Best of East and West - Back to back nights

[Charles Yu]

COLBORNE LANE

For the past six years, my brother-in-law and I celebrated our birthdays by always having a 'men-only' wine pairing tasting menu in one of Toronto's finest. Past venues included Senses, Scaramouche, Perigee, George, Truffles and Splendido. This year our choice is Colborne Lane. Before going on to discuss about the food, one piece of interesting statistic! It ALWAYS rain on our parade!!! All six years in a row! ##$%$%^!!!

Initially, I was planning to write a dish by dish review of our 10 course ($109, down from $120 ) menu. However, due to the complexity of the ingredients and the variation of physical forms ( foam, crystal, powder, tablets... ) that made up the dishes. If I do that, I'll have to use my entire evening! No way! Sorry Chowfriends! Instead, I'll just high light some of the night's best dishes.

- Aloe vera snow + compressed water melon + cucumber water + Kete ! Volka. ( Very refreshing )

- Fluke sashimi + yuzu vinegrette + black seasame caviar. ( Fresh, sweet and chewy texture, outstanding plate presentation.)

- Scallop crusted in Indian spices + coconut curd + sweet chili + nitro creme fraiche. ( The scallop seared to create a 'crispy' surface was uber delicious and perfectly cooked. Again really artistic presentation)

- Beet root in a variety of form ( The nights prettiest dish. Didn't realize beet roots can be THAT filling! )

- Early fall cream corn soup + flavoured tapioca pearls ( Best tasting 'western' soup I had in TO! )

- East coast wild halibut + rambutan + shitake mushroom + coconut broth ( Tasty dish and perfectly cooked fish. But! Coconut again!!!??!! )

- Tripled seared prime filet mignon ( Seared first in soya, then in Miso and lastly in Mirin to create a really complex tasting piece of meat )

- Hand churn ice-cream made in front of us with our server pouring lemon creme fraiche into a metal dish filled with liquid nitrogen. Great visual effect! Pretty tasty end result !

All in all a very enjoyable meal. Considering Claudio Aprile was absent from the kitchen that night, the Sous did a mighty fine job! Only complaint is that there are just too many 'coconut' components used.

LAI WAH HEEN:

Our modernistic meal at Colborne Lane was followed by a traditional Cantonese fare at Lai Wah Heen the next night! LWH was chosen because we heard from our fellow CHer SkylineR33 that the executive chef of Hong Kong's Maxim/Jade Garden group will be in town to man LWH's kitchen for a while. With an impressive credential that includes honing his abalone cooking technique from the world's famous ( Michelin star ) Cantonese Chef 'Ah Yat'. It will be a shame to let this opportunity by. The four of us selected the $268 prix fix menu.

The meal started off with a tender and delicious 30 head dried abalone braised in prime oyster sauce rested on a bed of sauteed pea sprouts. It was followed by a very tasty soup of freshly picked crab meat, assorted seafood and finely shredded chinese Zucchini. A pan seared jumbo Hokkaido scallop wrap with Nori was next. Two nights in a row, two great tasting scallop dishes! My food guardian angel must be looking after me! A couple of meat dishes followed. The high light being the crispy skin, hand fried free range chicken. Lastly, a braised E-Fu noodle with abalone sauce, chinese mushroom and yellowing chives rounded off the meal.

Only disappointment was that, for $268, I would expect some form of dessert would be included. But No! We were asked to choose from either the Senses' dessert menu or LWH's own Chinese dessert menu. We ended up ordering two fish shape fresh mango puddings that tasted very fruity and refreshing. At only $6 each, a pretty good deal!

Overall, one of the best Chinese meal this year outshining a few from the Emperor, Yang's, John's B-B-Q and O Mei.

Talk about the latter! Tomorrow night, Giant lobster 4 ways to celebrate the mid-Autumn festival! More foooood! Sigh!!!

[childofthestorm]

Great report. How were the wine pairings at CL?

[Charles Yu]

Since 90% of the menu was seafood related and 'sweetish', we decided to do our own pairing by ordering German Mosel Riesling and Alsace Gerwutz. by the glass.

[skylineR33]

Hi Charles,

Thanks for the report. I also had the Aloe Vera Snow at CL, but found the combination does not work for me, really strange taste when cucumber is mixed with vodka. However, we found the brown butter truffle mushroom soup tasty with a very strong and thick flavor on the night we went.

I agree the finely shredded chinese zucchini thick soup is very good at LWH, it is a good replacement for shark fin ! However, my best chinese meal in Toronto so far this year is at John's BBQ with a customized 10 courses dinner ! Very tasty braised premium shark fin with thick jin wah ham sauce and jumbo sized dried scallop (2.5 inches in dried form, which is equivalent to around 5 inches in original form ?!)

[pinstripeprincess]

you are lucky to get good scallop two times in a row. i'm often plagued by wet packed scallops and don't enjoy the chemical after burn on my palate. i won't order it any more unless i ask before hand otherwise i'm setting myself up for disappointment.

i've gotta say though.... while the king crab season was on the manager at o mei convinced us (our first time there) to order it in a 3 way preparation and i found that they weren't all that different and were mostly garlic focused. one dish even seemed to have come with purposely burnt garlic which left a strong bitterness throughout the dish. i'm not sure if this is part of their typical prep but it didn't leave a good impression.

[Charles Yu]

Totally agree with you Princess! King crab cooked 3 ways at O Mei is highly over-rated. Not worth the money they are charging!
Best King Crab I had was when I was working for an Oil Company with operation in the Arctic. The oil platform took in 2000 pounds of the crustaceans! A few of us gathered on the helideck., filled an oil barrel with sea water, heat it up and just dunk a few of the live 'big' ones in the boiling water. Nice and simple but so sweet and gooooood! Need special tools to operate though! Anyways, best 'beer' snacks I had!! Ha!