He’d found a small-ship cruise that fit into one of the few periods this spring where we could fit in a 10-day vacation.
And that’s about it, really. Jean did all the booking of this trip: the cruise, the flights (not that easy to arrange), the hotel in Dubrovnik, where we stayed before and after getting on the ship. I bought a couple Croatia travel guides and flipped through them, but overall, this was one of the trips I’d prepped for the least.
Reading the cruise itinerary, we both had similar thoughts: Wow, that sounds really relaxing.
Although we had no complaints about the food at our first visit to the Easy Pour Wine Bar, the service left something to be desired.
It’s not a high-end, white-linen place; we weren’t expecting anyone to hold our chairs as we sat or to be given a complimentary amuse to start.
But we did expect familiarity with the menu, as it is a bit of an unusual one. It has a list of items “to share”, then some salads, then flatbreads, then a small number of “heartier plates”. So it wasn’t as clear as at appetizer / entree / dessert restaurants how much to order from each category. We needed guidance, and we didn’t really get it.
And it didn’t help the situation any when Jean asked which cheeses were included on the cheese plate, and the waiter didn’t know, and then seem quite startled that Jean expected him to go to the kitchen to find out.
Hence the rather large gap since our last visit. But when some friends wanted to go out for dinner, we thought we’d give them another chance.
And fortunately, we had a much more “on the ball” waitress this time out, who opined correctly on the amount of food we’d ordered, steered in a different direction when we ordered two rather similar items, and gave some good wine suggestions. We decided to share everything, picking among the “to share”, salad, and flatbread categories. We started with the Mixed board, a nice selection of cheese, olives, deli meats, bread, and crackers.
The remaining items were brought out together, per our waitress’s suggestion:
Pea seared sea scallops
Warm pecan crusted goat cheese
Roasted beet salad
Truffle mushroom flatbread
Everything was really tasty, good texture, temperature, and presentation.
Our additional request for a special that day, oysters roquefeller, was apparently not heard, but just as well, as the above was enough food, and then most of us had room for dessert. I had the pumpkin creme brulee, which was light and delightful, and Jean went for the more hardy sticky toffee pudding.
The restaurant itself has character, It’s a stone building, not that large, with wood interior and open ceiling to the second floor. It was packed this Saturday night, and that made it a bit noisy, but we still managed conversation. (Although once the musicians started, that became harder, but that was only at the end of our meal.)
Nice night out. Good to know the service issues aren’t chronic.
Last weekend we went out for our “late for me, slightly early for him” birthday dinner. After much hemming and hawing, we decided to on Bhima’s Warung, a restaurant we hadn’t been to in a few years.
It was much busier than we remembered! We asked the waitress if that was unusual, but she was said no, it was typical—even on weekdays. It’s not that big a place; the couple seated next to us joked about how we were basically dining together, our tables were so close.
Bhima’s offers the cuisine of Asia prepared using French culinary techniques. Definitely makes for an original menu.
This day they were also offering a surprise six-course menu based on the foods of Sumatra, for $47. Partly just out of laziness, Jean decided to go with that. I was not obliged to join in with him on it, though, so I puttered through the menu, which was made even more complex by the addition of three special appetizers and entrees that day.
Since we don’t get to Bhima’s that often, I wanted a sampling of items. The waitress described my ordered amount as somewhat “challenging” in terms of quantity. But she did point out that most of their dishes taste even better reheated the next day.
We didn’t take notes, so there’s no going through everything we eat (which is probably a relief to you). I will say that everything was very good, marking an improvement over previous visits, where the food could be uneven.
And we do have some photos.
Oysters times two
Oyster are ordered by the piece, so we went with two from the regular menu, in warm lemongrass, ginger, chili, and garlic sauces, and two that were specials of the day: an oyster shooter in vodka.
