Cafe en Passant

Date: July 30, 2013

Location: 10133 Yonge St (north of Major MacKenzie), Richmond Hill
Website: http://www.cafeenpassant.ca/

Cuisine: French

Meal: dinner

My thoughts:

With a Team Buy voucher in hand, my sister and I came here for dinner on a random Tuesday night. You may have read from my previous posts that I've been to this restaurant a number of times now, and it is a place that I highly anticipate visiting.

So while this isn't a new restaurant for me, I thought I'd at least order items on the menu that I'd never tried before. 

We decided to share:

Crisp Calamari ($11.95) - marinated calamari rings mildly spiced and flash-fried to a golden brown. We were dissatisfied with this mostly because the batter wasn't really crispy. The culprit wasn't that the dish had been sitting for a while, as it was actually served hot. The problem is the batter. Tweaking of the batter recipe is definitely suggested. And perhaps a different seafood distributor - the calamari had a rubbery texture. Blech.

Cajun Seafood ($22.95) - trio of fresh mussels, scallops and jumbo shrimp blended with cajun on tomato rice. This was what I ordered and it made me reminiscent of the Spanish paella that I love so dearly from here.. but a whole lot spicier and with lots of mussels and no chicken. Next time I'm craving rice here, I'm definitely going for the paella, which is more flavourful minus the spice cover-up.

Crêpe saumon fumé ($19.95) - smoked salmon & green asparagus in a rosé wine sauce. This was pretty good but my sister and I unanimously agreed that the Crêpe St. Jacques is a whole lot better.

So it seems like tonight was filled with letdowns. We do, however, hold high expectations for this place. We are not regulars as it is out of our way, but we have been here enough times. I do still recommend this restaurant, though, just not the particular dishes we had this evening.