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| - My girlfriend and I went to see the Vanity Fair exhibit at the ROM and were looking for a good place for a quick lunch. Once again, I turned to my handy dandy Yelp monocle (god d__n, I love that thing!), which led me straight to L'Espresso Bar Mercurio.
The atmosphere was pleasant and we were comfortable straight away. The restaurant is divided with a food case at the front, so we weren't sure how to order. They haphazardly explained that you could either sit down and have brunch (on the large, roomy side of the restaurant) or you could pick something from the case and be relegated to the small, cramped side of the restaurant. We chose the latter only because we were in a hurry, and apparently so did everyone else because the "prepared food" side was far busier than the "served" side.
I had an egg salad wrap; it was good enough, but I'm fairly certain that it was "day old" because the edges of the tortilla were crunchy in parts. We ordered a Lemon Curd Tart and the Chocolate Mousse, and both desserts were very good. They have interesting teas from which to choose and my friend had the Vanilla Rose. They bring you the teapot with a little timer on it and instruct you to remove the tea leaves when the timer goes off. I thought that was a nice touch. The food was well priced, imo.
The service was just meh, although that could be because we weren't on the side with table service. Still, we had to ask for napkins and silverware twice which, to me, should be a given.
The brunch menu looked delicious and I liked L'Espresso enough that I'd probably give it another try.
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