Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Terroni, Yonge Street, Toronto

Terroni and sister restaurants have a longstanding rather vaunted reputation in Toronto. In it's earliest days at the original restaurant, I very much enjoyed the pizza. 

I do not choose to write about negative resto experiences. I prefer sharing my very enjoyable resto experiences and have no wish to be a "critic". But, by writing about this experience, perhaps someone with the Terroni organization may get wind of this review and try to get this restaurant's act together. It has a great location and a seemingly devoted clientele that keeps it packed most of the time.

Terroni opened a branch resto near the Summerhill liquor store on Yonge Street. I had eaten at the bar on the main level. The food was fine, but not exceptional and perhaps for what this resto does, the food does not have to be. It has taken me a long time to eat at the upstairs resto as it is often hard to get in at a reasonable hour at the last minute. This time, I tried booking a few days ahead and was only offered times of 5:15 or 9:15. I tied to ask the reservationist to allow my party of 2 to come in just a touch later, like even 5:30. I received a firm "no". You might imagine my consternation after being seated, looking at an almost entirely empty resto, which still had the odd empty table at 6:30, including a table for 2 right near us, which was still empty until just before we left.

And, there are absolutely no special requests permitted for the food. We ordered pizzas, at one time a reliable Terroni specialty. The pizzas arrived unsectioned/uncut. This might not be an issue for some pizzas, but, for these pizzas, the lack of attention to this detail just added to the pizza disaster.

The presentation of this white pizza, with mozzarella, gorganzola, sliced fingerling potatoes, house made spicy sausage and fresh rosemary, looked and smelled quite appealing. But, what a disappointment! The crust was rather tasteless and so chewy and tough, that we could not slice simple pieces with the serrated knives provided. Even trying to tear the pizza into reasonably sized pieces, resulted in a sloppy mess. The topping was tasty so we just scraped the topping off. The kitchen, not even deigning to pre-slice the pizzas, the pizzas were so much more difficult to eat.

The unfinished pizza, just too difficult to bother with eating and so unappealing after all.
My partner's pizza, mostly uneaten, the tasty top scraped off. Can you believe that the server cleared the dishes/pizzas, without taking any notice that the pizzas remained virtually uneaten!!?

Squid was properly cooked so the texture was good, but the breading, although light, was too oily to enjoy.

Garganelli gepetto with dandelion greens, house made spicy sausage, fontina and parmesan cheese and a touch of olive oil. This was the dish of the "night" for me. A very tasty experience, the slightly bitter greens complemented the earthy, slightly spicy, sausage and some of the sweeter aspects of the cheeses. The slightly undercooked crunchy textured greens were a pleasing experience with the coarsely textured sausage. The pasta was perfectly cooked and had good texture, a very good dish.

I did not care much for the texture of the crust or taste of the canoli filling. The crust was not crunchy enough.

Hazelnut gelato was rich and creamy and had a pleasant flavour.

No comments:

Post a Comment