100 Adelaide Street East
Toronto, ON M5C 1K9
(416) 366-7827
We're not strangers to
Starfish Oyster Bed and Grill this year. This little gem quickly made it to the top of our favourite restaurant list this year. For us, they're mostly saved for "special occasions," but when we saw that they were participating in
Summerlicious, we
had to make reservations.
We went for an early seating, but the table by the window had already been requested for a later reservation. That's okay, we still got a view of the park and some sunlight as the diners didn't arrive until near the end of our meal.
There weren't too many people at first, but when our mains were served, the restaurant filled up pretty quickly. It's not a very big space, so there isn't a lot of staff in the front. I think our waiter was working the entire floor! Regardless, he was attentive and automatically gave us extra utensils when we told him we were sharing each dish.
The bar that is almost the whole length of the dining room. Great place to sit if you want to watch them shuck oysters and grate horseradish!
Everyone around us was ordering the ShuckerPaddy’s L’il Shucker-Seafood Tower which came with an oyster, clam, prawn, sashimi, and crab. That was originally what I came for, but Howard pointed out that I don't usually eat prawns or crabs. Which was true, I'm actually not a huge seafood fan - unless it's sushi, oysters, or fish - so we decided to order a plate of P.E.I. oysters on top of our Summerlicious items.
Delicious, the oysters were so fresh and had a very clean taste!
The house-smoked haddock fishcakes with black olives, pickled ramps, grapes, and cucumber. I had to pick out the olives and piled them on Howard's fishcake. The fishcakes themselves were good, consistent with our previous visits.
And the grapes! Loved their use of grapes and how this element changes each time we have it.
This was their Spanish style tomato, salt cod, and chorizo chowder. Not as piping hot as we would have liked, but it still tasted good. Howard loves his soups!
For the main dish, we tried the Irish organic salmon with a risotto of toasted barley, vine ripened tomatoes, fresh peas, basil, and Grana Padano. The salmon was quite good, my favourite part was the crispy skin. This was a first for me, I've never had risotto as a meal before!
Following, the Kawartha Berkshire pork loin with a succotash of grilled corn, chipotle cured bacon, black beans, and coriander. While it was good, I think we both missed having the
rib-eye!
Starfish frites! We just had to add this to our order. The fries are seasoned so well, making them insanely addictive.
For dessert, Howard had the poached Ontario apricot with a raspberry and Gamay wine reduction, and Tahitian vanilla ice cream.
The first thing he did was take the pit out of the apricot. Then he sliced off a piece for me to try. =) I liked the apricot more than the ice cream, if that's even possible.
The famous sticky toffee pudding. Now, how could I resist?
One thing that did surprise me was that their lunch and dinner menus for
Summerlicious were exactly the same. Most participating restaurants change it up, offering lighter courses for lunch. So really, for a lower cost, you could go and have the exact same meal during lunch. I'm wondering if maybe the lunch portions are smaller? Or, we may have been charged the premium for dinner service. Another thing to note, gratuity was included with the bill - perhaps only for Summerlicious, as we never saw it on the bill before.
