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| - Figures is located near Yorkville in downtown TO (although not directly in the heart of Yorkville; it's on Avenue Road) and thus was part of a more posher area than other neighbourhoods.
The hostess found out it was our first time to the restaurant and gave us a brief introduction about the restaurant. Once we were inside, we weren't allowed to take photos of the mural wall but that everything else was okay. Then she directed me to press a button in the design of Captain America's shield and the hidden door (camouflaged by comic book figures) opened to reveal the restaurant itself. This was really cool! The area where the hostess's table was also acted as a vintage toy store where there was a shelf with items for sale.
One look at the drinks menu told me that the price point for this restaurant was going to be high. The cheapest cocktail was $16 and ranged all the way to $30, the most expensive one. Only a few of the drinks had some relevance to comic books.
K ordered the "Web Slinging Spider Hombre" since its name sounded like it might be uniquely themed. When it arrived, it had some blue foam at the top but no comic book figures (are my expectations too high?! Lol). Taste-wise, it was a little sour but did taste good.
Again, the menu items were quite pricey when portioned individually and the server did inform us before we ordered that it was going to be more of a tapas style dinner where the dishes were in small portions and designed to be shared.
When we placed our order, the server informed us that these weren't going to be enough for the seven of us and that it would be better if we picked two more. Hmm... to me, it sounded more like a firm insistence on the extra items rather than a polite recommendation. Nevertheless, we gave in and did order one more dish and added the Calamari. The server again insisted that we needed one more item, like an extra Quail perhaps. But we resisted and said we were fine and would order more afterwards if needed. Thank goodness we resisted.
The Global Artichoke had shallots and balsamic. There was a jelly on the side with a character imprinted on it. Overall, this dish was all right.
The In-House Gnocchi was all right. It was soft but could have been more pillow-y. I also thought that the crunchy vegetables on top of it didn't go well with the gnocchi.
The Norwegian Calamari had sweet peppers and oregano. I enjoyed this dish! The calamari was so flavourful and perfectly cooked; it wasn't firm or rubbery at all.
The Spanish Octopus ended up being an interesting dish. Other than the tentacle part, there were a few strips of meat that didn't look or taste much like octopus at all. The dish itself did smell fishy enough to suggest octopus but many of us tried the meat and thought it tasted more like the texture of chicken instead. It was such a mystery to us that we actually hailed the server down and asked about it.
The Arctic Char was beloved by many at our table. This was a really good portion too (the biggest we'd seen thus far) and came with cauliflower and tarragon.
The Soft Shell Crab was disappointing. I love soft shell crab in general. This came with corn and poblano which I thought didn't match well with the fried crab at all. This dish was difficult to share.
The Quail came with apricot slices and coffee cream. The quail meat was all right. Quails are very small birds and thus there wasn't much meat to share (no wonder the server recommended two quails for our table -- but seriously, $30 for a quail dish?). The apricot slices were very fresh!
Last but not least, we got one more redeeming dish. This was the Canadian Lamb dish that came with summer squash and rosemary. The lamb was delicious! It was moist, a little over-salted but delicious and juicy.
I thought that it was cool that our bills were presented in actual comic books that we could then take home!
For the amount of money that we spent on the bill, we really only got a couple of bites in (I recognize that we were a table of 7 and didn't order the number of "recommended dishes" to share but still I thought the prices were very inflated and the portions were small).
We actually decided to go to a pizza parlour right after the dinner to fill up the rest of our stomach space. I left the restaurant having gained insight into what Figures was all about but definitely felt disappointed and jipped. Only one dish had any visual allusion to a (comic book) character and the rest were all just fine dining dishes where not everything tasted great either. Some ingredients were great and some not so good. In other words, the dishes weren't consistent in their tastes. Unless you have the money to blow on tiny tapa dishes and really want to come here for the hype, I would suggest trying another restaurant instead.
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