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| - We were hoping that the Blue Danube Restaurant would be a secret little European getaway but found it a secret not worth keeping.
The Blue Danube Restaurant and Banquet Facility offers "savoury Canadian and German cuisine"* and is located in the heart of Scarborough. My wife and I were enticed to give this establishment a try as an alternative to our usual Asian, Greek, Italian or Canadian venues by a 2 for 1 coupon found on RedFlagDeals**. Thoughts of a mini-adventure flashed through out minds conjuring images of our European vacation which included a stop in Munich. We had hoped this would be a small restaurant nestled in a secluded plaza away from prying eyes and would give us a taste of Germany.
As we pulled up to the establishment at 1686 Ellesmere we were surprised to see that the restaurant is actually at the bottom of an apartment building and is connected the Association of Danube Swabians Banquet facility, aka community centre. Parking is either on the street or underground parking is available, although counter-intuitively requiring a drive into the apartment complex parking underground.
Entering through the large wooden doors (pictured) actually led us into the Swabian community centre, while the restaurant entrance proper is located within. My first thoughts were centred around the antiseptic scents of an old-age home rather than that of an eatery. Our visions of Munich were quickly dissolving before our eyes.
The restaurant proper picks up with the old-age home theme with sanitary white cloth covered tables, standard institutional-style chairs, solid carpet, and a dark decor. The spare population of patrons were also quite fitting as the average age appeared to be well over 50. However, along the back wall are large painted murals of beautiful German landscapes which were the saving grace to this very stark and decidedly rectangular venue.
The waitress was friendly and appropriately accented (although I suspect the accent was more Romanian than German, but that's just a speculation). As I'm on a low-carb kick we placed our order and she was very accommodating to the slight changes and was also happy to honour the 2 for 1 coupon. A few minutes later our waitress returned with a plastic rolling cart, much like those used to bus tables, which had my wife's tea and my ice water. Functionally I can understand that this decreases the chance of spillage however it only enhanced the institutional image.
Our dinner started with dinner rolls of the generic variety, as in purchasable from any supermarket. The garden salad (pictured) was next and consisted of salad-from-a-bag and, as a nice twist, a bit of coleslaw (possibly also from-a-bag). It almost took my attention away from the somewhat wilted iceberg lettuce. Next came the cream of mushroom soup (pictured) which I found quite enjoyable. It didn't taste like the low benchmark of Campbell's canned soup as it wasn't as salty and had ample moderately large mushroom chunks.
Our main courses rolled up to the table on the aforementioned plastic cart. I ordered the special of pan-seared salmon with pineapple and orange salsa with a side of veggies (no potatoes due to my low-carbing). The fish was prepared with a crispy exterior topped with a salsa-like sauce of pineapple and oranges. The juxtaposition of flavours, sweet and savory, didn't come across well. Although the fish wasn't dry it certainly tasted over-cooked and chewy. As well the salsa-sauce was more tart than sweet and didn't spread well over the meat.
My wife, still clinging onto a scrap of reliving our memories of Munich, ordered the Jagger Schnitzel, hunter style. Essentially this is a pork chop (minus bone) covered in mushroom sauce. "Hey, that sauce looks familiar where have I seen that before?" Could it be a coincidence that the soup of the day was cream of mushroom and the Schnitzel is covered in this similarly grayish mushroom sauce? Granted the sauce had hints of wine wine and was thicker than the soup, "good" it was not. The pork was sufficiently moist and "tender" but if there were leftovers, which there wasn't due to our earlier hunger, we would not have bothered to take-away the remainder.
As we paid and departed we wondered if our taste-buds were simply not tuned to appreciate the blandness of these German/Swabian dishes. That's possible but I'm more inclined to believe this is just a below average food from a below average venue. It's also possible that within the circles of homeboys and homegirls that are connoisseurs of old-age institution cuisine the Blue Danube is "Da Schnitzel" yo!
* Quoted from their website at www.bluedanube.ca
** http://coupons.redflagdeals.com/coupon_link.php?c=4680
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