A Perfect Date

My extraordinary in-laws were here for a couple of days. Cakes’ Grandma arrived on the train Thursday, with her backpack. She walked from Union Station to St. Lawrence Market to buy some nice cheeses for us, then hopped on the streetcar to our place. She took Cakes for the entire day yesterday allowing us to catch up on errands (Ikea, Home Depot, Loblaws) and have a blissfully uninterrupted nap. Grandpa joined us yesterday afternoon and they sent McHotty and I out for a nice dinner on them. Pretty facking sweet.

We went to the new-ish addition to the Danforth, the Globe Bistro. The place is gorgeous – vaulted ceilings, extravagant glass chandeliers, massive art on the walls. It’s sleek and showy. The wine list is huge with some good reasonably priced options. We had a Porta 2005 Chilean Merlot that was very tasty. The food was excellent. We started with crab empanada and our main course was the Farmer’s Plate (the daily chef’s special, fresh from a local farm), which was lamb with an amazing sauce of salsify, accompanied by pickled salsify and fingerling potatoes.



The service was smooth and polished, but not stuffy. When McHotty went to the washroom, leaving his napkin in a bundle on the table, our server stopped, shook it out with a flourish and folded it neatly. I couldn’t help but giggle at this (I’m goofy that way) and he laughed right back. When we tasted the wine, we asked him how often people sent it back. He said that more than once he’s had people who thought the purpose of the exercise was to see if they liked the wine, and they responded to the taste with “sorry, I don’t really like this one”. Isn’t that funny!

Though the servers were not pretentious, some of our fellow diners seemed so. The man to our right brought his own wine. When the server went to take the empty bottle away, he curtly stopped him (McHotty thinks he wanted to return it and get his ten cents*). At first I thought the women on our left would be fodder for making fun because of their effusive compliments to the owners of the restaurant (who were making the rounds the entire time we were there). However, after dinner, they must have noticed me “surreptitiously” checking out their desserts. One of them asked for a second spoon, which she used to offer me a taste of her crème brûlée (which I of course accepted). The two of us, a rather tipsy pair by then, enjoyed a little conversation. As Jane Austen tells us most eloquently, first impressions can be deceiving, can’t they?

After dinner we went to our favourite local spot for a nightcap, Barrio. A perfect end to a perfect evening.

What is your idea of a perfect date?

For the Torontonians, which restaurant are you most dying to try?

* Ontario has recently introduced a program to return empty wine bottles for a refund. We can clean out our garage to put Cakes through college.