Splendido

okay, so Splendido is located at Spadina and Harbord.

Went during the winterlicious when David Lee was cooking with Normand Laprise. It was really excellent.

I don't think it would be a very useful review seeing how this was a special event, but the dishes that were created by splendido were excellent. The wagyu with lobster was unbelievable.

Anyway, not going to say anymore, except that Splendido is awesome. Can't wait to go for regular dinner.

Pretty pricey.

http://www.splendido.ca/


5/5

C5 Restaurant

It's been a long while, but here it is.

C5 is located in the Michael Lee Chin crystal at the ROM.

I have no pictures but everything was pretty good. The decor was chic modern with very high ceilings. For those of you who like to watch the kitchen can be seen from the dining area.

I would say the food at C5 is sort of modern continental. Quality ingredients met with current technique. Menus change frequently, but the Foie gras and quail that I had was excellent, as was the butter poached grouper.

The cheese course featured 5 cheeses that was easily shared by our table of 3 and dessert was not bad but also not spectacular. My friend really enjoyed the red wine sorbet.

All in all, excellent.

4.5/5

Pretty expensive, 4 courses plus 1 shared cheese course and 1 drink, including tip was around $140 each.

http://www.c5restaurant.ca/

Vaticano

Vaticano is an italian restaurant located in Yorkville. It's located in the lower portion of a 2 storey building on Bellair street.

Pictures of celebrities fill the wall of the front entrance and the decor is sort of classic italian restaurant, like the kind of place you would see on TV. I'm not quite sure how to describe it but even if you didn't know the name, you would know they were an italian restaurant when you saw this place.

The menu is pretty typical italian with seperate sections for the fish, meat and pasta. The beef carpaccio was very nice, thinkly sled beef with olive oil and cheese. The mussels were pretty good but the clams were definately forgettable. Guess it was clam season.

The lamb chops were a good sized portion and the meat was tender, although slightly undercooked, I ordered Medium rare, it came out rare. The side vegetables were grilled but not very flavourful.

Dessert looked pretty nice but wasn't what I thought. I ordered the souffle and asked if I would need to wait, I should have known it wouldn't be a real souffle when the waiter said no. Anyway, it was like chocolate cake.

3 out of 5, good but nothing truly exceptional.

http://www.yellow-net.com/trattoria-vaticano/index.htm

Cava

Cava is located in a plaza at Yonge and St. Claire. You can't see it from the street but it's definately worth looking for.

Serving a tapas style menu, your choices are both plentiful and different than most places. While I wanted to order and try everything, the waiter told us when he thought it would be enough and for once we listened. So the 2 of us ordered about 9 dishes before dessert which is 2 less than the planned 11.

Now i'm not going to talk about them all, so here are a few of my favorites. The Charcuteria consisted of 2 types of chorizo sausage (1 spicey, 1 not), and some kielbasa, but the best part of this dish was definately the squab liver and foie gras mousse. It was rich and creamy and absolutely wonderful. The swiss chard with pine nuts and currents was a nice combination. And the beef cheeks were excellent. The most tender pieces of meat i've ever had (in picture above), they melted in my mouth.

Dessert was good, but was up to the quality of the rest of the meal. Still worth trying though, I mean who doesn't like dessert.

4 out of 5

9 dishes + 2 dessert + coffee + drinks was under $150.


http://www.cavarestaurant.ca/

Diamond Banquet Hall

This chinese restaurant is located at First Markham square, Woodbine and Hwy 7.

Diamond was very nice. Service was very good and fast. May have been because we went on a Wednesday evening and the place wasn't that busy, but still good.

The food was very typical chinese. Ordered a peking duck. The duck was crispy and not too fat, I mean it was a little fat but you're eating duck skin, so what do you expect. The vegetables were fresh and prepared very well, again not too greasy. The geoduck (in picture) was fresh, however the pieces were a little small.

All in all definitely worthy of a repeat.

3 out of 5

Lai Toh Heen

This place is on Mt. Pleasant south of Eglinton.

This place is definitely not like many of the other dim sum places around town. The menu consists of many interesting choices ranging from foie gras in pastry to some of the traditional favorites like shrimp dumplings (hah gow). Many items on the menu consisted of chinese cuisine with western influences. I must say I have never seen so much truffle used in dim sum, actually I have never seen truffle used in dim sum. The picture to the right is a $9 crab rice roll, there was no crab inside, only a small piece of crab on top.

The special items were overly expensive and not that great. The one exception was the phoenix dumpling with truffle, it was a shrimp and crab mixture wrapped in a dumpling skin with truffle on top, it was pretty good. Now, I absolutely love foie gras, but the foie gras pastry was pretty bad. The foie gras was chopped up beyond recognition, and the pastry was a deep fried ball as opposed to a pastry.

Onto the traditional items, the hah gow was done nicely but nothing special, in fact everything was okay and nothing really stood out.

Overall, it was nice but not great and relatively expensive.

Dim sum for 3 was over $120.

3 out of 5
http://www.laitohheen.com/

Colborne lane

Located on colborne lane (close to Tom Jones).

Went during volume 1 of the menu which was available a la carte. We ended up ordering and splitting about 90% of the dishes on the menu.

Everything was very good, particularly the squab. Dishes were prepared sort of tapas style with asian influences in most dishes. The waiter recommended about 3 dishes for each person, but I think we ordered more. 3 would probably be enough for most people. As I said before the squab was very good, full of juice and wonderfully flavoured. The potato tart was excellent, as was the striped bass. The rare tuna came with a wasabi infused foam and frozen soy sauce which was both interesting and very good.

Dessert was good, but not great.

4 out of 5
-went during the first couple weeks of it's opening.
- spent about $130 per person (included 1 bottle of wine)
http://colbornelane.com/