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| - 3.5 stars.
Tough review. We were four during a long weekend in Toronto and did a Friday night dinner at Belong. The location is quite a ways from downtown and bit hard to find in the darker Winter nights. A wonderfully designed restaurant with an intriguing menu that ends up just a bit short all around and at the finish. We did three starters (the grilled radicchio, the daily version of the St. Lawrence salad, and the northern mushrooms). The mushrooms were easily the standout dish to open with the other two fighting to stay in the memory. For mains we did the steak, the grilled roots (sunchoke and celeriac), glazed pheasant, and the fettuccine. The steak was well cooked and solid, the pheasant pleasant, the sunchokes were nice but the celeriac a bit undercooked/roasted, and the fettuccine good enough. Three desserts were a good: orange panna cotta, middling beignets, and the hot chocolate profiteroles - which were way over spiced (it's not "hot" chocolate, it's spicy chocolate). One wine, one mocktail, one cocktail, three coffees. Total is about USD$50 per person before tip. That's a great price point, and that gets some star love, but there were only three standout dishes. Staff is good - a bit too chatty, quite honestly, and that's hard to say because the nice-ness is there.
We wonder if we'd go back and we probably wouldn't in a city with some many options.
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