I never heard of Ten before a coworker told me. I didn’t express interest in it at first, because if I did, she would tell me her experience and let me tell you..food is all she talks about at work.
So I did my own research about it and thought long and hard about if, I wanted to try it out. At first, I was hesitant about asking K. I know for a fact that he would, for sure, say no at first..mainly because of the cost. It is $115 per person for 10 courses. I know it is costly and not everyone has the money for it, so I didn’t push much on the subject. But I came up with a proposal to ask him if he would be slightly interested and told him he could think about it. He has never had a tasting menu before and I wanted to share this experience with him. And it is very rare to find a restaurant that does vegetable forward tasting menus.

We had the ten course tasting menu and K felt extra special, so he also had the tasting wine (as a treat).

The first course, salad with sunflower honey. The honey under the salad leaves were as thick as a stack of coins. There is a lot of vegetables under the leaves and I ate it within three bites. The green sauce on the side was my favourite from this dish.

Ricotta dumplings with cauliflower bits and cauliflower foam. This was my favourite dish so far. A bit sad that there were only a handful of dumplings under the cauliflower foam.

Blend of celery, carrot and other vegetables. This reminded me of a mirepoix, but with what I thought was quinoa.  It had a mix of warm spices and perfect on a old winter night, but this was one of my least favourite dish.

Sunchokes with spinach dressing. This dish was an interesting one. I never had this root vegetable before and taste similar to potato, except there is no flourly texture, which is a plus. I might pick up some sunchokes and experiment with them.

Housemade sourdough bread with carrot butter. Oh my goodness, where should I start? First, the house made bread is sliced minutes before toasting. Toasting the bread on one side, gives it a two tone texture. Then the carrot butter was so smooth and melted on the small slice of bread. I could savour the flavours and moment forever.

Beet and lettuce. The beet was pickled and glazed with a sweet beet sauce. The romaine lettuce was grilled and suited the beet well, as one was sweet and the other was a bit bitter.

Mushroom with cashew dressing.  I have mixed feelings about this. I like this mushroom (mushrooms are expensive) but it was a bit salty for me, even though there was a leafy green to balance the saltiness.

Palette cleanser: a mixture of leftover ingredients used in the other courses (it was sour from the green apple and cold)from being frozen).  I never thought that something like an flavoured ice cube could have such an effect.

Tart with apple circles. I wonder why the tart was cut in half. I know that it is a tasting menu, but perhaps, a smaller size tart could have been better. I also didn’t care about the tart as I don’t remember liking the flavours.

Corn and apple with berry sauce. Surprisingly, this was also a favourite. The berry sauce was tart enough to balance the fried corn dessert.

These are all the wines K tasted. My favourite was Monbazar 2017. It was light and refreshing, not too woody. But who am I to judge, I hardly drink white wine.
All the staff were nice and friendly but one of the staff was a bit to forward with her attititde and presence. Would have loved to see the staff interacting more at the front of the house, cause I know that they were having a blast at the back.
Overall, the food was delicious and I applaud the restaurant for trying to use every bit of a whole ingredient. For example, I saw a green apple being sliced using a mandoline. The chef was using a cookie cutter to punch holes from the slices for the tart. Then the corn fritter had bits of leftover apple in it.
I would definitely recommend this restaurant. You can see the time and thought put into each dish. Although one may not have so much to spend on one meal, you can check the socials for popup events.

Click here for the restaurant’s website and here for Instagram.