Stone Grill Menu

My friend Kerri (of Wines Constantly) and went to the Stonegrill last night, for the Cabbagetown Wine Route. This is an event that a number of neighbourhood restaurants participated in, a 3-course meal with wine pairings.

The evening started out with problems:

1. I got there after Kerri but couldn’t find her. There was no host or maitre d’.  I waited perhaps 5 minutes for someone to acknowledge my presense. I noticed that the reservation had been checked off but when a waiter came to seat me he couldn’t tell me if my friend had arrived or if the checkmark was a mistake.  That in itself isn’t so bad, and it got sorted out, but absense of host was problematic, as was the wait. Kerri said that she waited longer (I got there 15 minutes late for the reservation and she must have just gone down to the bathroom before I arrived).

2. The place was too noisy. It was the the large group of lawyers. “The first thing we do…” I can’t fault the restaurant for that.

3. Kerri ordered a drink first pre-appetizer, a prosecco-based beverage called a French Kiss made with Stoli Raz and chambord (?). We like prosecco. When her drink arrived I was about to order myself a prosecco-based drink but learned that they were out of prosecco.

4. That last bit in the bottle was flat, and her drink tasted like cherry cough medicine to both of us. I suppose that the bottle had been sitting around for awhile and wasn’t properly covered.

…After that it got better. The waiter whisked away the offensive drink (“It never happened”) and the meal was quite nice. The first two courses had two options, a meat option and a non-meat option. This was perfect for us. For the appetizer she got the roasted tomato soup with chorizo and basil and liked it a lot. I had the salad of baby arugula, strawberries and feta. The salad got better the longer it sat.  The flavours deepened as I ate it. The accompanying wine was a Rockway Glen Pinot Gris. I don’t remember what that was like. Pear? Melon? I didn’t take notes. I know I liked it and I remember that it had the right amount of sweetness to go with the spicier arugula.

For the main course, she ordered the AAA sirloin and I ordered  the gnocchi, made with a spicy sundried tomato-hemp seed peto, spinach and goat cheese. This is when I recognized why the restaurant has its name. The steak was a slab of raw meat, served on a stone grill (a collective “ohhhhhh!” is heard). The ‘grill’ looks a little like a flagstone. It’s heated above 400F and presented to the diner, meat sizzling on top. I had a tiny piece of meat, a size that I’d refer to as kezayit – a small piece. I think my eyes rolled back into my head. HELLOOOOO. I want to go to my organic butcher and buy a big ol’ steak. Then I want to thank the cow, the farmer, the butcher and everyone else involved in the raising and slaughtering of the animal.

It reminds me of my final year of university, when I tried to go vegetarian but kept eating meat ocassionally, my roommate once referred to me as a “vegetarian who eats meat” and himself as a “meatatarian who eats meat”. I think I was “flexitarian” before that word existed.  Now when I do eat meat, which is rarely, it’s a morsel of meat.

The gnocchi was delicious. It had a nice bite to it, a nice spice. Deliciously seasoned. Great consistency. Again, I wish I’d taken notes.

For wine there was a choice, and we chose different wines. Hers, a 2007 Henry of Pelham Gamay (winery tasting notes – PDF). Me, a 2006 Barrel fermented Chardonnay, also Pelham (winery tasting notes – PDF). The Gamay tasted of stone fruit and something I couldn’t place. My chardonnay tasted like pine and herbs, basil maybe. I kept going back to pine and grass. Kerri tasted melon (or maybe that was the dessert wine – why didn’t I take notes when I intended to blog it?). Henry of Pelham’s description says, “Full bodied and multi-faceted with layers of tropical fruits, flinty mineral flavours off-set by notes of fresh cream, caramel and toast.” Perhaps the fruit and mineral flavours were there for me. I think I need to drink more to see. Lots more.

Dessert was macerated berries with lemon basil zabaglione, served with Henry of Pelham Late Harvest Reisling Ice Wine. The wine wasn’t too sweet like some ice wine, only slightly pineappley with citrus and honey, maybe melon (can’t remember).

Not bad for $40 including tax and tip.

Next time I’ll take notes so that my descriptions – wine descriptions in particular – aren’t so vague.