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| - Located in the busy Distillery district, it is easy to walk by and miss Pure Spirits with their simple and understated facade, especially with the more eye-catching El Catrin, Cluny Bistro and Mill Street Brewpub. But if you give it a chance, you will find it to be a worthy restaurant to dine at.
The inside of the restaurant is cosy. There is a nice outdoor patio area as well.
Me and my dining companion started our meal with some oysters. There was a very good selection of oysters from both the east and west coast, but my favourite of the night was the Coromandel from New Zealand. The pricing was not cheap, even when accounting for the quality and size of these oysters, but this is to be expected given the restaurant is in a heavily touristy area. I was delighted to find out that they do buck-a-shuck here on Tuesday nights for good sized PEI malpaques, and am already looking forward to doing that for my next visit.
We also indulged in some Vermouth tasting and loved the presentation: The red Guerra vermouth was presented in a round bottomed glass flask. Orange slices were caramelized with a flame and placed into the glass with ice, and the red vermouth poured over. This was paired perfectly with a pork hock croquette, which was delicious!
We shared all the mains afterwards:
Ceviche of Pompano, with leche de tigre, sweet potato, corn nuts, cilantro, poblano pepper and shallots: This was a refreshing appetizer and I loved the fact the acidity of the leche de tigre was balanced out by the sweetness of the sweet potato. The corn nuts gave nice cripsy textures which is a nice contrast to the cured fish.
Calamari Tempura: An interesting take on the classic calamari, with a light tempura batter. It was quite enjoyable with the lightly sweet tamari dipping sauce.
Vietnamese style Florida snapper: The fish was perfectly cooked, and the Vietnamese satay sauce was great with it.
Yellowfin Tuna poke: A good sized poke served in a cast iron (?) pot. The presentation was lovely. However this dish was a slight miss for us as we thought the sauce given to mix in the poke was perhaps a bit too much, resulting in a poke that was just a tad too salty. We also thought the pricing for this dish could be a bit better ($31.95) especially since there are a ton of cheap poke places in Toronto, but we did noticed that the ingredients used were high quality.
We finished our meal with the white Guerra vermouth tasting, which was presented much the same way as the red vermouth. This was paired with a delicious orange almond cake.
Service was impeccable during our meal and we really enjoyed our experience here.
Overall, I would rate this restaurants 4-stars, and stop short of giving it 5 stars given that I think pricing could be improved just a bit (Cluny Bistro next door is a tad more competitive with their offerings in terms of pricing). I think Pure Spirits would be a fine place to dine with their oyster specials.
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