Bottega Gianduia Grappa

Ladies, pay attention. I have discovered sex in a bottle. That's right, chocolate grappa. It is the best thing since... Geoff's mother's cooking. Yes, that's right, that's how good it is. Now, I'm not a fan of regular chocolate liqueur. Creme de cacao is awful and chocolate martinis are an abomination to the entire martini food group. Chocolate grappa, however, is like liquid dessert. Imagine drinking chocolate fondue out of a shot glass with a bit of a kick at the end. Ah, so good.

I feel like I need to provide a backstory for this information. Last night, I went to the Fat Belgian for dinner with Anjali and two other girlfriends. I really like this restaurant and wish that it wasn't across the street from Hooters and Circa. However, the location is great if you want to have dinner and drinks downtown before you go out to a club. Or even if you don't plan to go out afterward. If you can find room in the budget to pay $10 for parking and can forgive the occasional fire truck that pulls out of the neighbourhood fire hall (ooh, chocolate grappa and firemen! I digress), this restaurant doesn't disappoint.

I have had dinner here many times before. Their online drink list doesn't appear to be up to date. I had my usual pina colada style martini but if I had seen the butterball martini on the menu, I definitely would have ordered that for dessert! We shared the fried calamari and the goat cheese wrapped in phyllo pastry appetizers. For our main course we shared the Fat Belgian mussels and the moules mariniere. All of the food here was excellent as always so I won't even bother to tell you that the phyllo was flakey, the calamari was crunchy and the mussels were tasty enough to make a toxicologist forget that they're filter feeders.

The head waitress comped us a round of shots. This is when we discovered the chocolate grappa. As soon as I post this, I'm going to the liquor store to buy myself a bottle. Or seven. It is not available at all LCBO stores though so check before you head to your local store. And a word of advice from the waitress. Before you crack the seal and serve, give it a good shake otherwise it will pour out lumpy. Yes, that's how chocolatey it is!

For dessert, we indulged. We shared the Deus creme brulee, the mango sorbet and the chocolate trifle. All were excellent. A warning about the creme brulee though. Deus Brut de Flandres is a champale and you can definitely taste the ale. If you don't like beer flavoured food, give this a miss. It was otherwise an excellent brulee.

In the interest of full disclosure, I only sampled two spoonfuls of the creme brulee and trifle as I'm allergic to eggs. After we split the bill, we ended up paying about $50 each so this was not a cheap night out but I thought it was worth it. I hope I still think that when I get my VISA bill!

The Fat Belgian is definitely a big hit. I'll be back there in less than a month.

Wedding Cake and Fallen Angels

I didn’t drink tea but I was given mad e-props for knowing where to find the best gelato in the City.

We started at 7 West. I’m not sure why I had never heard of the place before considering it’s practically around the corner at Yonge and Charles. Three floors of cozy hard wood floors and small tables topped by a west-facing windless but worthwhile patio. I had one martini – a wedding cake - but would love to return for dinner soon. The wedding cake was more like a pina colada. Vanilla vodka, Malibu and a splash of pineapple juice. Except for the whipped cream. I think that was the “wedding” part. Which would have been fine had it not melted quickly in the afternoon heat and slid obscenely down the side of my martini glass. Fortunately, I rescued it with a napkin. The incident may have been too risqué for the company I was with.

Second stop for the evening was The Red Room at College and Spadina. Again, great atmosphere with interesting art, quirky lighting and medieval feast furniture in the back. Picture oversized benches and long wooden tables which would be perfect for a large group of starving and thirsty graduate students from U of T. The patio is one of the few, if not the only one, on Spadina. My Wedding Cake was stripped of its whipped cream and demoted to a Fallen Angel. She treated me well though and I will likely to return to pick her up again. We ordered perogies and the chicken fajita. Both were more than reasonable in portion size and, although I didn’t sample the fajita (again, a little too risqué?), I did enjoy the perogies. They don’t measure up to Lord English’s culinary creativeness but they’ll do in a pinch. Don’t be in a hurry though, unless you’re prepared to be assertive with the service.

Next up, gelato. The Big Chill in Little Italy has been one of my favourite places since a coworker discovered me to it last summer. It’s a tiny nook just off College on Manning and is worth the walk for a scoop or three. Filled with cows, it offers a surprising array of flavours and options for its limited 500 square footage. Thursday’s tasting included pistachio for me and strawberry for The Other. While I was offered a taste, I was too coy to take advantage of the situation. More fool me. The pistachio rivalled Ed’s at The Beach(es).

Finally, a pre-pumpkin drink at Il Gatto Nero (College and Crawford). The patio was sizeable, the service acceptable. We even saw a minor celebrity, according to the patron at the adjacent table. Never figured out who he was though. They have Guinness on tap which was apparently a hit with The Other. My mystery Riesling – Canadian, with a hint of bleach – was not worth a repeat trip but I haven’t entirely written off a second visit.