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| - EXPENSIVE BUT NOT SPECIAL
I attended BlueBlood 2 days ago for my birthday dinner, which my wife had arranged weeks in advance with great anticipation. When you go out for a $500 birthday dinner you're laying on the Ritz, and you expect the restaurant to do the same. Unfortunately, that didn't happen.
When we arrived, a hostess gave us a quick but nice tour of the adjacent portion of Casa Loma. However, when it came time to be seated we were handed off to another hostess who started to walk us to our table while we still had our coats on. We had to ask to check our coats, and their process of taking and checking our coats was disorganised and awkward.
We were seated in the smaller of the 2 rooms, the first room in from the entrance. The room is visually attractive, with a large baronial fireplace at one end and high vaulted ceiling. However, the lighting was turned down so low that my wife couldn't read her menu. And the tables are crammed in so tightly that you can hear the conversation at the next table.
My wife had twice requested, well in advance, the table for 2 beside the fireplace but the Restaurant wouldn't confirm either request. When we arrived, we found that the fireside table was occupied and we were seated at the table farthest from the fireplace!
In anticipation of a birthday dessert (which didn't materialise, see below), we skipped the appetizers and went straight to the main course.
My wife had Cornish hen (which our waiter referred to as "chicken"), sweet potato fries and asparagus. She described the Cornish hen as good and the sweet potato fries were excellent, wide cut and wafer thin. However, the asparagus stems were large and somewhat woody.
I had an 8-oz centre-cut filet done medium rare, with duck fat kennebec fries and a side of sautéed spinach with quail egg. My steak was properly cooked and tender, but it had little flavour and it was the smallest 8-oz steak I've ever been served. My fries were excellent (they seem to be good with potatoes), but the spinach was a soggy mass sitting in water. I ordered Béarnaise sauce on the side for my steak, and it was watery and flavourless.
We shared a Caesar salad for two, which the menu said was to be prepared "tableside". That's always fun, and we were looking forward to it. However, the tables are packed so tightly together that the salad chef couldn't get his cart beside our table, and we were left as somewhat distant spectators while our salad was prepared in the middle of the floor, 8-10 feet away, closer to other tables than to ours. The salad was mediocre: far too much white lettuce with a dressing that was thin and too lemony.
Presentation of fine food is a large part of both the attraction and the enjoyment. The pictures posted by the restaurant looked appealing, but reality was disappointing. The dishes are black and the mains are served sitting in the middle of an empty plate because the sides are all served separately. So I had my little round filet sitting naked without even a sprig of parsley on the plate. And the lack of visual appeal is exacerbated by the low level of light and the black dishes; my charbroiled (black) steak sat alone in the middle of a black plate and the sautéed spinach was a greenish-black mass in the middle of a black bowl. Not visually attractive!
My wife had alerted the restaurant that it was my birthday, and they had told her they would acknowledge the situation appropriately. We took that to mean the usual little birthday cake and the wait staff singing Happy Birthday in the usual good-natured way. So we passed on dessert and waited, but nothing happened. Finally, after 20-30 minutes killing time and sipping wine, it became clear that my birthday wasn't going to be acknowledged and we departed, without any birthday celebration and without dessert.
Overall, a disappointment, especially at this price point!
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