on the rocks

Went to Fressen with my parents for dinner today, Fressen is a Vegan restaurant on Queen St. W, between Spadina and Bathurst.  After being seated, the waitress described the menu to us, telling us that the dishes are meant to be shared, which is quite welcome to us, since that’s how Chinese food is usually served and makes it easier to try everything.  The dishes were all priced at $9 each, which is a pretty good price for any sort of upscale resturaunt.  I didn’t manage to take any pictures of the decor, but the interior was very cozy, albeit rather dark (resulting in the poor photos :( ).  It was a welcome change to actually be able to choose absolutely anything from the menu.  My parents and I decided to try 5 things from the menu, so my mom and dad chose one dish each, the Mushroom Filo and the Taro Dumplings, respectively.  I chose two more items: the Spinach Blinis and the Tempeh Fish and asked the waitress to recommend the last one, the Gluten Roast.

First came the bread, which was absolutely delicious.  The bread had something cooked into it, the exact ingredients I couldn’t make out but it tasted of flax seed and chestnut, it was fragrant enough that the dip wasn’t even necessary, but still a welcome compliment.  The taro dumplings were also delicious, I actually expected dumplings that were wrapped in dough, but they were more like fried balls of taro, the outside was crispy and inside was moist and soft.  I wasn’t a fan of the spinach blinis, as they were more spongy than fluffy, but I did enjoy the avocado salsa that was served alongside.  The tempeh fish was unfortunately rather dry and did not taste very special.  The texture of the gluten roast was very interesting, crispy and crunch like you would expect the skin of real meat.  My favourite dish was the final dish, the mushroom puff which was basically a combination of all the textures of the previous dishes, crispy skin, smooth sauce and inside the puff was soft moist mushroom, simply put this dish was awesome!

The entire restaurant is vegan, meaning no animal derived products at all which made for a funny situation when my dad ordered coffee and my dad wanted milk with it, but the waitress explained to him that we had no milk and offered him soy milk instead, which my dad reluctantly accepted.  The service was perfect as well, friendly, not pushy and dishes were cleared at all the right times.  My only problem was that the dishes all came out much too fast, which left some of our dishes sitting on the side of the table while we finished the dishes we were working on.

Overall, I’m quite impressed with my experience here and hopefully I can convince some of my non-vegetarian friends to come with me, so I can visit again :)

Delicious bread and white bean dip

Taro Dumplings with Mango Chutney

Warm avocado and corn salsa sandwiched between fluffy spinach blinis accented with pepper purées

Beer battered deep fried tempeh fish and a tangy tahini cucumber tartar sauce on dandelion greens

Seared home made gluten-roast on candied potatoes with a red wine and shiitake glaze

Sliced shiitake and crimini mushrooms mixed with shredded spinach in cashew cream wrapped in a filo pastry puff