Olive and Lemon Restaurant
119 Harbord Street
416-923-3188
dinner for two, including house wine, taxes and tip: $80

As we live rather near, we passed Olive & Lemon almost every day but we had some trouble figuring out the hours of operation. Often the candles inside would be alight and beckoning invitingly but there was no soul within and the door was shut. And then one particularly frosty late evening we finally saw people inside and immediately jumped at the chance to satisfy our gastronomic curiosity. Inside it was all mirrors, abstract art and delicate early spring flowers, quiet music (although when we came another time it was the same track collection – and I find such things rather irritating) and a cosy intimate atmosphere.

They started with a pretty compliment; a saucer of green-golden olive oil flavoured to a nicety with herbs and spices, served with chewy ciabatta-style bread. It was absolutely delicious so as an oil freak I asked to see the bottle, and though it turned out to be just an upscale supermarket extra vergine Italian oil I was still very much impressed by this touch.

The choice of salad was influenced with my memory of postgrad days in Padua, where I enjoyed cooking in the communal student kitchen, sharing recipes with the international crowd and tasting everything. At one time I made a Sicilian orange and fennel salad (a recipe from a good German book on Italian cuisine I had back home) and everybody Italian (most of them from the North) poked fun at me because they never heard of such a salad before. And here I finally saw it on the menu! But it wasn’t quite what I expected, rather two heavy on onions. The grilled sardines my husband ordered, another Southern Italian speciality were much more convincing.

We also had a daily special – risotto milanese with ossobuco (and a glass of excellent Sangiovese for $7) that was lovely even if a little over lemon-zesty, and pasta with cream and sausagio, that tickled my fancy – an originally Latin word that gave English sausage and Italian salsiccia revamped into pseudo-Italian sausagio. And here the fun began.

Instead of pasta with sausage we were brought pasta with mushrooms! I appreciate mushrooms but they are not exactly my favourite food and besides I was particularly intrigued by sausage and cream combination (back in Padua I once tasted a wonderful fresh home-made sausage from Friuli lightly sauteed, smothered in rich cream and served over polenta and it was absolutely glorious!). The lady in charge was very gracious: “It’s not YOUR problem” she said implying that it pretty well WAS somebody’s else, which made me feel a bit uncomfortable. We were eventually brought our sausage pasta, but the sauce was somewhat lacking and it was rather on the dry side for my taste. We were also offered to finish off the fragrant mushroom pasta, since it was cooked anyway and my husband who loves pasta rather too much for his own good did try a few delicious forkfuls (and it wasn’t included in the bill).

As we were splurging anyway we decided to share a dessert and opted for the chocolate tartufo with raspberry sorbet interior. It was very good even if a bit on the hard side and then came another dinner highlight – I have still yet to taste a better espresso in a Toronto restaurant! All in all a fabulous beginning and a fabulous end and quite a decent and rather stylish meal in between, so I would definitely recommend you having a treat at Olive & Lemon one of these days. And yes, it is open daily – from 5 pm.