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.

I’ve had an unpleasant experience at Richtree College Park this morning around 9:30 that I decided needed to be addressed.

First, I arrived at the French toast/Belgian waffle station to find no one there. There was a male worker nearby (maybe a foot or two away) prepping vegetables for lunch and there was a woman on coffee with no line in front of her. The station I was at was located between the two. No one looked up to see me waiting until the coffee station worker came over to make waffles, which I later learned were for her and a co-worker. I have no problem with workers eating on the job but do take issue when a worker’s own meal takes priority over a customer’s. When I tried to order from her she called over another co-worker to take my order. That was the unpleasant customer service. Recap: There was no one there, no one paying attention, no one appearing to be concerned that there was a customer present. I have worked in customer service – retail, coffee and food included – and I always learned that when there is a customer in line, you drop what you’re doing (e.g. lunch prep, standing over coffee that no one is ordering at the moment) and serve the customer. I wondered if there was a “It’s not my station/not my job” attitude present.

I ordered French toast with fruit topping and the quality was horrible. The fruit, referred to as “fresh” on the chalk board but which I could tell wasn’t, was still frozen when it was piled on top of my French
toast. Previously frozen fruit from a bag is not fresh, and still frozen is definitely not acceptable.

When I began eating the French toast at my office I found that the middle was raw in one piece (really, raw egg mixture) and after awhile I noticed that the fruit had taken on the flavour of the plastic container that the meal was put in. Raw middle and frozen fruit is not quality. Raw egg mixture is a health hazard. The plastic flavour, while offensive, could almost be forgiven if everything else was spectacular, but the fact that my food tasted of plastic makes me wonder what sort of toxins from the plastic were transferred to my food. My food was basically inedible and a potential health hazard.

I would recommend that even if frozen fruit is used, it should be completely thawed – warmed even – before being placed on any hot food. I would also recommend a longer cooking time and packing meals in aluminum containers.

I hope that Richtree takes these concerns seriously. 10 years or so ago when Movenpick was running the Marches/Markets they employed a mystery shopping company for which I was a shopper and I had the opportunity to “mystery shop” those restaurants. I never had any complaints when I visited back then. The food quality was consistently good, as was the customer service. Has it deteriorated since Richtree took over?

Richtree is my favourite place in this building to go for coffee- I appreciate that each cup is brewed fresh – and I’ve had decent sandwiches but I will not be buying breakfast there anymore. I’d thought that the overly salty (or too much baking soda, perhaps) muffin that I recently bought there was an anomaly but maybe it was indicative of inconsistent food quality.

I appreciate you taking the time to read this and hope that you address my concerns.

Thank you.

Their response:

Dear [my name edited out]:

Thank you for visiting our Richtree Market Restaurants and taking the time to write us details of your recent experience at our College Park location.

From your comments we regret to learn that overall you were disappointed with your visit and we sincerely apologize for the inconvenience caused by our shortcomings.  Please be assured that your concerns were immediately passed on to our General Manager at that location and corrections will be made to rectify them.

As a token of our apology, we would like to invite you back. We will be sending you a Gift Card for $10.00 in the near future.

We look forward to the opportunity of welcoming you many more times in the future.

Yours truly,

[Executive Assistant]

It’s something. I’ll give them another chance when I receive the gift card. Depending on how that goes I might or might not return after that.

Dinner tonight: Mixed lettuce/greens with some of the wilted broccoli, old white cheddar cheese, fake beef strips and sesame ginger dressing. I didn’t want to do any major cooking because of the heat but even heating up a pan and cooking the fake meat strips was too hot.

For dessert: Ice cream. Ben and Jerry’s Banana Split ice cream is yummy.

I forgot to mention in previous posts that I made a great lunch last Tuesday: Cold soba noodles with cucumber, leftover peanut sauce, hot pepper flakes, sesame seeds. I tried to recreate it on Thursday morning, except I couldn’t find the peanut sauce recipe so I winged it. (Why does the past tense of “wing” sound like it should be “wung”? Because “ring” and “rung”?) I must find that peanut sauce recipe. I remember that it was part of a tofu stir fry recipe. That’s a start. It used coconut milk.