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| - In a city overrun with exotic dining options, the Queen and Beaver on Elm Street offers a fancied-up take on Toronto's Anglocentric past.
Dinner starts inauspiciously. House-baked bread is available, for $6. An increasingly common occurrance, it's developed into a pet peeve along with the practice of choosing side dishes a la carte, charging extra to substitute one menu item for another and the phenomenon of 'sharing plates'. I appreciate that you're running a business, but to me, this is the antithesis of 'hospitality'. A little goodwill goes a long way. The bread is excellent, but the expense leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Oxtail soup is rich red-brown, kitted out with healthy chunks of veg and slivers of tender meat. It's sweetness could come from slow cooking, or hooch, or just plain old sugar. It's all smoothness on the tongue.
Fish and chips are an essential part of the pub experience.
Q and B's fries illustrate the frites vs chips divide. I'm a frites man, myself. For me, the fun of fried food rests in the contrast between the salty crisp exterior and the creamy sweet interior. I prefer a high ratio of crunch to soft, so I'll take a golden plate of frites any day. Beer batter shatters upon fork/knife impact but the fish tastes a bit musty.
It's not often that condiments require comment, but the tartar and cocktail sauces that arrive with my fish and chips deserve their own reviews. Tartar sauce is savoury; loaded with dill, capers and sharp dill pickle. It's a welcome change from the usual saccharine version. Homemade cocktail sauce is a revelation; chunky tomatoes and a near-subcontinental blend of spices cut through rich fish and potato. I blitz through my ramekin, and grab a tablemate's when she's not looking.
A Gastropub (I know it's over, but how else to describe the Queen and Beaver) may not be your first choice for steak, especially with Barberians a few doors down, but the rib-eye is flavourful and cooked to a properly pink medium-well. Sided with more fries, it's a substantial supper.
Coffee is strong, if overly bitter.
Desserts work best at the English comfort-food end of the spectrum. Warm sticky toffee pudding raises blood sugar from three tables away; indulgent golden sponge, dates and treacle are too good to share. Drowned in custard (or was that melted ice cream, my brain had stopped working after the third spoonful), it's a sense-memory in the making. More ambitious desserts, like an inexplicably-salty chocolate-orange tart, disappoint.
Brunch is worthwhile, even if you pass on the hair of the dog. More of that strong coffee braces one for a proper English breakfast. Lightly scrambled eggs, rashers of bacon, sausage link, beans, tomato, mushroom and fried bread mean you don't have to eat for a week. It's all fresh; the eggs properly runny and the sausages popping with juice.
A side of lemon ricotta pancakes gilds the lily-but wait-we asked for a side to share, but got a whole order instead. The mistake shows up on our bill, but the extra charge is removed with good humor. We feel better about the charged-for-bread incident a few nights earlier.
I don't expect much when it comes to pubs in Toronto. My expectations are usually met. The Q and B may be too far downtown to be anybody's local, but on those rare occasions when you want to LARP an episode of Coronation Street, it'll do the trick.
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