Luma

 My most favorite part of travelling involves eating. Yes, the sights are interesting. Sure, I wanna check out the tourist hot spots (for a brief period of time). And of course I want to wander the streets and see the "real" (name your destination here). But the real joy for me, when travelling is eating. Usually before I go anywhere I google the city, the restaurants, the reviews... Often I end up with an entire trip of reservations for particular eateries that I absolutely MUST try.

What can I say? I'm a bit of a restaurant slut. I want them all!!!

However, because of the rush of exams and essays before we left for Toronto last week, I didn't have a chance to do any of my usual investigating. And to be honest, the sheer size of the city and the unfamiliarity with it were truly daunting. So, I winged. it. And ultimately, we ate. Boy, did we eat. We ate good! Below are 3 of the restaurants we hit - all of which really deserve their own post for very specific reasons. Actually, if they deserve it, let's give it to em! In order of appearance, here are (in 3 separate posts), Luma , Enoteca Sociale , and Pure Spirits Oyster House & Grill!

Luma

Photo courtesy of Luma Restaurant



Located in the TIFF Bell Lightbox at 330 King St W, Luma was downtown Toronto elegance at it's finest. Gracefully casual, sophisticated, beautiful, unpretentious, and clean. It was here that my lovely Kaitlyn (you can visit her here) had her Bachelorette lunch. 

The food incredible and perfectly balanced in flavor and texture. And the presentation was obviously well thought out. And it was generally, very, very good.

For lunch, I had a couple of glasses of the Cristom Pinot Gris, Eola-Amity Hills in Oregon ($15) - um, delicious! - and the Seared Sea Scallops with warm potato salad, double smoked bacon, and sun choke & lemon vinaigrette ($23). The scallops were perfectly cooked and I couldn't get enough of the sunchokes. My only regret on the plate was that I didn't order more of them! Some of the others tried the Seared Tuna Salad with bibb lettuce, green beans, tomato, chickpeas, and tonnato ($16/$22), Ricotta Gnocchi with mushroom, parm-reg and chives ($13/$18), Crispy Fried Pork Torchon ($15),  and the soup of the day ($8). I'll be honest - it's a little pricey, and the menu doesn't really lend itself to non-meat eaters - but if you do eat meat, it's well worth the cost and the visit!

The service was the high point for me (aside from seeing Kaitlyn and meeting her wonderfully glorious friends). Our server was friendly, informative, unobtrusive, honest, efficient, and quite frankly, pretty darn hilarious. He really made the lunch. He also went far above and beyond what I would expect any server to do - he tried to book me in at a completely different restaurant for dinner! As I said earlier, I don't ordinarily travel without looking into restaurants ahead of time. But, because I hadn't, I asked him where we should eat dinner. After conferring with a couple of the servers, they unanimously proclaimed "Enoteca Sociale"! He proceeded to try to get me a reservation for that night (and then refused a tip for his effort). How amazing is he??! I was honestly and truly impressed and absolutely will be back.

Unfortunately, it was too late in the day to make one but we went anyway... and luck was on our side...