White Sangria

Alcohol and I have a complicated relationship. It's as if we were those couples that hook up, fight, break up, and inevitably find each other again. It's dangerous, exhausting, and addictive.

I have on several occasions fallen sick in the most unexpected and least desirable places (on a plane, in the park, on an elevator, in a tram). I’ve learned the hard way how alcohol can do nasty things to me, not to mention turning me into a tomato seconds within my first sip, so I drink with caution.


It's not like I chug gallons of tequila down my throat. What's the fun in that? But just one mojito can cause me to feel dizzy and my vision to go blurry. I suppose it's my Asian genes and the inability to break down alcohol that leads me to always bemoan: Why did I drink that? Whyy?? I'm not saying I like being drunk or have issues that require immediate intervention, nothing like that. I'm just glad that I could drink in the sunny afternoon and still get away with it.

However, I’ve noticed since my Europe vacation, the ill effects of wine/beer/anything with alcohol seems to have trickled away. No more headaches! No more nausea! No more lightheadedness! Golly, did drinking every night in Budapest do me some harm good? Even though I still glowed like a red traffic light, I avoided illness.


Which brings me to sangria. I love the summer for many reasons, but one of them has got to be the restaurant terraces spilling onto the sidewalk. There's nothing better than sipping sangria in the company of good friends. One particularly charming terrace is Boris Bistro in Old Montreal, I’ve always passed by, but I never bothered to step in. Thanks to Milos’s rad research skills, we settled at a table and promptly ordered drinks: a white sangria for me and port for him.

My glass sweat through my placemat, cold water dripped through the cracks of the table. Ice cubes crowded my drink, which was sweet with pineapple juice and mildly bitter with wine. I could sit there and drink all day if I wanted to, it was refreshing and oh-so-summery.


The following day, I visited Terrases Bonsecours also in Old Montreal, nestled on the St. Lawrence River. It has renovated since I last visited, the bistro area has added plush lounge seats so you can relax, let the warm breeze whip through your hair and watch boats float by.

We ordered a small pitcher of the strawberry/lychee sangria. It's got white wine, white rum, Soho lychee liqueur, pineapple juice, and ginger ale. But it lacked that kick, that tingly fizziness that would bring it to the top, regardless, I felt like I had been transported somewhere tropical.

I suppose I should drink up before summer whizzes by. So if you mistaken an Asian for a flashing red lightbulb, don't be alarmed, it's just a normal reaction.

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Recipe here!

Bravi

It's taken longer than expected to discover restaurants that lure me to return again and again. Lynn Crawford's Ruby Watchco on Queen Street East has definitely earned Must Go Back status. I not only watch her admiringly on the Food Network, but her creativity in combining ordinary ingredients to create extraordinary tastes is really just...well, extraordinary. Another terrific place is Auberge du Pommier at York Mills. The food is clean and crisp and fresh bread baked on the premises always earns brownie points in my book. My favorite part was sitting outdoors under the canary yellow and white stripped canopy surrounded by the lush garden.


This weekend I went with Minh to Bravi on Wellington Street East. An Italian restaurant that is definitely underrated. From the moment we walked in (Oopsies! 30 minutes late) we felt welcomed. The host took our coats and immediately offered us drinks at the bar. I sipped a glass of juicy sweet Kim Crawford rosé and Minh enjoyed a caesar.

A few moments later we were brought to our table, I didn't think much of it, it looked like an ordinary seating for two nestled in the corner. Our noon brunch was big enough to tide us over the whole day, giving us plenty of energy to walk from the Harbourfront to the Distillery district. We window shopped luxurious furniture shops, touched everything in quirky craft stores and explored cafes, inhaling lusty fumes of chocolate. By 8:30pm, I was ready to eat and boy, was I in for a surprise.



My arugula salad with bosc pear, roasted pistachios, and pecorino was divine. The perfect balance of bitter and sweet was pronounced with the Meyer lemon and olive oil dressing. The cheese added a hint of nuttiness to the dish. Minh's turnip puree with apples was sumptuous too. One bite took me on a wave of flavors (in a good way), first was that earthiness from root vegetables, followed by a jolt of tartness from the fruit yet tamed by the lemon cream.

The highlight of the night was not the food however; it was how our entrees took us on a high (literally). “Would you like to go for a ride?” Our waiter politely asked. Dumbstruck, I stuttered, “S-s-sure.” What I naively thought was “just” a quiet corner was really a freight elevator. As it clanged and clacked upwards, my jaw dropped. The company of other restaurant patrons disappeared and were replaced with the carved initials of lovers who declared their feelings in every wooden crevice possible. The only noise was distant voices from the kitchen and our forks scraping food off the plate. How sneaky Minh was to book this place, voted one of the most romantic dinner spots in Toronto.


I've been craving pasta the past few weeks so naturally, I ordered the basil-infused pasta sheets with seafood in a tomato sauce. It was lovely. Delicious. Fresh pieces of shrimp, scallops and squid were tender and succulent among the slippery rags of pasta. The robust sauce was rich and chunky in tomato. Minh's salmon with roast fennel was fabulous, the fillet intensely moist, the vegetables slippery on my tongue; fragrances of licorice and olive oil swirled together harmoniously.


I'm sure the elevator has passed rigorous testing and that it is in tiptop condition, but despite Minh's urging, I was too much of a scaredy cat to take a ride up and down. Why risk getting stuck in an old elevator with only a candle as a source of light? We had already finished our meal, the bread basket was long gone, and if it stopped working, what could we possibly survive on? Green olives? (Yuck) So we finished our main courses, came back down to ground level and stayed put with our desserts.

Though it’s always nice to lounge on my sofa and eat homemade bread, I still reminiscence the crackly olive bread, the soft and chewy rings of squid, and the thick cut pasta sheets in the quiet confines of the elevator.

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Recipe here!