So here’s the situation: It’s your 30th birthday, you’ve recently gone back to a fully vegetarian diet, and you want a nice dinner out to celebrate. You look over menus at many of the well-known restaurants in the city, and consider many of them, but then think to yourself that it sucks to go somewhere that only has two or three things you can eat on your own birthday. Then you remember those reviews you’d read about Fressen, and your problem is solved.

Fressen is Toronto’s only upscale (yet still casual) vegan restaurant.  As any vegetarian knows, most vegan and vegetarian places are comfortable, casual lunch places on purpose.  It isn’t that they don’t think vegans and vegetarians go out for fancy dinners, but rather that a cafe or lunch takeout spot tends to draw in the non-herbivorous crowd too.  But Fressen wanted to do something a little different, and they have.

The menu here is comprised entirely of small plates intended for sharing, and is split into five categories: salad, starch, crispy, vegetable, stew.  A separate wine list contains mostly organic wines from a few different regions of the world, and the drink list focuses on pear and ginger cocktails.

We arrive a few minutes early for our 8 pm reservation, and are seated pretty promptly, at which point we are given water glasses and menus.  Then… we waited.  For a good ten minutes no one even approaches our table until one server asks us if the other server had told us about the soup of the day.  It is at this point we realize Fressen has the same problem we’d had issues with at the Village Cafe in Ottawa – servers work all the tables instead of being assigned sections.  Hmm.  We decide to just shrug and see what happens, and order some of those pear and ginger cocktails, with gin, please.

Another few minutes go by and the second server asks us if the other had taken our order yet. We explain we’d ordered drinks, but otherwise needed a few minutes with the menu.  She nods and dashes off.  Shortly after that, our drinks do indeed arrive, and are quite delicious.  Clearly the pear and ginger are fresh from a juicer, and the gin goes surprisingly well with that combination.  I consider ordering a second, but decide I’d rather switch to wine once the food comes.

Ordering food goes smoothly.  We ask if they’d prefer us to just order one thing at a time, like at Jamie Kennedy Wine Bar, or if we should order everything and they’ll bring it when they’re ready.  We are told that everything should be ordered immediately and they’ll pace our meal.  We choose four dishes: the ‘rawzagna’, the crispy battered tempeh ‘fish’, the corn and taro dumplings, and the pan seared mushrooms. Right after ordering, some black olive bread is delivered to our table, with what tasted like hummus to spread on it. Way better than the dry baguette and olive oil that passes for bread at most restaurants these days. We’re hungry, so we snap it up pretty quickly.

Our first dish arrives rather quickly: the rawzagna.  Layers of mushrooms and zucchini piled with pesto and hemp butter, it is delicious, if a bit difficult to share between two people.  As we are just starting to finish that, our second dish arrives, and only moments later, our third.  I guess by pacing our meal, they meant pile our small table with dishes.  We just shrug and chuckle a bit, then dig in to the battered tempeh ‘fish’ and dumplings.  The fish are great – crispy as promised, pleasantly chewy, with a tangy sauce reminiscent of tartar sauce.  The dumplings are a bit misnamed – they’re more like falafel balls of corn and taro than dumplings, but they are still my favourite dish of the night – lightly spiced and served on a lemongrass skewer with fresh mango salsa.

Our fourth dish arrived just shortly after we finish the previous ones, so perhaps it needed more preparation time, or maybe someone realized there was no room on the table for more food. Regardless, it was a nice pile of delicious mushrooms with sesame, garlic and tamari flavours. Rich commented that this was his favourite dish of the night.

One of our servers popped by to ask if we wanted dessert, and when we ask what is available, she seems a bit frustrated to have to explain that they only have one dessert – a chocolate terrine done with chocolate, avocado, and various fruit. It sounds as good as the rest of the food was, so we’re happy to take an order, and also order two cappuccinos. The dessert arrives pretty quickly, and is as good as it sounded. The fruit is quite fresh considering it is winter, and the chocolate is not too sweet, and there is plenty of it to share between two people.

Oddly enough, however, our cappuccinos don’t arrive while we’re eating our dessert, or after our plate is empty, either. One server pops by to take our plate and we ask her to check on them; the second server soon pops by to say they’ll be free because they shouldn’t have taken so long. Great!

At the end of the evening, just moments after our late cappuccinos arrive, our bill is placed on our table on a little silver tray.  No one asked if we wanted anything else, and we didn’t even get the typical ‘take your time’ that you usually get when someone drops off the bill before you ask for it. At this point I got the distinct impression they were trying to rush us out of the place so someone else could have the table, but a quick glance around confirmed there were several tables for two available. Worse? The cappuccinos weren’t taken off the bill.

So here’s my take on Fressen, which is similar to many of the reviews I’ve read: really delicious vegan food. Mediocre service. Most of the service problems would be resolved if they would simply assign each server a section and have the other server only help by running food or busing tables if needed.

That said: I’d go back! That menu looks too good to pass up the chance to try more of it, and the service issues weren’t deal breakers.

