Enoteca Sociale

After a long week nothing beats a super chill Friday night dinner on a patio. Toronto's Enoteca Sociale - the new Italian restaurant from the people who brought you Pizza Libretto - not only offer a great patio, but also seating inside - that you can actually book! Half the tables are reserved for reservations and half for walk ins.

We couldn't get a reservation for 6:30 but the friendly woman on the line said we wouldn't have a problem getting a table at that time as a 'walk in.' And we didn't. Opting for the patio, which is very nicely shaded under huge trees, and looks out over a residential street off of Dundas West, things felt relaxed, and that doesn't always happen at restaurants. The service was spot on too and we actually all agreed our waitress looked oddly familiar. We were right - she had served two out of the three of us at Ruby Watchco and Crush. Celebrity waitress!

The restaurant has a fun family style tasting menu but they also currently offer a 'harvest menu' for $35 dollars and four courses - appetizer, pasta, main and dessert (a great deal because the portions seemed to be the same size if you didn't order them from that menu). The table ordered two of those and then we choose a few dishes we wanted to try that weren't under the harvest menu.

The starters - treviso, pear and green salad and marinated anchovies with Ontario buffalo mozzarella, and mains - grilled cornish hen and braised oxtail with polenta didn't really floor us. But, it was the pastas - bucatini all'amatriciana (spicy tomato & guanciale), house made pappardelle with braised rabbit, house made duck liver ravioli with sage brown butter (the filling, so creamy and rich!), orecchiette with asparagus and caramelized onions (our favourite), and desserts - flourless chocolate cake, ricotta cheesecake with cherries and zeppole with hazelnut cream (delicious Italian doughnut), that were by far the best part of the meal. Also enjoyed a side of asparagus doused with parmesan.

Oh ya and I also accidentally gave the restaurant a big shout out, tweeting where I was at on my work account instead of my personal one. Only slightly embarrassing - but these things happen, right!?