Very special Thursday dinner at Canoe

I picked Canoe as our first place for a "nice" dinner because I had read that the view was amazing....and it was.  We saw all of downtown Toronto lit up at night.  I made my choices for most restaurants we ate at this weekend using both Yelp and Open Table.  Using a combo of those two websites has never disappointed me.

At Canoe, we ordered from the tasting menu. We also did the wine pairings with it.

They served fresh, crusty bread with a little ramekin of a puree of carrot, garlic and some bean, with olive oil on that.  It was delicious....I will need to try to make that.

We started with "Crazy Horse" sake....it tasted good, but smelled like dirty socks. That came with the Amuse Bouche.

This was Qualicum Beach Scallop Ceviche, Apple Cider Seaweed, and Fresh and Preserved Apple.  This was amazing! The smooth scallop with crunch of the seaweed....and the acid from the apple cider foams.  Crazy good....texture and taste.

I don't have a picture of the next dish....which is SUCH a shame because it was both of our favorites.  It was Jerusalem Artichoke Soup with crispy artichoke, sunflower seed oil and maple braised pork belly.  It was the creamiest soup, so creamy there was almost no texture (if that even makes sense!).  I didn't get any the crunch of the artichokes but the 1 inch piece of pork belly was great with the smooth soup.....just crazy goodness all in one bowl.  It was paired with an Ice Apple Cider....not a good pairing and we told the manager who kept coming over to talk with us.  It was WAY too strong of a flavor with such a delicate, smooth soup.

Our intermezzo was concord grape ice.....ok.....nothing great, but really wasn't meant to be great.

We got to try two of the main dishes.

This is a Deep Water Char with molasses glazed salsify, cookstown beets, cranberry shallot compote
and borscht jus. When eaten with the cranberry, it brought out the flavor of the fish.  I would have liked
a bit of a crispy skin.  It was served with a Keint-He Vineyards Pinot Noir. Tasted like liquid dirt to me. Yuck!

Now this was a first for me.  I ate venison.  It was served with spaghetti squash, chestnut
tourtiere, and huckleberries (see them sprinkled all around the dish?).  This was so good.  As you can
see, it was served quite rare.  I thought it tasted like a smoother steak. I would eat venison again.

Though it wasn't on the menu, they gave us each a cheese plate.  It included ash covered goat cheese.  I love goat cheese.  The ash, to me, had no additional flavor. There was also a homemade cranberry biscuit.  All nice.

This dessert and the soup were our favorite dishes.  This was caramel poached pears, with birch caramel, an almond cookie, and pecan and wildflower ice cream.  You can see under the ice cream candied pecans poking out.  This wasn't in the description, but a nice addition. I was apprehensive of the ice cream, but it tasted like vanilla to me, not flowers.  And the pears tasted like caramel with the texture of cooked pears.  It was interesting. On the way out to Toronto, I was reading the Food Network magazine and there was an article about chefs now incorporating different barks into their dishes.  There it was right in front of me. Didn't taste any woodiness (is that even a word??).  Just yummy caramel.

They gave us a special anniversary plate.  They were wonderful there. I recommend Canoe to anyone.  It was a costly dinner, but worth every penny!!