Now, if only I could duplicate those dumplings at home…

Fressen – 478 Queen Street West, Toronto, 416.504.5127. Dinner for two with drinks and dessert, $100.

I decided to try making a stuffed chicken breast dish, and searched foodtv.ca for a good recipe. It didn’t take long before I found Rob Rainford’s recipe for chicken stuffed with goats cheese. Now, normally all of his recipes require a grill, and we live in an apartment with no grill in sight. Not one to back down from a culinary challenge, I decided instead to cook the chicken on our Le Creuset grill pan. As you can see from the picture, the marinade became this lovely brown coating on the outside of the chicken. Easy peasy fix.

Now, chicken is pretty boring on its own, even if it is stuffed with goats cheese and fresh herbs. So I decided to make a favourite: oven roasted potatoes. I don’t really follow a recipe, but essentially you take diced potatoes and toss them into a large pan (such as a 9×13 cake pan). Coat them in the oil of your choice (I used olive), toss in some whole garlic cloves and sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste. I also added in a bunch of oregano leaves, figuring I could tie in the flavours of the chicken dish with the potatoes. Roast in a 400F oven for 15 minutes, mix to re-distribute all the oils and flavourings, then put back in the oven for another 15-20 minutes until done to your liking.

I also made a simple vinaigrette for our mache salad. Whisk together balsamic vinegar and good quality olive oil (at a ratio of about 3:1 oil:vinegar) with a dob of grainy mustard, then pour over your salad. So simple and so good, and just as interesting as most pre-made dressings.

Toss in a bit of your favourite bread and you’re done! I think this meal took me about 45 minutes to make from start to finish, not including time for the chicken to marinade.

The place is obviously popular, at least on Friday and Saturday nights. We were only able to get a reservation for 6:30, a bit early for dinner but workable none-the-less. We arrived and were seated promptly. Unfortunately (?) it was only a few weeks until Christmas, so the decor and music were holiday-themed. I had hoped they might have a peaceful French-bistro-inspired decor, or at least something slightly funky, but alas, no such luck. We’ll have to return sometime when it isn’t the holidays to see what the interior is like.

Once we’d done a quick once-over of the interior, we turned our attentions to the menus. Like a few other restaurants in Ottawa, Domus tries to focus on local and Canadian cuisine. All of their ingredients are locally obtained, and if something isn’t available locally, then they at least go with Canadian selections. This is also true with their wine list, which features some wonderful bottles from all over Canada, focusing most on Ontario (and therefore the Niagara region).

I drooled over the first page of the list, which was rare/’last call’ bottles of various vintages. We might have been celebrating my birthday, but we also didn’t want to drop $70+ on a single bottle of wine, no matter how delicious it might be. Instead, we turned the page over to the local reds choices, and went with a Stonechurch Cabernet Franc. It was a balanced wine with flavours of blackberry and fresh pepper, and a hint of vanilla. Probably not the best choice for the food we ordered, but it was a lovely wine none-the-less.

I decided to order the barley and black truffle ‘risotto’ as my appetiser. It was creamy and rich and had just the right flavour balance between the earthy truffles and the salty richness of the risotto. Rich ordered foie gras as his starter, and was pleased with both the presentation and the flavour; Domus served their version as a ‘hot and cold’ selection, which let you experience the flavour and texture of foie gras more fully.

For main dishes, I ordered the salmon, which was served with a variety of mushrooms done in a tempura-style batter, and with more black truffle shavings on top. Clearly, I was on some sort of truffle kick that night. I enjoyed the salmon and liked the Asian inspiration for the dish. It had a very nice flavour and the salmon was cooked and presented beautifully. I did feel it needed a little something extra; just salmon and mushrooms with tempura seemed a bit boring. Rich ordered the duck as his main course, which did actually go nicely with our wine. He said it was well prepared and delicious.

Desserts here are made-to-order, as should be expected from a restaurant of this caliber. I ordered the vanilla creme brule, and my Rich ordered a cranberry and white chocolate tarte. My creme brule had the perfect amount of ‘crust’ on top, and had a nice, light flavour, exactly what I was craving. His tarte had a lovely, flaky crust. Both were beautifully presented. Add in a lovely cappuccino and we had a great finish to our evening.

Service was prompt but not as good as some of the restaurants in this class we’ve been to (for example, Juniper or The Urban Pear). This isn’t to say it was bad, just that it wasn’t as attentive to details or as chatty as we’re used to. Generally our server will tell us about the virtues of the local wines presented on the menu, or the chef’s inspiration for the side dishes of the evening, or whatever might be an appropriate topic based on what we’re ordering. It’s possible they were a bit swamped with holiday party preparations and that sort of thing, but I was expecting a bit more than we received, that’s all.

Overall we really did enjoy our meals and found the food and wine quality to be well worth the cost. We will most certainly return to Domus at some point, probably during the summer, when the insanity of the holiday season will not compete with the food and wine.

(87 Murray Street in the Byward Market; 613-241-6007. Dinner for two with wine, $150.)