Woods Restaurant

A nice little restaurant in the St Lawrence Market area. The entrance was quite hidden, thought I was walking into another building. The restaurant advertise as proudly Canadian – only use ingredients from locals in Canada. The menu had a lot of variety. I was in between a few items but end of selecting the ROASTED MUSCOVY DUCK BREAST with crispy confit, dried cherries and duck egg béarnaise. The sauce was sour and sweet from the dried cherries. The duck confit was really crispy and the duck breast itself was very tender. The dish was quite delicious.

We ended up sharing a dessert – RASPBERRY ‘MACARONNADE’ – Mascarpone Mousse, Basil Ice Cream, Macaroon, Raspberry Tuile, Textures Of raspberry, salted pine nuts. It was a raspberry mousse in a jar with basil ice cream on the side. They advertise on the menu that there is macaroon, didn’t see one, maybe it is mixed in the mousse.

The service was great. Great atmosphere for catching up with friend, not too noisy.

Woods Restaurant
45 Colborne Street
Toronto, ON M5E 1E3

Basta Pasta

It’s my friend’s birthday, he didn’t want to go all fancy but we went to a nice Italian / Japanese Fusion restaurant near SOHO. We got reservations at 9pm but the place was still packed and more coming in. We started off with some appetizers – Insalata D’anatra – Cherrywood-smoked sliced duck breast, watercress, arugula. The duck breast was very tendered with a little piece of fat on top. Next we had the Tonno Fresco Scottato – Prime tuna tataki, original wasabi tartar sauce, cauliflower, fingerling potatoes, orange saffron sauce. It was a very small portion, honestly, it was literally one bite per person.

I was already starting to fill up but this is just the beginning. Next come the restaurant’s speciality which is the Spaghetti Con Prosciutto E Parmigiano – Spaghetti with parmigiano reggiano & parma prosciutto, served in a half wheel of parmesan cheese at the table. The server rolled over a half wheel of parmesan cheese and mixed the hot spaghetti inside to melt the cheese and then served on my plate. Now that is some fresh cheese from the table! The pasta was so delicious, it is homemade and it is chewy and boiled just perfectly. I had a food organism on my first bite! I had never had such a good plate of pasta.

Finally, my main course was the Costolette D’agnello Charcoal – grilled colorado free range lamb chops with potato gratin. The lamp chop didn’t have much of the “lamb” taste. The potato gratin was actually more delicious, I wonder how it was made. We surprised our friend with the birthday tiramisu and the banjo singing band singing happy birthday. Haha, my friend was quite embarrassed but we had to do it.

Basta Pasta
37 West 17th Street
New York, NY 10011