| rev:text
| - There are many restaurants participating in Big Taste and Swine & Sow happen to catch my eye. For their Big Taste menu, course 1: choose between deep fried cheese curds or spinach salad, course 2: salmon or beef short ribs and course 3: sticky toffee pudding or cheesecake. I love all of the above so a few gfs and I decided to give them a try. I made resos for Wednesday night at 615, so parking would be free.
I rolled up just after 6 and to my surprise, parking was hard to find - though, it did just snow so there were piles of snow that took up some parking spots -_-. I got super lucky and found a spot right in front of the restaurant. This was my first time in Swine & Sow and the restaurant is huge. I didn't get to browse much because we were sat in a booth out in front of the window.
To be honest, first impression of our server, I wasn't feelin' it. I told her I had a reso and she just walked away without telling me to follow so I wasn't aware she was leading me to our table. It wasn't busy at all, she just seemed kind of snooty. My one friend showed up and we were hungry so we ordered some chicken wontons to start while we wait for the other two. The chicken wontons came out quite fast, five pieces on top of some greens, drizzled in some honey soy syrup. At first look, the wontons were definitely overcooked, they had dark edges and the chicken was bland but the soy syrup helped with the flavor. We were too hungry to say anything. The other two rolled in and ordered some calamari to begin and we all ordered from the Big Taste menu.
Each of us ordered opposites so we could have a taste of everything. The calamari was okay, it wasn't as crispy as I would have liked - it came with some romesca sauce which was nice and tangy. Shortly the appys arrived. I couldn't wait to dig into the deep friend cheese curds! They were lightly battered, nice and crispy, more oily than I anticipated but nonetheless good - the house made ketchup went really well with the curds. I had a taste of the spinach salad, and it looked kind of sad but tasted great. The roasted walnut dressing was delicious. For our mains, the presentation was great - I was super excited to dig into the salmon, it came with a wild rice croquette and some snap peas and greens on the side, drizzled with honey soy sauce. Boy was it great!! The salmon was perfectly cooked, the skin had a slight crisp and the fried rice croquette was really good, crispy and went well with everything - highly recommended! I had a taste of the beef short ribs and it was really good as well, covered in tomato white wine braise, it was saucy! The creamy polenta was a nice texture, almost cheesy. My gfs and I were definitely pleased with the mains. After rubbing our bellies for a bit, we were ready for course 3: DESSERT. My favorite meal of the day.
The dessert came out and I was super pleased to see generous portions. The sticky toffee looked and was sooo delicious! It was swimming in the caramel sauce, topped with fiasco vanilla bean gelato - the cake was moist and had pieces of some sort of nut mixed in, I could have done without but still really good. I made sure there was nothing left on the plate. The seasonal flavour for the cheesecake was blueberry, which of course I love too (I love every dessert), it was really soft, melt in your mouth texture and the base added a slight crunch. I like my cheesecake with more texture but it was a nice light, creamy cake.
Overall, yes my first impression wasn't positive but I soon realized that its just how our server interacted, I felt that she warmed up as the night went on. I had wish my water was topped up more frequently because I'm basically a fish but the Big Taste menu was really good. Another to be honest, was I didn't have high expectations going in. There were other more popular participating restaurants but I wanted to try something that wasn't too fancy and didn't have all the hype and I'm glad I did. My gfs and I really enjoyed our dining experience at Swine & Sow and I would highly recommended giving them a try.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)