As professionals, it is good practice to keep meetings short and sweet, so we wasted no time in moving on to the first item on our agenda - ordering a bottle of wine to quench our Thursday thirst. Admittedly, I am a cheap drunk so my eyes immediately settled on one of the house reds, an argentinian malbec at $45 a pop. At this price point, it was quite palatable - peppery and spicy. Oh that first sip of wine was a warm hug down my throat!
Next item on the agenda was the food. Here, we zoomed in on the beef and foie gras poutine (french fries topped with emmental cheese, covered with brown gravy), the smoked duck quesadilla, as well as 2 items from the specials menu - the Norwegian salmon, and the chicken terrine with double brie cheese (this sounded too good to resist).
When the food came, we were bowled over by the fantastic presentation. This is my first appreciation of how visual presentation can whet one’s appetite to eat. Apologize for the pics which do not do the dishes justice. I think the presentation might have raised our expectations a notch too high though, because the taste of the food, albeit good, did not impress. The poutine stood its own, but the smoked duck quesadilla and chicken terrine were kind of lack-lustre. Luckily, the norwegian salmon was done very nicely, I loved how it was pink on the inside, and the cream (mushroom?) sauce complimented it perfectly.
We ended the meal with item 3 of the agenda, a bottle of montepulciano d'abruzzo ($51). It was an easy drinking Italian red with mildly sweet and soft tannins, a good one to end the meal.The Thirsty Thursday club passed the motion that in spite of misses in some food items, Hummerstons was a good place to unwind and recuperate from a hard day at work. Oh, and of course, quench our thirst.
