Eat Out: The Village Cafe

by jc

With the ultimate goal of eating at every [good] restaurant I can, I plan on documenting some of my experiences along the way on here.  I’ll be giving these restaurant adventure entries the “Eat Out” tag and rating the experience on a scale from 1 (shit) to 10 (life-altering).

I’m by no means a writer, food connoisseur or any sort of qualified to comment on the quality of food BUT I will do so anyway and post some yummy lookin’ pictures as well.

Disclaimer: I’m sorry but the first entry in this “Eat Out” series will be fairly boring but I promise to improve with time.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of eating at The Village Cafe in the trendy Westboro neighbourhood.  This is a small, casual, and cute restaurant that serves fairly simple but fresh food.

Photo cred: inanutshell.ca

We were lucky to snag a window table but also had the misfortune of having to listen to a loud-mouthed, middle-aged slob talk his lunch-partner’s ear off about pissing off his girlfriend and 16 year-old daughter, with some crass comments about another buddy’s girlfriend.  Seriously, get a life.

Back to the food.  The lunch menu is made up of a few appetizers, salads and a wide variety of very tempting sandwiches (not show in image below).

Had a hard time not going for the crab cakes

We started with the bruschetta duo and definitely did not regret our decision.  It comes with both a traditional tomato bruschetta and a sauteed mushroom and artichoke version.  While the tomato one was good, the mushroom + artichoke combo was unbelievable.  The nice, thick balsamic vinegar drizzled on top completed the dish perfectly.

Tomato + basil

Mushroom + artichoke

For my main course I had the roasted butternut squash salad.  Overall it was pretty good but a little too focused on the sweet side of things.  The walnuts were candied, there were too many dried cranberries and the dressing was even a bit sweet.  A bit more acidity and some more veggies would have balanced things out a bit.  The panko-crusted goat cheese was really good though and I could have had more of it (but when do I ever not want more goat cheese? #fatty).  I always love getting bread served alongside a salad but this stuff was dry and confusing to me – why was it even on my plate?

Sweet city… don’t be fooled by the bread.

I’d give my experience at The Village Cafe a 7/10.  The bruschetta blew my mind but my main dish was a little disappointing.  Basically the bruschetta and the yummy-looking pulled-pork sandwich that I was creeping on at another table (and plan on going back for) raised up my opinion of this place a bit.  Well that, and the very sweet Aussie girl who served us.  She was delusionally in love with the -30 degree weather we just had last week… right on girrrrrl.