Medium Rare Treat

So it's that time again where I take you to the depths (or shallows depending on your views) of Toronto's world of franchise restaurants.

First I would like to apologise for the lack of photography on this blog entry. My camera had not charged itself like it was suppose to even though it knew the important of this assignment, so I told it to go to its room without any supper and to think about what it had done. Humph.

There. Once discipline was despatched my girls and I keenly absorbed our surrounds. Surprising the decor was far from kitsch considering this chain of restaurants has a donkey on its neon door signage, a signage that flashes the T, O, R and the apostophe on and off revelling a "surprising" new word. Check out the "ingenious" design on their website.

We started our evening with a cocktail each.

Butcher's paper cover each table along with a supply of crayons. Following my cocktail I had drawn many a masterpieces that night which I would have shown you here had my camera behaved like an adult and acted responsibly. Tut tut.

We had another cocktail and shared a:
LOBSTER AND
CRAB DIP
A mixture of cream cheese, lobster,
crabmeat, mushrooms, peppers
and onions. Oven-baked until
bubbling, served with crisp nacho
chips and warm pita bread triangles.

For dinner I chose a medium rare:
TOPLESS STEAK
SANDWICH
Top sirloin grilled to order and
topped with sautéed button
mushrooms, three-peppercorn
mushroom sauce and crisp onion
straws. Served open-faced on
a piece of toasted Italian bread.

This was consumed with vigour as the steak was done as per ordered - medium rare, the only way to eat steak. It has been many moons since I've had a good steak and let me tell you, this, was, a good steak. In fact it reminded me of another fabulous steak I once had on Valentine's Day. Oh my, I just realised that was the one and only time I've ever celebrated Valentine's Day. We actually made a big deal out of it, made reservations for a fancy restaurant and afterwards, well, we had a wonderful night... But that was a long time ago.

Give me another cocktail, make it a Long Island.

I washed down the steak, salad and garlic bread with another cocktail. The garlic bread here had be lauded by many so I shouldn't have been surprised by its delicious taste and texture - it was like eating a cloud! Not the candy floss kind of cloud, which shrinks into an intensely artificial mess when your saliva lingers too long it. It was more like a doona (duvet for our non-Australian readers) kind of cloud, warm and comforting that you just want to roll yourself up in.

This restaurant proved franchised food can be good and performed better overall over Red Lobster. It is definitely better than its gimmicky name.