Posted by Sheryl Kirby in bistros, restaurant review on April 10, 2007 at 6:51 am

The Fat Belgian
115 John Street
416-596-0000
Dinner for two (appetizers and mains only) with a glass of wine or beer, plus all taxes and tip: $100

As a general rule, I try to avoid the Entertainment District. There’s not much about it I find entertaining, except occasionally riding through it late at night in a cab where I can point at the people shivering in the cold at 2am desperately hoping to get into some overcrowded nightclub, and emit my loudest and most obnoxious "Ha Ha!!” Because what pleasure is there in life if you can’t include a Simpson’s reference at someone else’s expense?

No, I am a decrepit old punk rocker and once they closed down the Twilight Zone and razed the Silver Crown to make a parking lot back in the eighties, that area had little to offer me. Which is why I had no clue there were so many restaurants wedged in between all those clubs. Oh, I knew they were there, they were just off my radar in terms of destinations. I assumed they were all overpriced and mediocre.

My visit to the Fat Belgian has validated that assumption.

We thought we were giving ourselves plenty of time. Dinner at 6pm, three courses, and then out the door by 7:45 to be in our seats at Roy Thompson Hall as Miss Aretha Franklin (Queen of Soul!!!) took to the stage. Everyone in our party arrived on time. And then the wait began. The service wasn’t mind-numbingly slow, but just slow enough to put us off schedule and have to pass on dessert, which was too bad, given that dessert might have helped rid our mouths of the excess salt from the first two courses.

And that’s the shameful part – the food itself had the potential to be decent – the concept was good. The portions were small and it was all pretty classic Belgian fare, with plenty of Belgian beers on offer, but everything was so over salted that it was difficult for any other flavour impression to stand out.

The appetizers made it out of the kitchen without too much sodium chloride all over them. The grilled calamari salad ($11), served on a bed of sautéed spinach with capers, Niçoise olives and sun-dried tomatoes was unevenly cooked, with the tentacles and centre of the large squid quite tender and sweet, while the ends were rubbery and chewy. The accompaniment seemed to be composed of too many elements and looked rather like something that would be served atop pasta – in fact, it would have been great with pasta. Hiding under the calamari, it was just alright. The miso mushroom salad ($9) was a tasty, but tiny, combination of mushrooms in a smoky miso sauce garnished with asparagus. Caesar salad ($9) with birds eye chili packed an uncomfortable oomph, with the chili peppers overpowering everything else.

Mains were a good half hour arriving after our appetizers had been cleared, and it was here that the over salting issue was most evident. The mushroom risotto ($14) was verging on inedible, which is too bad, as it could have been a splendid dish, full of lovely fresh asparagus and tender mushrooms, the rice cooked perfectly. The steak frites ($24) was properly cooked, but again over salted, and the addition of the blue cheese crust ($4 for about 30 cents worth of cheese) increased the salt level exponentially. Frites, which accompanied both the steak and the mussels, were floppy and greasy and just as salty as everything else. The halibut ($17) fared no better and even the sides of green beans and potatoes couldn’t cut the salt and grease.

Only the Fat Belgian mussels ($13) seemed to escape the heavy hand with the salt shaker, but these suffered from a case of the weirds. At first glance, mussels with Gruyère cheese sounded delicious, until it arrived and we realized the cheese was all over the shells, not the mussels themselves, and to eat the cheese, we had to scrape it off with our teeth. Points for presentation on the mussels though, as they arrive at the table in a large saucepan.

I can’t comment on desserts, because by the time our table was cleared and a bill presented it was closing in on 7:30pm and we figured we’d never get out of there in half an hour if we dallied over something sweet. Plus by this point some of our party were so disappointed with the meal that they didn’t want to risk the desserts being a disaster as well.

The Fat Belgian is a pretty space, located on two levels of an old Victorian with exposed brick and French windows and railings that allow patrons to look down onto the lower floor, and the service was indeed friendly and polite. However, the kitchen (even when the restaurant was only half full) was slow, the dishes slightly overpriced for what we got, and almost all of the mains were so salty that we were parched for the rest of the evening, even though we brought some bottled water into the concert with us.

So while I do occasionally have reason to trek over to the Entertainment District for a concert or a show, I plan on finding somewhere other than The Fat Belgian for my pre-concert meals. That much salt combined with an astounding show by the Queen of Soul was just too much for the blood pressure.