Pangaea

[philadining]

I'm always surprised the Pangaea gets so little attention here on eGullet. I think I've been here 5 times over the last several years, and always had really terrific meals. It's a beautiful space, the chairs are unusually comfortable, and service has always been gracious without being stuffy.

We could only schedule a lunch this time, but much of the menu is pretty serious mid-day, so it felt almost like dinner...

Pear and Endive Salad: Roasted Pear, Shaved Fennel, Watercress, Frisée, Walnuts, Stilton, Mustard Dressing

Simple, clean, elegant, and absolutely delicious.

Soup "Fall Triptych": Pumpkin & Apple; Wild Mushroom; Roasted Golden Beet

OK, these aren't all that pretty, and don't offer much tonal or textural variety, but each had distinct, bold flavors, and each was very tasty. The golden beet was especially good.

Ocean Trout: pan-seared, on glazed squash, thyme infused beluga lentils, fried shallots.

This dish successfully tread a fine line between a fresh and simple seafood preparation and a hearty autumn dish. The sweetness of the roasted squash and the earthiness of the lentils played well off the richness of the salmon-y fish.

Pappardelle & Sweetbreads: sautéed mushrooms, truffle oil, baked garlic, tomato, parsley, seared sweetbreads, veal reduction.

This was a rather gargantuan portion of pasta and sweetbreads, each carefully cooked to a pleasing texture. It was a little more tomatoey than I expected from the menu prose, but it nonetheless tasted great. I know not everyone thinks this way, but for me, a little bit of the richness of sweetbreads goes a long way, so this was almost too much of a good thing. Between sweetbread burnout and sheer size of the portion of pasta, I couldn't quite finish it.

Although that might have been partly in order to leave some room for:

Apple Crostada: rosemary cider sorbet, apple caramel sauce.

Flawless. Not sure what else to say: great crunch on the light, sugar-dusted crust; perfect spicing on the warm apple filling; herby, grainy sorbet lightening the dense tart.

It was not an inexpensive lunch: apps were in the low teens, mains in the mid twenties, desserts in the low teens. With one glass of wine, it was about $110 for two before tip, not too different from what we've paid for dinner. I thought it was fully worth it, a decent value for excellent food. My only complaint would be that they don't offer the duck for lunch - it's one of my favorite dinner selections.

www.pangaearestaurant.com

Edited November 28, 2006 by philadining (log)

[sadistick]

Hey Phil,

I have always enjoyed Pangea...although I havent been in almost a year now...It looks as if they renovated a bit, that ceiling looks drastically different.

Either way, their food is consistantly good. One of the lunch dishes, the Octopus salad, is particularly good, so tender.

Glad you had a nice time.

-Justin

ps - where else did you end up eating?

[estufarian]

I haven't been for lunch, but a couple of dinners there were just boring with disappointing service - basically we were ignored in an almost empty restaurant.

We did go for one of the LCBO 'special' wine & food dinners (last year IIRC). The food was not bad, but the matches with the wines were disastrous - it was a joke. Both the wines and the food suffered.

Not sure who made the matches but it certainly didn't restore confidence.

But I did like the dessert.

[philadining]

ps - where else did you end up eating?

←

This quick trip was (sadly) not entirely focused on eating, so many of my decisions were made based on locations and timings. I even had the frustrating experience of standing at the the entrance to JK at the Gardiner but realizing that I just wasn't even a little bit hungry... and having to walk away, vowing to try it next time.

The quick summary is that we had onion soup and crepes at La Papillon (I know nobody believes me, but both were delicious) sampled some chocolate at Soma, dinner at Lee, pastries for breakfast at Thuet, lunch at Swatow, late-night pie at Shanghai Cowgirl (I wasn't finding many dessert options out that way, and it wasn't bad at all, in that diner-pie kind of way - any suggestions for future midnight dessert cravings?) and finally, lunch at Pangaea.

It bore little resemblance to what I'd planned, but we liked most everything we ate. If I can schedule a fully food-centric visit, you'll be getting an alert, Justin!

[jenc]

I even had the frustrating experience of standing at the the entrance to JK at the Gardiner but realizing that I just wasn't even a little bit hungry... and having to walk away, vowing to try it next time.

very sad indeed.

Most late-night dessert locations invovle Bubble Tea or something for me and going far up north.

Downtown dessert locations are few and far between, IMO, unless you hit up a hotel, and even then, they shut down at 11 or so...

and if others have late night sugar sources, share!!!

[orangewasabi]

wow, those are great pics and the pear salad in particular looks terrific.

you did a good public service mentioning Pangaea, I think it does get overlooked because of it's location i.e. lumped in with the other so-so Yorkvilly places.

who's the chef there now? any idea?

[George W.]

The Chef at Pangaea is Martin Kouprie. He along with Peter Geary have been co-owners of Pangaea since it opened 10 years ago.