New Year's Dinner Out


Happy New Year's folks!

Debbie and I were a little tired of cooking this holiday season, and wanted to go out for a nice dinner. It also happened to be new year's eve. We thought we'd try a new restaurant in town, called Forage. It's one of those "Sustainable Dining" restaurants, basically a place that gets their ingredients from within 100 miles of the restaurant and everything must be sustainable. Now I can appreciate the idea, but it can come off as a bit preachy to me, but that's just my own opinion.

Now onto the food!

Forage is a small plates restaurant and everything is meant to be shared, so we ended up ordering five dishes to share, and not just because we were hungry!

We start off with the snack sized Gnocchi in brown butter.

A very simple dish of handmade Gnocchi cooked in a brown butter and finished with parmesan cheese. The Gnocchi were freshly made and were nice a fluffy with a great seared texture, very small but the dish is $6 which is pretty reasonable for this type of restaurant.

Prawn, Pork and Seafood chowder, topped with a quail egg.

This is their award winning dish, and I loved it!The chowder is really creamy with a strong salmon and prawn flavour. It is very rich and full of spot prawn and salmon bits. One warning though, this dish is pretty tiny. The bowl reminds me of a bowl I would of eaten in when I was a toddler! But you must order this!

Smoked Sablefish, winter mushroom broth, gnocchi, lamb bacon & Brussel sprouts

The fish is cooked perfectly and the dish is tasty, but was a bit too salty for our liking. Salty broth with salty mushrooms and very salty lamb bacon. The Brussel sprouts help with the salt. The fish is darn tasty though, and the dish looks beautiful.

Coho Salmon, Beet risotto, Chantarelle mushrooms, Nasturtium

I didn't want to order this dish. At first glance I thought I was right. The salmon looks overcooked. But I was wrong! This is a great and tasty dish. The salmon has a lovely wood grilled flavour, the risotto is creamy with a nice sweet taste. The Nasturtium... I have no idea what the leaves were, and tasted of nothing. Supposedly a pansy flower leaf... Interesting. I would order this dish again.

Pepper Braised Bison cheek, charred onion, 64 degree egg, Fettucine, Bone Marrow crouton, Watercress.

Easily the best dish of the night! The Bison cheek was amazing, with great flavour and texture, the Fettucine was handmade and had a nice al dente bite to it, the egg made everything extremely rich, and the croutons were beefy and amazing! We got the last available order of this dish, so order it quickly. It's a must try!

Overall this was a wonderful meal, it reminded me of the old restaurant "Ensemble" before they closed down. The meal is pretty pricey though, so its great for a special occasion.