Squid with ‘rujak’ salad
I also tried the regular menu sotong goreng sama rujak, or tapioca and garlic fried squid in roasted chili, lime, and hoisin glaze with ‘rujak’ salad. Very nice; great texture on the squid.
Shrimp and ?
One of Jean’s courses featured shrimp and… Stuff we can’t remember.
Another Jean menu item: This one was monkfish and lobster ball
My main involved rabbit done three ways (a special), and it did indeed make a fine leftover. 🙂 Dessert for me was a tapioca and ice cream concoction, while Jean’s menu concluded with ice cream made of something we’d never heard of and now can’t remember—but tasted very good—along with some sort of pastry or apple or something. (Look, it was a lot of food!)
Mystery ice cream with mystery other things
It’s not a fine dining experience, but the dining was still quite fine. We should notify Where to Eat in Canada that Bhima’s is once more worthy of inclusion.
We originally thought of taking a day trip this long weekend—maybe do some snowshoeing—but the record cold temperatures dissuaded us from that plan. Instead we found entertainment closer to home.
Friday night we had dinner with friends at Aqua, the new seafood restaurant in the not-so-new Crowne Plaza Hotel. The service was a little iff-y—bit inattentive—but the food was pretty good. We all went with the Valentine’s special menu. The highlights were the beet soup with smoked trout, the ravioli and beef entree Jean had, and the two desserts: A chocolate mousse cake and a cookie with ice cream concoction. We all concluded we’d eat here again, amidst that special chlorinated pool ambiance. 🙂
Afterward we all attended a symphony concert. It started with a modern piece that our friend accurately described as interesting, but not that musical. Then we got Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concert no. 2 in C minor. For me, this would be the number 3 Rachmaninoff piano concerto I have heard live, and he is three for three in my books. I always enjoy them. The second movement of this one sounds so much “All By Myself” that Eric Carmen still pays royalties to Rachmininoff’s estate. (True fact!) The third movement was lively and sensual. The featured pianist was an attractive and obviously talented young woman named Natasha Paremski.
The second half of the concert featured Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances, which was also good though, for me, not as good as the piano concerto.
Saturday was actual Valentine’s Day, and we don’t generally go to restaurants then. But it being a holiday, I decided to make a nicer dinner.
I tried a new (to me) Jamie Oliver recipe for slow-cooked duck pasta. We weren’t able to buy the duck until that morning, and it was frozen, so the main challenge was getting it defrosted in time for dinner that day. That required a whole lot of rinsing.
Otherwise, the recipe wasn’t tough: Just required time. The duck cooked at 350 for 2 hours, in its juices, and I had to turn it every half hour. Then in a fry pan I sauteed some pancetta, then I added various vegetables and some can tomatoes and red wine to make a pasta sauce. After the duck cooled, we removed the meat from it, and added that to the sauce. Then it was a matter of cooking rigatoni and mixing it all together, topped with Parmesan.
Quite delish. We served it with a Chateauneuf du pape.
For dessert I made a chocolate mousse cake. No flour, just cocoa, unsweetened, and bittersweet chocolate with eggs and Cool Whip, basically. It was another new recipe (to me), and it turned out well—not too sweet, good texture.
But we weren’t done eating yet. 🙂
Sunday we braved the cold and drove to Wilk’s Bar, which is at Langdon Hall, for lunch. It isn’t a cheap place (though cheaper than the Langdon Hal dining room), but they do a nice job.
We had the “From the Land” sharing platter to start, along with four oysters. The oysters were amazing. The land platter was fine, but not outstanding. The highlight of that was probably the almonds!
Muskox stew with mushroom risotto in the background
Both of the lunch entrees were very good, though. I had the wild mushroom risotto and Jean had muskox stew. The glasses of wine were quite nice, also.
But no time (or room, really) for dessert, as we had tea dance tickets for 2:00. After a detour to the wrong location, we got to that event around 2:15. It was a fun time, and a chance to work off some of the food—especially dancing to “Jump, Jive, and Wail”! Wow, that’s a fast song. (Which is why the wailing after the jiving, I guess.)
