Dealicious: Vittorio's on Avenue

The offer: $20 for $50 Worth of Lobster, Seafood and Fine Italian Cuisine from Vittorio's on Avenue in Yorkville

What I value in a good restaurant experience: convenient location, good service, pleasant atmosphere, reasonable prices and deliciousness (in no particular order - although tastiness is pretty key).

Location: Avenue and Davenport

This was a bit of a hike north of Bloor, but in normal weather conditions this isn't out of the way at all. The restaurant has recently relocated to Yorkville and is just a short walk north of Hazelton Lanes.

Service: Great service; very attentive staff

After switching tables twice, I was sure they were going to ignore us. But who puts armchairs (like office furniture) at a high table? We had to switch! Anyway, the waiters were all great, and various people kept coming by to fill up our water (rare!), pour the wine and clear plates regularly.

Atmosphere: Warm ambiance 

Upon arrival at 7pm, the dining room was dark with lots of candles around. The tables were quite close together, but it didn't seem to affect the overall dining experience - although it was somewhat difficult to fit everything onto the table. By mid-meal, a musician had begun serenading various tables with spanish-flamenco (??) type music.  Isn't this an Italian restaurant? Oh well. It was quite pleasant, although another patron seemed to be giving the guy a hard time about his performance. She was a cranky old bird, because we sang along when he came by our table and sang Brown Eyed Girl and various Enrique Iglesius (??) songs...

Prices: On the high side

The prices are typical of Yorkville, however quite reasonable given the quality and presentation of the food. I would certainly return for the prix-fixe menu in the future, and maybe even a full meal on another day if I didn't have a voucher; the vouchers make the prices a bit more tolerable.

Deliciousness: Exceeded my expectations.

Sometimes seafood is a bad choice, however I took a chance because this place seems to talk about seafood a lot on their website and in their specials menu. The appetizer included three amazing scallops, and my main was a half lobster stuffed with wild mushroom risotto. Yay! All selections were fantastic and very pretty! I should also mention that the rosemary and sea salt (I think?) bread was so amazing that we ordered a second one. The tiramisu was good, but not as amazing as the one at Grazie! :)

Overall value: Excellent! The deal came up again on Dealicious and I purchased three more vouchers. I'm also interested in the non-voucher deals, such as Date Night Tuesday - This looks like a tasty menu, so I'm excited to try it!

Recipe: Zucchini Fries

Who doesn't like cheese fries? Well they're bad for you, so it's best to avoid them. Alternatively, you may consider substituting zucchini. Yes, this is a certifiable cheat that I saw on Dr. Oz. 

Ingredients

Zucchini

Eggs

Finely grated parmesan

Spelt bread crumbs

General Method

• Cut zucchini into strips and blot dry
• Whisk egg and set aside
• Combine parmesan and bread crumbs 
• Dip zucchini in egg and quickly roll in cheese-crumb mixture
• Place strips onto a grease cookie sheet 
• Bake 10 mins at 425F; flip strips and bake for another 10 mins until crisp (not burnt)

Adapted from Dr.Oz

Comments:

• I forgot to blot the zucchini at first, so the egg wasn't sticking to it very well; this caused some of the crumb-mix to fall off rather quickly. Lesson learned.
• The egg mixture made the crumb-mix clumpy and quite difficult to work with towards the end of the process. I suggest dividing the parmesan-breadcrumb mixture into 2 portions to avoid having to use a lumpy mixture at the end. I simply added breadcrumbs to the mixture to dry up some of the egg batter.

Overall Recommendation:

• Generally good tasting, with a fun crunchy texture
• The baked zucchini doesn't keep well, so try to eat the whole batch at once. Use 1 zucchini instead of 2 for a more reasonable batch size.
• I liked this recipe, but not sure if I'd make it again in a hurry...it's a lot of work for a cheat, but distracting, time consuming activities may be part of the solution when avoiding a craving!

Recipe: Baked (not fried!) Meatballs

We've been talking about spaghetti and meatballs for some time. It just seemed like too much work. The problem is that most pre-packaged meatballs are disgusting. Yeah - disgusting! Random particles and rubbery bits...and overall poor flavour. Note: Even the Longo's brand meatballs aren't good - how is that possible?

Little known fact: I don't really know how to fry any food other than bacon. I burn that too. It became important to find a recipe that didn't involve any crisping, searing or initial frying. Who knew you could bake meatballs? Best idea ever.

After reviewing a few different recipes, including one from Chef at Home and some no-name Pasta book, it became apparent that there wasn't a perfect recipe available, so a few needed to be combined. Here are the results - these are not scientific.

Ingredients

Beef

Pork

EVOO

Leek

Parmesan Cheese

Egg

Garlic

Basil

Thyme

Oregano

Salt

Chili Powder

Spelt Bread Crumbs

General Method

• Combine all ingredients with 1/4 of the breadcrumbs
• Form the meatballs and roll in remaining breadcrumbs
• Place on a baking sheet
• Bake 20 mins at 400 F

Adapted from 3 other recipes

Comments:

• Try rolling some meatballs in breadcrumbs before baking and leave the rest plain - try them before deciding which you prefer
• The 1/2 pound of beef and pork yielded approximately 14 meatballs and quite a bit of wasted meat - will double up the recipe next time and freeze the extra meatballs
• Whisk the egg before adding it to the mixture 
• Using leeks instead of onion was a last minute sub, since there weren't any onions around (oops!) - it created a milder flavour considering the large volume of leeks that were used (you can see them!)
• My favourite herb right now - fresh thyme. Delicious...use it! All of the other herbs listed above were dried

with pasta, sauce and cheese

Overall Recommendation:

• Pretty quick if you've got everything you need
• The most time consuming part of this method is preparing all of the ingredients
• I served this up with the marinara sauce I posted previously. Note that for 14 meatballs a double batch of sauce would have been preferable!
• Since this recipe usually goes with spaghetti, I'm opting to defer making these again for a while... carby goodness.