We were in Stratford a couple of weeks ago and I promised my innkeeper (a friend of a chef) that I'd post my reviews, so here goes my innagural posting! We've been going to Stratford for five years now, so we're pretty familiar with the standards. This time around, we wanted to be good about our food budget (we've got two trips planned this year to catch the majority of the plays, so we'll be back in September), so we had planned on going to 38 and Bijou for dinner (we liked both a lot last year) and York Street Kitchen and Boomers for lunches. Our plans changed upon arrival, as our innkeeper highly recommended The Globe. So here's a few bite-sized reviews... The Globe -- probably our new favorite restaurant in Stratford. The two of us split 8 dishes and 2 desserts, had four glasses of wine, and the bill came in under $100. The food was great, there were some very interesting wines available by the glass, and the location couldn't be beat (we had tickets for London Assurance at the Avon that night). My biggest gripe: there just isn't enough waitstaff. Two people were covering the whole restaurant and the bar, which meant there were gaps in the service (but no fault to our servers who where great when they could get to us). I failed to take notes on the food itself (which I'm now kicking myself for!), but I do remember three dishes involved foie gras and we loved how many different ways we could eat the stuff and not suffer from any redundancy. Bijou -- it took us three years to find this restaurant and I don't know why because it's wonderful! We concentrated on lighter dishes (mostly seafood) because we had a Shakespeare tragedy that night (Colm Feore was fabulous as Coriolanus!) and the meal hit the right level of satisfaction -- we didn't stagger out completely stuffed and entering food-coma-land, but we certainly weren't hungry that night afterwards either. Bijou is just about the most perfect pre-theater restaurant. I also had a great deal of fun just watching the kitchen -- there's nothing quite like the hum of a well-run kitchen. Boomer's Gourmet Fries -- had poutine for the first time and *loved* it! The sandwich I ordered was practically incidental... York Street Kitchen -- we were going to eat in the restaurant for lunch, but it was stiflingly hot in there! So we ordered wraps from the take-out window, ate along the river, and then popped into my favorite Stratford bookstore (Callen's). Very handy option and we'll take advantage of it again. So we ended up skipping 38 this time around. I'm a bit surprised by the negative reviews here, as we really liked it last year and we're thinking of going back in September...
