Valentine’s Day was coming but Jay was going out of town for work. I booked Teatro for an early V-Day dinner on the Sunday, and it was extra special because I had an awesome Groupon – I paid $120 for $200 worth of gift certificates! You really have to keep an eye out for those awesome deals – it’s not often that great restaurants have a Groupon and there’s an extra 20% off sale!
Service at Teatro was pleasant and friendly as usual. Our coats were taken and hung up but surprisingly I wasn’t offered a purse stool for my $350 purse this time (it’s okay, at least the floor was clean). Now, some people may get upset at me for bringing this up, but I think that an upscale, expensive restaurant may want to enforce a better dress code for the hostess. I won’t get into the details, but how a hostess presents herself (or himself, for that matter) should give the impression that yes, a $55 steak is being served here, and it’s going to be worth the money. Perhaps I’m just too old school (at my ripe old age of 39).
I’ve never sat near the kitchen at Teatro, but it’s always nice to sit at the front of the building, near the windows. We had ourselves a nice, quiet corner where it was easy to talk. We ordered a bottle of wine – one of the cheapest on the menu at $65. It turned out to be mighty tasty, and from a place only 10 minutes from where I grew up in the Okanagan, so I will definitely purchase the wine again. To note, the menu said this wine would be a 2013 or 2014 for $65 but we were served a 2015 for the same price. I wish I had noticed it at the time… Also, the wine list is huge and full of very pricey wines. It took me a while to even find the cheaper wines in the menu, if you can call $65 ‘cheap’.
Their homemade focaccia is awesome. Dipped in delicious olive oil, I could eat that bread all night. I think it would be extra tasty with some good quality balsamic vinegar!
Jay is tired of getting calamari when we eat out, so we started out with the bruschetta ($15). It was a neat treat of 3 different toppings – olive tapenade, traditional tomato, and marinated artichoke. All the toppings were great. The tomato was fresh and light, and the artichokes were tender. The tapenade had a lot of great flavour, and for someone who doesn’t enjoy black olives, I quite liked it. The bread, however, was quite chewy. It was toasted, but it wasn’t crunchy enough to be crisp. It was thick sliced, so it was hard to bite through. Jay took a bite of one, couldn’t get through it so grabbed it with his fingers and pulled, only to have it crumble all over the table. An odd texture – I think the bread slices need to be thinner so they can be crispier.
Jay ordered the Bistecca. The serving of grilled striploin was larger than expected, which was nice. For $55, it’s nice to be served a fair chunk of meat. The potato pavé was delicious – thinly sliced and masterfully layered and cooked to perfection, we talked about purchasing a new mandoline that could cut this thin. The green beans were tasty but I wasn’t a fan of the fennel. Jay said he would have preferred my leeks to his beans and fennel.
I ordered the bison with rosemary-polenta. The bison had good flavour and was tender. Again, it was a fair portion of meat, which was nice. The grilled leeks were tender and the grill marks brought delicious flavour to them. The polenta was nothing special. All in all, the flavours on the dish all went well together, and I found myself putting a mouthful of bison, polenta and leeks on my fork at the same time.
We each ordered a dessert – me, the tiramisu (of course!) and Jay the sorbet. The sorbet was cool and refreshing – coconut, mango and papaya. Mixing the fruit flavours with the coconut, and even all three together was delicious. Jay is not a fan of coconut, but he scraped all the bowls clean. The tiramisu was delicious. We were told it was an old family recipe. I found it to be kind of runny though – typically they’re more custard-like but this one was definitely more fluid. Regardless, it was super delicious!
Note to self – do not drink that wine after dessert. OMG – it tasted horrible! LOL… lesson learned!
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