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| - If you venture away from the downtown core, just outside the hustle and bustle of the 9-5 crowd, the theatres and skyscrapers, you might just find a restaurant that is surprisingly unique and that shows some real passion. You can still see the CN Tower, but it all seems far removed from the tourist-focused mentality. Preparing food requires creativity and there is no better place for the chefs of Parkette to find artistic inspiration than on Queen West beside Trinity Bellwoods Park.
A very tiny restaurant, Parkette offers an equally small, very succinct menu with starters, second courses, salads, pasta, pizza mains and desserts. The server tells me, "our dishes are meant to be shared, like family-style," and so we did.
A meal for two should typically be made of three dishes; a starter, a salad and a main or a "second" and two mains, and so on. They offer, what I would call, up-to-date traditional Italian food. Our starter of mussels in tomato broth, topped with fennel and white beans ($10), was just light enough to leave room for the heavier mains of beef cheeks on bed of polenta ($16) and ricotta gnocchi with oxtail ($14). The beef was tender enough that only a fork was needed to pull the pieces apart and, though not experienced with polenta, I thought it was appropriately soft and that it held up to the rich beef.
As mentioned in previous reviews, I am a new gnocchi-addict. Parkette's was not so dumpling-like as I've had before and it was certainly not topped with your typical pasta sauce. Little packets of tender potato, assumingly kept so soft by the ricotta, were paired with oxtail and sun-dried tomatoes in more of an aus jus, than a sauce. I think I had a bit more than my fair share of that dish - at a $14 price-point, this was the best of the night. The ingredients are bold, but the layered flavours hold up perfectly.
Humble, but delicious, Parkette offers carefully prepared food in a great atmosphere; natural woods, stemless wine glasses and paper napkins prevent the tiny interior from becoming claustrophobic. Parkette does almost make you feel like you're having a lovely dinner in the park.
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