day.  But for some absurd reason my daughter's school board decided to schedule a P.A. day on the 'first' day of school... meaning one more day of summer.  So we are hanging out today just having fun.. lucky us!