For my birthday we made a reservation to Bent, run by Susur Lee and his sons. This was the second in the line of the Lee family restaurants in Toronto and is known for it’s raw seafood bar.
We started with the Truffled Filet of Beef Carpaccio: garlic potato shoestrings, red onion, Asian pear, braised shiitake mushrooms, Taiwanese vinaigrette. This dish was both beautiful in presentation and marriage of flavour and textures. I loved the addition of pear.
Next came the Vietnamese Seafood Ceviche: shrimp, scallop, octopus, mussels, jalepeno, asian pear, red pepper, celery, potato, vietnamese coriander & lime, chorizo buckwheat rice cake. The spice in it was nice. My favourite part of it was the octopus.
We were totally obsessed with everything about the Carmelized Black Cod: Asparagus (wrapped in bacon), thai ginger squash & carrot puree, lemon chive veloute. The puree was silky and heavenly and the addition of crunchy chickpeas was a nice touch.
We did get one veggie dish to calm ourselves from all that meat. Jerusalem artichockes (which I didn’t know were shaped like mini potatoes) paired beautifully with hazelnuts and goat cheese.
To drink I had the And Also (yes that’s what it is called). It contained Broker’s Gin, Tromba Tequila, Aperol, Lillet Blanc, watermelon juice, cucumber, grapefruit bitters, simple syrup and fresh sours. It paired very nicely with the dishes we ordered.
Nash had the Georgetown Storm containing El Dorado 12 year rum, homemade ginger beer, nutmeg, lime and orange.
Our waiter highly recommended the Wild Banana and Chocolate Chip Cake and we were super glad that we listened to him. It was divine and I loved the vanilla marshmallow that came with it.
Birthday dinner at Bent was totally worth it. It’s a sharing restaurant so it’s recommended that two people have at least 4 dishes. It’s a great place to celebrate or if you’re feeling particularly ballin’.
