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| - Friday was date night for my girlfriend and I, and it was my turn to choose the establishment for the evening. What could be better than sausages and (gluten-free) beer? I thought. Turns out I made a pretty shrewd choice when I suggested that we eat at WVRST.
Located on King Street West near Portland St., WVRST features a spacious communal cafeteria-style dining hall and counter service. We arrived around 6pm with plenty of open space to choose from. Other reviewers have described the interior as "unpretentious", which is accurate and refreshing, given the trendy King West location of the restaurant.
WVRST offers an impressive beer list to compliment their wide variety of sausages. They even include helpful pairing suggestions for each of their draught beers (on the menu posted on Yelp, but not on their website).
We had a good idea on what we were going to eat before we arrived, having perused the menu online previously. However, they do offer a variety of sausages in a tantalizing display case so narrowing our choice down to four was tough.
SERVICE - Upon entering the restaurant, we were greeted by the hostess who asked if it was our first time visiting WVRST. When we told her that it was, she explained how the counter service worked and gave us two menus so we could make our choice. Overall, the service was swift and the people we spoke to were very pleasant.
FOOD - After asking how filling the sausages are, our server replied that two sausages are ideal per person, so we decided to share an order of four sausages with a side of duck fat fries. We opted to try the sausages currywurst style, cut up into bite-sized morsels with a side of dipping sauce, but sausage buns are also available.
We were adventurous in our selections, opting for choices all from the "Game" menu:
1. Guinea Fowl filled with cheddar and asparagus
2. Pheasant filled with apple and sun-dried tomato
3. Bison filled with blueberry and maple
4. Kangaroo (!) filled with 'fine herbs'
Each one was delicious and featured a unique taste. However, we both thought the Kangaroo was the tastiest of them all. The Guinea Fowl had the sharpest, 'gamiest' flavour of all of them.
Word of advice - try eating the sausages without the curry for the first bite, to get a better idea of the flavour. We thought the curry sauce tended to overpower the sausage flavour a bit (they actually don't recommend ordering currywurst style with game sausages, likely for this very reason).
My only disappointment would be with the duck fat fries, which didn't taste that different from regular fries and weren't really worth the $6.50 I paid. That said, they allow you to choose 2 different dipping sauces for a large order of fries, from a list of 14 in-house sauces. We got the chive & garlic mayo-based dip (great!) and the jalapeno & cilantro yogurt-based dip (okay), for a grand total of 6 dips if you include the 4 curries that come with the sausages!
I also ordered a Bard's Tale Dragon's Gold gluten-free beer, which is one of the best GF beers I've tried. Kudos to WVRST for including it on the menu (along with New Grist).
We were both pleasantly full after the meal. Next time I'll skip the fries, though.
PRICE - The traditional, poultry, and vegetarian sausages will run you $7 each. We opted to try four of the game sausages, which cost $9 each, or $36 for 4. Total price for two people, including two drinks, was around $60. Not cheap, but not totally outrageous.
So what's the bottom line?
Savoury. Delicious. Lively. Fun. Pricey. Worthwhile.
You should go eat here.
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