| rev:text
| - Last week we decided, a bit on the late, to invite a couple of friends out for dinner. Of course, all the restaurants where we wanted to go were all fully booked, but for Lena. That should have tipped me off right there.
The menu, which boasts of Spanish-influenced Argentinian cuisine, seemed to have potential for exploration although it was fairly limited.
We first ordered drinks. How difficult is it to screw up an order of Vodka/tonic and a shot of Knobby Creek on ice? Well, they did. No ice with my Bourbon, and soda water instead of tonic.
We started off with what the menu calls "small plates", which is what you and I, entitled members of the middle class that we are, call "tapas".
Call me a purist, but I think that trying to pass Shishito peppers for what the menu claims were Padrones should be ground for a public flogging. They may seem the same, but Shishito peppers are, of course, much cheaper and readily available in Toronto. But they do not quite taste the same.
We certainly are quite a distance away from Buenos Aires. The patatas bravas reminded us that we were definitely not in Barcelona. Where one expects a little bit of crunch, we were served chunks of potatoes that had gone quite soggy. I should be grateful that they opened a fresh jar of pil-pil sauce for us. The typical aioli you would expect with bravas was replaced with "milk mayonnaise", something that felt and tasted like thickened milk.
Tasking the salt cod fritters with salvaging this fiasco was a mistake. These four deep fried buns of bland mashed potatoes, flavored with some kind of fish - probably cod, and maybe, just maybe of the salted variety, we can't be sure - were sadly sitting in a plate surrounding a small ramekin filled with what is described as "caper & dill crema", essentially a tartar sauce with fancier aspirations. Yup, bland too.
Maybe it's me, and maybe I'm spoiled, but it's been a while since I've been to a restaurant that charges patrons for bread. At Lena, the bread is listed with the tapas, er, "platos pequenos". Since Lena does not boast of making their own bread, I'll assume it came from Whole Food, which would explain why they feel it's appropriate to charge 5 bucks for 4 half-slices of bread.
On to the main plates. We had heard great things about the Pollo Dona Aurora, and were eager to try it. I was reluctant to try veal Milanese in an Argentinian restaurant, the same way I am reluctant to order the salad when I go to Schwartz. But the table next to us had ordered it, it was just served, and it looked delicious.
So that's just what we ordered. Essentially, both good, but not great. Some of the pollo was a bit dry and over-cooked, but the real treat here were the mushrooms and the laurel, lemon, and saffron "braise" juices, which had a nice and subtle complexity that saved this dish from the mashed potatoes which were, altogether now, bland.
The veal portion was generous, and I suspect they covered it with an egg to, on one hand, avoid having to deep fry it, and on the other, show how dull and grey veal meat is when you have to grill and don't want to transform it into an un-chewable slab of leather. So brownie points on that. It was tender and decent tasting. With the sunny-side up duck egg, I don't understand why this dish is not paired with some mushrooms. I was also secretly hoping for green chimichurri, which would have shown some boldness. But alas it was to be red, fully revealing the Italian influence of the dish. The boquerones were a nice touch, although I suspect they came from the same store as the bread.
Understandably, this is Toronto, and finding fresh ingredients may sometimes be a challenge, but in a restaurant that aspires to be of this caliber, you would expect boquerones to be marinated in house. Maybe it's me, but I blame Juan Arzak for spoiling it for me every time I eat out.
The wine selection is interesting, and we found a little gem in the Spanish Viognier from La Mancha. It did the job quite nicely with the pollo, acceptable with the veal.
The desserts were unremarkable.
Service was decent, with a few mistakes here and there. Fork was missing and I had to get one form another table. No milk or cream with the coffee. Water glasses that remained unattended to.
A bit over $400.00 for four people, including drinks, wine, and service.
Overpriced, overhyped, underwhelmed.
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