And then, we dashed to a 4:20 showing of The Theory of Everything at the Princess. Pretty interesting movie about the relationship between Stephen Hawking and his first wife, Jane. Definitely shows the challenges of her having to cope with his increasingly serious illness. Though of course, as we know, he continued to do amazing physics work through it all.
Then we were ready to go back home and relax. Family Day was pretty quiet, and that suited us just fine. Especially as we got some news Sunday night that definitely had us thinking about family.
Our annual “weekend in Toronto in winter because Jean has a conference” wasn’t terribly eventful—we drove back before da big storm really hit—but it did provide some photographic opportunities.
We visited the very crowded, kind of expensive, but still pretty neat Ripley’s Aquarium.
The big draw seemed to be sharks swimming overhead.But there were other interesting critters, tooHello moray
We had some trouble getting dinner reservations Saturday due to (I assume) Winterlicious being on. But we managed to get in at Frank, at the AGO. Jean had their Winterlicious items while I ordered from the main menu.
This was the mussel appetizer.
I had a roasted squash salad. For mains, we each had a tuna entree, but prepared different ways—both good.
This was the Winterlicious entree.
For wine, we had a bottle of a Spanish white, an albarino, that was on special. Quite nice, and appeared to be low in alcohol.
For dessert, Jean’s had rum raisin crème brulée. Yum.
I had the Tres Leches Cake—not too shaby, either.
For January, the weather wasn’t too bad. It was partly sunny on Saturday, and not that cold, especially when not in the wind. So we did do some walking around, and Jean took some photos.
Toronto City HallSkating rink at Nathan Phillips SquareView from our hotel
Sunday we had some delicious dim sum (no photos), then visited the Douglas Coupland exhibit at the ROM. It was more to my taste than Jean’s. Therefore, you must now prepare for a precipitous decline in photo quality, because the following ones are mine.
If you look at the next image through the camera of your cell phone, they’ll look quite different than they do with the naked eye. It’s really weird. (And if you actually take the cell phone picture, you lose the effect.)
I don’t know what you do if you’re looking at this post on your cell phone.
The exhibit was very pop art-like. One set of paintings was of QR codes that bring up phrases like “Sworn to fun, loyal to none” and “I wait and I wait and I wait for God to appear”, that you can then text to your friends to confuse them. Another was a large installation of found objects, arranged to represent the four quadrants of the brain, and the cerebellum.
The following photos might help you judge how interested you might find all this. How many of these coloured squares do you want to read?
What I remember of Footloose the movie is that a preacher in a small town has banned dancing. Kevin Bacon moves to that town, takes up with the minister’s daughter, and dances his way into convincing the town to lift the ban.
Footloose the Musical, which we saw at the St. Jacob’s Playhouse, was very well-done, but the sadness running through the whole piece was a surprise to me. If also in the movie, I had forgotten about the abandoning father, the dead son and brother, the silenced women. Those people really needed to dance!
Jean was mostly sad that a piece that we first saw as contemporary is now an item of nostalgia.
A 100-mile feast with 7000 km theme
It’s somewhat confusing that 100-mile dinner of local food has a theme of A Tour of Italy, a country 7169 km away (says Google). But that’s what the Waterloo Inn had an offer, as sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce and in benefit of local physician recruitment.
It was the place to be if you wanted to network. We were there for the food, but gathered up various business cards nonetheless. We were encouraged to Tweet during dinner, and so I did, and as a real rarity, also acted as food “photographer.” (I did all five courses, but will stick to three here.)
The Importance of Being Earnest: Reliably entertaining
I’ve seen the play before, I’ve seen the movie, yet I didn’t hesitate when invited to the University of Waterloo production of this Oscar Wilde play—and not only because the tickets were free (for me, because I’m special :-). I never remember the story that well; just that I really enjoyed watching it play out! This production, in the newly renovated Humanities Theatre, was no exception.
