Great Canadian Cheese Festival

Prince Edward County (PEC) has really become quite the destination for foodie-related events and get aways. It has been too long since our previous trips to PEC.  Since we're a bit limited in the foodie-related events we can feasibly attend with a baby, I was thrilled to be invited to the Ottawa-based media launch for The Great Canadian Cheese Festival that will be taking place in a couple of weeks in PEC.  

With more than 100 exhibitors and vendors and over 125 different Canadian cheeses to sample, this show is the largest cheese show is Canada.  

    

This event gave a taste of the exhibitors you'll see at the festival.  

Of course, we couldn't pass by Casa Dea Estates Winery's wines without sampling a bit for ourselves!  PEC's wines benefit from a mineral rich soil and a climate moderated by the adjacent Lake Ontario.  

A chilled white wine (I believe it was Pinot Gris) was a delicious way to cool down from the warm weather of the day.

Saavy Company, was behind the marketing of the event.  Saavy Company has organized transportation to the festival for those coming from Ottawa.  Their tour includes a round-trip coach bus and tickets to the festival.

One of my favourite samples came from Seed to Sausage's skewers of a selection of their salami.  This artisan sausage maker uses local products where possible with few additives and preservatives.  Their products are available at a number of locations in Ottawa.  I am going to have to seek out some more of their Lomo.

We spent some time chatting with Salty Don, who can be regularly found at the Ottawa and Carp Farmer's Markets.  It was interesting learning about the different techniques he uses to add flavour and scent to his salts.  

I'm a bit of a sucker for honey.  I regularly use it in baking, in my tea and when making jam, so I am always tempted to buy just "one more jar." I sampled some of Heavenly Honey's creamed cinnamon honey butter, which would be delicious on a piece of toast.  

   

I'm still kind of hoping that we can magically make it to The Great Canadian Cheese Festival.

Savoy Brasserie

I can't believe how quickly E is changing.  At 9.5 months, she has now learned to army crawl her way around, showing us all of the ways our house is not sufficiently baby-friendly.  I'm guessing she'll be walking before fully crawling.  She has started cruising this week and that's all she wants to do...  Well..cruising and using the phone to call 911.  Seriously!  What are the chances of a baby pressing the talk button and then 9-1-1?  Apparently, pretty good.  Oops.

Good thing she doesn't make strange (yet?) -- we were able to get out a second night out during Grandma and Grandpa's recent visit.

This second night we went to Westboro. The corner of Churchill and Richmond has changed a lot this year.  First Gezellig moved in on the north-west corner and now Savoy Brasserie has taken over the space previously occupied by Newport Restaurant on the south-east corner. 

The Savoy has a lot of things going for it (location, space, design, concept).  At the same time, there are new restaurant kinks to work out (food consistency, staff training, flow of restaurant, equipment functioning).  

We met up with a couple of friends for dinner about two weeks after Savoy Brasserie opened. For an appetizer, R and I ordered the Savoy salad.  The salad was a bit underwhelming, but I'd attribute it to forgotten ingredients.  I didn't realize until after I finished the salad and saw the neighbouring table's order that our salad didn't include chick peas.  I did, however, notice that there wasn't a drop of dressing (grapefruit vinaigrette) on the salad.  Our friends order the escargot and enjoyed it.

For my main, I ordered steak frites.  The steak was done to my specifications (medium), but I debated askng for steak sauce.  Generally, I hope for a steak to have enough flavour on its own, without needing some sort of sauce.

My friend ordered a bouillabaisse, which she enjoyed.  

R ordered veal scallopine and said it was "just okay."  Not pictured is the duck confit, which our friend really enjoyed (though I think he felt like his serving size was smaller than ours).

Although the staff all seemed polite, I found the number of waiters a bit dizzying.  I know R got really tired of his chair being bumped by passing waiters.  Hopefully they can find a way to widen the aisles for the waiters to pass through.  Below, you can see see the amount of space between the two chairs, which is a main artery of the restaurant.  

Of course, the elephant in the room is the firemen.  Again, I'll give the restaurant slack because it recently opened.  But, the smell of smoke, followed by blaring smoke detectors and entry of firemen kind of broke up the evening.  We took it as our cue to leave and headed down the street for some dessert.

So -- the big question.  Will I return?  Sure -- I'd like to see how they're doing in a couple of months.  Aside from the lack of space between tables, I think all of the bumps we experienced can be easily ironed out with time.

Odile

Going out for a nice dinner is a rare occasion these days.  E and I go out for lunch fairly regularly (maybe once every couple of weeks).  But, without a babysitter or family in Ottawa, I can count the number of times we've gone out for a nice dinner in the past nine months on one hand.  

Knowing that R's parents were coming for a visit, I texted Ron about going out for dinner.  I listed a couple places I would like to try, but hoped he would choose one in particular: Odile.

Odile is Chez Edgar's little sister, but only in the sense that it is Marysol's second restaurant (note: Odile opened about a year ago).  I may be biased, but I think little sisters are pretty awesome.  

After getting screwed by my GPS and ending up in Aylmer, we made our way to Odile's lovely patio area.  I love the way Marysol's food uses fresh ingredients, is cooked with a lot of care, but is not at all pretentious.  

R and I shared a caesar salad.  The dressing had a great kick of garlic and anchovies.  I loved the croutons.  It tasted like bread that had been soaked in garlicy goodness and then baked.  I also thought the pig cheek was an interesting touch.  It had good flavour, though was a bit on the fatty side for my liking.  

For the main I ordered red wine braised shortribs.  They come with a puree of yukon and celery root and kale.  All of this is topped off with chevre noir, a gremolata and shallots.  Oh goodness was this so delicious.  Comfort food at its best.  The shortribs were melt in your mouth and flavourful  If this is how fresh kale can taste, then I need to work on improving my kale-preparation skills.  I will also be looking to make a recipe where I can punch up the flavours with a gremolata soon.  The serving was hearty, but I want some more!

Others at my table ordered the duck breast and were quite complementary of it.  Clearly, there is no shying away from a healthy serving of meat.  My table mates also quite enjoyed the touch of sweetness brought by the fruit (fig? date?).

Even though it was starting to get cold (well, I wasn't cold after drinking two glasses of wine), we couldn't skip out on Marysol's delicious desserts.  Our friends shared an almond cake (can't remember what else was in it).

R and I shared a slice of pear and sugar pie,  We were completely full before the pie came, but managed to find room for it and thank goodness we did.  I don't always like pie crusts because they can be too dry for my liking.  But I loved the crust on this pie.  Of course, the star was still the filling.  The fudgy/sugary thing on top didn't do much for me.  I felt the pie was sweet enough without it.  But, I don't like fudge in general.

Aside from the exceptional food, the service was pretty stellar too.  Like the servers at Chez Edgar, our server was down to earth, professional and friendly.  I hope to be able to return to Odile soon!