COLETTE GRAND CAFE

This year, I only picked two restaurants to visit for Winterlicious, choosing quality over quantity. For date night, The Hubby and I re-visited Cafe Boulud and continuing with the French theme, I picked Colette Grand Cafe for girl’s night. With high ceilings, white columns, marble floors and plenty of chandeliers, Colette Grand Cafe well suited the occasion.

Atmosphere: Colette Grand Cafe was a lovely vision of blue and white. Plush baby blue bench seats lined the dining room filled with white marble tables. I felt like I was in a life-size dollhouse. Lighting was dim, creating a sense of privacy in the open room, but tables were close to each other. It was hard to tune out the discussion in my left ear.

Service: I found service was pleasant, efficient and unobtrusive. Writing this post, I don’t have much to say. My friends and I were quite engrossed in our conversation and our servers took care of us without us even noticing.

Food: What was remarkable, was the food. Each course on the Winterlicious menu had a good number of options with two vegetarian appetizers. All of us went with the French Onion Soup, served piping hot in a classic, white, lion head porcelain bowl. The soup was sweet, savoury and cheesy, all soaked up by the crouton. You could taste the strong beef broth and onion flavour.

For my entree, I had the Boeuf Bourguignon with wine braised celery root, potato puree and pearl onions. The medallion of beef was super tender and fell apart at the touch of my fork. I liked that the vegetables were still crunchy and lightly seasoned, contrasted the strong seasoning in the broth creamy potatoes. The plating also showed off the ingredients, making a typically heavy, neutral coloured dish look fresh and colourful. When the dish first arrived, I was unsure how full I would be but the portion proved to be quite filling. One of my friends opted for the vegetarian option, a wild mushroom risotto, that was also satisfying and well-cooked.

Since there were three of us, it only made sense to order one of each dessert. There was a rice pudding, a chocolate brownie cake and salted caramel ice cream, which was unlisted and amazing. Of the three, I loved the salted caramel ice cream that was indulgent and the perfect balance of salty and sweet. The rice pudding was light, fluffy and nutty while the chocolate brownie would’ve satisfied any chocolate lover.

This was Colette’s first year participating in a Licious event and I would love to see them continue to take part. I hear great reviews about Colette’s bakery and will have to return to sink my teeth into some flakey croissants.