More people need to go to Marisol
We dined there before the Swing concert, and it was lovely as always, but alarmingly quiet for a Friday night. More people need to find this place! We can’t keep losing the area’s best restaurants.
Christmas parties
Some companies still have these. If yours doesn’t, I recommend marrying into one that does. It’s worked out for me.
Writers on music: Like dancing about architecture?
That’s the saying, eh, that writing is about music is like dancing about architecture. Well, the KW Symphony begs to differ, and recently had a concert featuring novelists Miriam Toews and Wayne Grady, whose recent books (All My Puny Sorrows and Emancipation Day) have musicians as main characters.
Each novelist got half of the program, in which they read from their work, had the symphony play a piece related to what they read, discussed music and writing with the conductor, then listened to a modern work by the symphony and read a response to that.
it was a fascinating evening. The symphony were “forced” into genres they don’t typically tackle—jazz and piano concertos (featuring a lovely soloist from Wilfrid Laurier), and I’m sure the novelists hadn’t been previously familiar with the work they commented on.
Cork is a restaurant in Elora, Ontario that we enjoy going to. Elora is a bit of a hike, though, so we were happy to hear that the owners were opening a second restaurant in Kitchener: Gilt.
Gilt opened in late September, and we tried it out on November 1. It’s relatively small and has a contemporary look, with a bar area along with its tables. It was a little loud but not to the point of not being able to hear each other. Service was good–attentive and wel- informed about the menu items.
And that menu is all tasting plates; that is, tapas-style, appetizer-size dishes. The regular menu items are supplemented by three varying specials: from the sea, from land, and raw feature. The waiter recommended that we order two to four items per person.
So we got a variety. We liked that their oyster menu detailed exactly which were available, and let you select as many of each type as you want. (They do similarly with their cheese plate, though we didn’t try that.) We went three East Coast options, six oysters in total. Still on the seafood theme, we tried their raw ceviche tun special, and some cooked scallops.
To that we added brie and pear flatbreads (an item we’d enjoyed at Cork), duck confit steam buns, BC wild mushrooms, and peanut butter & jam foie gras! Except for the mushrooms, which seemed a bit underseasoned, we were happy with all items. Jean was impressed with their take on foie gras, the only issue being perhaps a bit too much salt topping.
They have a pretty good wine list, offering many by the large or small glass, 1/2 half liter, or full bottle. Given the variety of food, we got 1/2 liter of Sauvignon and a glass of Malbec to share.
We were reasonably full after that, and ready to skip dessert, until they described the house specialty, nitro ice cream. For this, you get to go back to the kitchen and watch them make the ice cream with liquid nitrogen. It’s kind of fun. And the results are very delicious!
We took no photos during dinner, but afterward we went to check out the Kitchener Nightshift, a sort of nuit blanche event with outdoor installations and many stores and restaurants open until 2:00 AM. It was unfortunately a somewhat chilly night for it, though many participants had hot beverages on offer. We found this Gloss installation interesting, though feared the models might be chilly:
We later went into the Gloss store for the first time, and I emerged with a nifty new lace top.
Near Mount Rainier, we stayed at the Copper Creek Inn, which provides an unusual “do it yourself” experience in hospitality. You pay the cost upfront—not unknown in online booking online—but then they send you an access code and directions for getting into your room. That is, you never check in: You get there and let yourself into the building, then into the room. The all-important wifi password is posted on the wall, and any other documentation you might need is also in the room.
No one makes your bed or gives you fresh towels for the second day, either (though apparently, if we had stayed a third day, that would have happened). And when you’re ready to leave—you guessed it—you don’t check out; you just leave.
Making your way in the world today takes everything you’ve got
Takin’ a break from all your worries sure would help a lot
Wouldn’t you like to get away?
