To celebrate my sister’s graduation we recently went to Valdez, a Latino street food restaurant we discovered from the Toronto episode of Day of Gluttony.
The inside of the restaurant was very modern and fit with the landscape of it’s King Street West location.
Since we were celebrating something, cocktails were totally mandatory! We happened to make happy hour so I ordered a Colombian Sour which had Aguardiente, blood orange, lemon, sugar, egg white and bitters. Nash had the Tormenta Oscura with Kraken, lime and Thomas Lavers ginger beer. We also ordered a litre of Mo-Tio: Bacardi 8, raspberries, mint, ginger syrup, soda. Their cocktails alone warrant returning.
To start things off we ordered a set of ceviche tasters. We had two sets for the table of four because a set is good enough for two people. There were 5 ceviches made from albacore tuna, scallop, ahi tuna, mahi mahi and confit tuna. My favourite was the scallop which had a sweet taste. They were all super fresh and we drank the juice (which we learned we were supposed to do from watching too much TV).
The Pastels were a crunchy wonton with cream cheese and guava inside. It was delicious.
Maduro was a delicious dish of baked ripe plantain, muzzarela, honey butter. We weren’t sure what it was at first. I thought it was eggplant so I ate the plantain skin which seemed to be edible but I’m not quite sure if we were supposed to eat it. Hahahaha, well, I’m still alive.
Their tostadas had smoked chicken, guacamole, cilantro on a corn tortilla.
Chuzos a la Plancha was 2 beef skewers paired with a delicious chimichurri and arepita (a kind of fried bread).
One of our more adventurous choices was a Fried Branzino served with greens in a lemon chia dressing, pepitas (a nut) and rice.The fish was one of our favourite parts of the dinner. It was pleasantly salty and crunchy, fried to a point where most of the bones were edible.
How could we go to a Latin restaurant without eating some chorizo? so we had a chorizo sausage with potato salad and a chimichurri!
The food was so good we couldn’t resist getting a bunch of desserts too!
The first was a crepe stuffed with fried banana with cream.
The second was a ginger cookie ice cream sandwich.
Then there was a beautiful rice pudding with brûlée plantains.
Lastly was a cool play on peaches and cream with warm ice cream.
We enjoyed all the food we had at Valdez! It is definitely recommended you go with a bunch of people so you can try everything (as with all tapas).
