The first dinner was at La Petite France. I assumed that most Winterlicious places were located downtown but this place was all the way near Islington station on the Bloor-Danforth line!! I've never been near that area but it looked pretty sketchy and dead as we walked to the place. Inside, it was a cozy, yet inviting little French restaurant.
To start, I had the Quiche Lorraine. The slice was on the small side, but it had lots of bacon and was warm. My friends ordered the crab cake and pâté, the latter of which I had a small sampling of, and it tasted quite strongly of champagne.
For the main I had the Coq au Vin, which is supposedly classic French stewed chicken with red wine, but I couldn't taste any wine at all. The chicken didn't taste like anything really, it was just rather...boring. The meat was rather dry and I swear the roasted chicken from Costco tastes 10x better. o_o We also all got the same sides of a weird mash-up of vegetables plus some bits of an unidentifiable nature thrown in.
The desserts were the most disappointing of all. I think mine (the chocolate mousse cake that had one strip of mousse in the centre bordered by too-rich strips of chocolate cake) tasted the best out of the three options. I'm not sure if crème caramel (pictured above) is supposed to be crème brûlée, but it definitely was not. It was harder than jelly and tasted like stale egg tart fillings. :/ I tasted the lemon tart too and somehow the crust had this weird fishy, metallic taste to it... x_x Funny thing also, I saw "Profiteroles" on the menu... not sure if they're the same cream puffs sold in tubs that you can get at Costco, but it'd be funny if they were. >__>
As we prepared to leave, we asked if we could split the bill since not all of us carried cash, and we were met with a curt "No" in which the server just shoved the bill back to my friend. o_O" Though by now, it was evident that we were the only Asians in the restaurant and the rest of the clientele was comprised of middle-aged/eldery Caucasian women and some men. Most of them looked like regulars too, and were treated with far more warmth than we were. So in conclusion, I would definitely not recommend going to La Petite France, for its bad service and equally bad food. I had to leave early as well since I had to rush back uptown for an interview, so sadly I couldn't enjoy myself fully, but it was great to see some of my old friends again.♥
The next night, I went to The Wine Bar with another group, and what a contrast to the previous night. First, the service was excellent from beginning to end. We got our coats hung up for us and were given a brief explanation of the menu...Winterlicious items all had prices and we were told we could add dishes and wine if we wanted.
We were coincidentally seated right at the bar counter, so we had a great view of the chefs preparing the meals. It reminded me very much of the sushi bars I went to while in Japan where the chefs are right in front of you. :D
Chefs preparing dishes of duck breast.
For the appetizer I ordered the couscous salad, since my mom has been making it a lot recently but it was so different! This couscous was very fine like rice.
My friend's wild mushroom aracini.
The duck breast dish. My mom sometimes buys the pre-seasoned smoked duck breast for dinner and I've been eating a lot of duck the past few weeks so I wanted to avoid it..but it looked tasty nonetheless! *__*
For the main dish, I ordered the roasted cauliflower polenta, because I've never had polenta before. It looks similar to my starter, but tasted very different. Still very healthy though, which is good because I had been binging on greasy fried dim sum earlier that day lol :P
My friend's creamy seafood chowder. I was tempted to order this too, but since I was kinda full from my appetizer already (small stomach, lol orz) I was afraid it would be too rich..but my other friend commented that it was not that creamy.
The spare ribs with mashed sweet potato also looked very good!
Random shot taken while waiting for dessert to arrive~
I seem to have a major craving for anything chocolate lately... so of course I ordered the chocolate duo (white and dark chocolate mousse). I didn't like the raspberry compote that went with it though, way too sour and took away from the sweetness of the chocolate. >_<
Espresso Crème Brulèe~
Overall, I had a great dining experience at The Wine Bar and would definitely go again. It's funny because both dinners (La Petite France and The Wine Bar) cost the same price. Another interesting note was that La Petite France already calculated the tip and added it onto the total for us (I only know that this is sometimes customary at All-You-Can-Eat Japanese buffet places), but for The Wine Bar, how much tip we wanted to give was up to us, like at most restaurants...
After dinner, instead of going home early on a Saturday night, we decided to go somewhere else to chill downtown. My friend mentioned One Hour and it rang a bell, I vaguely remember it being a location for a past dollfie dream meetup location, so I was really curious. We almost missed the entrance, but we went in and managed to get the spot near the window. The interior is really modern and really cute as there are bean bags for chairs.
The glasses looked like fishbowls~ The bottoms were also curved, so they wobbled around, though you can't tell from a still photo.
They had some interesting dishes on their menu, from bubble tea to chicken wings, as well as traditional Chinese herbal desserts.
I decided to play it safe and ordered a white peach tea. It smelled soo nice! It was a little tart but not unpleasant. The cup of tea was huge for a small, but I ended up drinking nearly all of it while doing some much needed catching up and gossiping lol. Thanks for a great night, ladies!♥
I don't go out to eat often so I make sure to make a big deal and document it if I do, haha. Looking forward to Summerlicious :)
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