Sometimes you want to go
Where everybody knows your name
And they’re always glad you came
For Norm Peters, that place was Boston bar Cheers. For Jean and me, it was Verses Restaurant.
Now, a white-linen, four-diamond restaurant likely seems a curious place to name as somewhere so comfortable, you can forget all your worries and just revel in the companionship. Yet, that’s how it was, The waiters may have been in suits, but they were never stuffy. The menu may have contained items you’d never heard of, but they were always delighted to explain it to you. And they had a remarkable ability to remember you, and your name.
But after 11 years in business, Verses is closing its doors as of September 27.
The news was a shock. This was our place. Our New Year’s Eve destination. The one spot my parents always want to go when they visit. The place where we catch up with friends. Where we have Christmas parties, celebrate anniversaries, partake in multi-course and surprise dining experiments.
We went in for one last dinner. Waiter Ken joked about people’s reaction: “People keep saying, ‘Where will I go now?’ Excuse me if I can’t sympathize too much, given that I just lost my job!” Hmm, good point.
But last two weeks or not, the food and service quality was impeccable as always.
What wasn’t quite so usual were the many conversations about what other restaurants the various staff might be ending up at, the promise that we would be emailed everyone’s final destinations, and the round of hugs for everyone at the end—along with some bonus chocolate mint truffles.
The fact is, there aren’t any other restaurants in Kitchener-Waterloo that offer the same level of creative, high-quality cuisine as Verses.
Langdon Hall is a chi-chi poo-poo restaurant and spa in Cambridge, Ontario.
Langdon Hall at night (by Jean)
This summer they have been offering barbecue experiences for the comparatively low price of $75 a plate. We decided to try out the one on the last Friday in August, featuring a menu by Toronto chef Jamie Kennedy and cheese from Montforte Dairy of Stratford.
They and we were lucky enough to get nice weather that day—no rain and warm, but not too warm. So we were seated outside, in a part of the grounds we’d never seen before. (Apparently there was a contingency plan for indoor seating if necessary, but it was not necessary.)
Outdoor seating at Langdon Hall
The servers brought drinks, but they explained that it was otherwise a “serve yourself” style. (All you can eat, I guess, though I hadn’t thought of it that way until now!) They had a soup and salad station, a barbecue station, and a dessert table.
They also had a selection of five wines on offer—for an extra charge—all available by the bottle or the glass: three French and two Canadian. Or, you could try all five in 3-oz serving stations. Jean and I couldn’t resist the “try all five” option, though I then realized that with this “serve yourself” approach, I’d have to figure out my own pacing through them all. They went from lightest white to heaviest red, so I aimed for the two whites with salads, first two reds with barbecue, then big red gliding into dessert if necessary.
We proved to be pretty effective at pacing our way through the meal, making it a lingering one. We paused partway through to visit their gardens—they grow a lot of their own food here. We noted a rabbit in the garden, and wondered why he or she hadn’t devoured everything in sight.
Flowers in the herb and veggie garden of Langdon Hall
There’s no point in listing everything we ate, but standouts were:
Watermelon gazpacho with herb oil and Monteforte Fresco—Who would have thought of that? But it was lovely
Shiso (an Asian herb) with peaches and plums and Montforte Blossom
Torched wild keta salmon—Outstanding texture and smokey flavor
Salt marsh lamb
Grilled corn with herbed chillies and buttermilk sauce
Decadent brownies (that was their name)—Deep, intense chocolate
Blueberry fritters—Nice little ones
All the wines were worthwhile, also, but the standouts were probably the Niagara Keint-He Chardonnay and the 2003 Haut Medoc red from Chateau Dasvin Bel Air.
Cold plate samplerAnd warm
It was neat that chef Jamie Kennedy himself served us some of the barbecue items. (And he commented that he enjoyed working with a glass of wine in one hand.)
Spot the chef! (He’s the one pointing at the food)It
It was a fun night out. If they do this again next summer, we’re going to see if can rally up more troops for it.
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