Tasting Menu at George Restaurant

Last night we had an early celebration of 2hung's bday at George Restaurant on Queen East.  This restaurant's tasting menu was highly recommended by one of my friends, so I had high expectations going into this restaurant.  Maybe they were a little too high...

We decided to go with the 7-course tasting menu ($120 each).  First off, we were presented with an amuse bouche of beef tartar.  I didn't really like the fact that they added red peppers to the beef tartar.  The pepper taste overwhelmed the beef and all I tasted was red pepper.

From then on, we both got different dishes for each course.  The first was a smoked trout dish and a poached lobster tail salad.  The smoked trout was quite nice.  Again there were red peppers in the lobster dish, which I was not a big fan of.  You can't see the lobster tail as it hidden behind the many ingredients but it was cooked just enough so that it's nice and tender.

The second appetizers were a swordfish tataki and a bluefin tuna.  The swordfish tataki had some figs and shaved cauliflower which I found interesting, but the bluefin tuna was very ordinary.

The Asian infused dishes continued with a miso black cod and a shrimp dish with a curried naan.  The black cod was again fairly ordinary.  Having tasted gindara cooked in the Japanese fashion from various Japanese restaurants, this again fell flat for me.  I definitely preferred the shrimp dish over the cod.

Did I mention that there was a very long wait time in between dishes?  I think we must've waited for 20-30min to get to the hot dishes that were to follow.  I enjoyed these hot dishes much more than their predecessors.  For our foie gras dishes, mine was served over duck breast and 2hung's was served with deep fried sweetbreads.  I was happy with the meats on my dish, but notice the broccoli off to the side.  I cannot recall a single fine dining restaurant that has ever served me boiled broccoli as a side before.  This was a first.  It was 2hung's first time having sweetbread and we both agreed that we much prefer foie gras over sweet bread any day.

After about 2.5 hours, we finally got to the main course.  Mine was a beef tenderloin with foie gras butter and fingerling potatoes.  2hung's was a loin of lamb.  Overall, I liked this dish and the dessert the most.

There is a cheese dish before dessert.  We had the Niagara Gold and an aged cheddar from Quebec.  At this point, we figured out that most of the dishes served to the male at each table were the stronger tasting, more gamey dishes while the ladies had the milder, more tame versions.

Since they did ask us if we were celebrating a special occasion at the beginning of the meal, they managed to send us a dessert plate that had "Happy Birthday" written on it, which was very cute.  Our desserts consisted of a cherry and pecan pie with sorbet, and various chocolate and strawberry paired desserts.

Overall, I thought the food at George was not bad, but it definitely lacked the wow-factor that I expected from a $120 tasting menu.  I would much rather have spent my $120 at Sushi Kaji.  After having dined at restaurants like West in Vancouver and Marea in New York (ok, maybe I shouldn't be comparing this to a Michelin 2 star restaurant), this place did not quite hit the mark.