Cafe en Passant

Date: June 29, 2012

Location: 10133 Yonge Street  Richmond Hill, ON L4C 1T7

Website: http://www.cafeenpassant.ca/

Cuisine: French

Meal: dinner

My thoughts:

I brought my family here as a going away dinner for my sister, who was leaving for China for two months for school. Of course, if you've read my previous blogs, you would know that I've been here a number of times, but because most of my family had never been, I thought this was a good time to take everyone here for a try.

We came on a Wednesday night, the night before my sister was set to leave, and I decided to make reservations to ensure we would get a table off to the side, since my mom is very sensitive to noise and commotion. This proved to be unnecessary, as the restaurant was quite empty, but I always like to plan ahead and avoid any chance of waiting.

So to start, we shared a Fried coconut shrimp ($11.95), which was served with a sweet corn, cranberry and mint chutney on baby arugula. This was delicious! I was really glad to have finally tried this. My previous visits here were mostly with my ex, who is not a big fan of coconut shrimp, and I never want to eat all those fried morsels in one sitting (I'd have to be at the gym for hours to burn them off!) This time, not only does everyone love fried shrimp, there are five of us and exactly five shrimp - so we  all get to have a taste. We all loved the chutney; it was a very unique (in a good way) pairing with the shrimp.

My mom also had a Butternut squash soup ($5.95), which was one of the daily specials. My mom is able to take liquid-based foods a lot better, so the pureed texture was perfect for her. This was flavourful, although a tad salty.

For our mains, my middle sister ordered the Penne with grilled portobello mushrooms ($17.95), which consisted of penne noodles with sautéed portobello mushrooms, fresh spinach and goat cheese in a rosé sauce. Definitely very palatable, but very rich and thick - I would only recommend this if you can stand to gain a few pounds!

My youngest sister ordered the Penne Arrabiata ($18.95), which came with ten (or so the menu claimed - questionable if there were actually ten) black tiger shrimp sautéed in garlic and cayenne spiced tomato sauce. This was a tad spicy, but nonetheless very, very bland and overpriced for what tasted like something that came straight out of a jar of tomato paste (not even spaghetti sauce, so it really lacked flavour of any kind.) The shrimp was also very small. Needless to say, none of us was a fan of this.

And I had the Crêpe St. Tropez ($19.95), with large shrimp, sautéed baby spinach, in a rosé mushroom sauce. I am not normally a fan of savoury crepes, but this was delicious! Twenty dollars is pricey for a crepe, yes, and the portion size doesn't really justify the price, but the taste and quality are really top-notch. The sauce was creamy but still maintained the perfect consistency - not too thick or runny. The seafood was fresh and bursting with flavour. I already know what I'll be ordering at my next visit to this restaurant and look forward to trying their other crepes!