Mirabelle

To celebrate our Granny's big b-day, we dined at Mirabelle tonight. One of the joys of living downtown is that we were able to walk to this restaurant, located innocuously on the main floor of an office building.

The interior of this restaurant was pretty casual, although my impression was that the restaurant seems to pride itself on being a little more on the high end of the cuisine continuum. The carpet looked a bit worn, the walls had a busy wall-paper appearance to them, and the tables and chairs were comfortable but nowhere near trendy. A majority of the patrons there tonight appeared to be older, and I somehow got the feeling that the twenty-somethings in the city don't often frequent this establishment.

The menu, though not very large, covered most of the standard offerings of a steak and seafood house; it included a fair selection of appetizers, pastas, steaks, and specialty entrees. Some of these entrees and appetizers were described to be done so as to have a bit of flair to them; it was obvious that Mirabelle was attempting some originality and edge to their dishes, and we were eager to see if the food would live up to the descriptions.

Our server, who knows my mother-in-law, was very friendly, courteous, and prompt. He filled our water glasses right away, and took our orders in a timely fashion. My hubby ordered the lobster-stuffed smoked salmon rolls to start, and the buffalo steak. I ordered their prime rib, which is available only on Fridays and Saturdays. We both chose baked potatoes as our side orders, although I was admittedly intrigued by the stuffed potato. It was nice to see that other choices were available as well, including rice, pasta, and french fries.

Once we had ordered, our bread was brought out. The buns were standard dinner buns, but had been warmed slightly, which I was happy to see. Next, my hubby's appetizer arrived. It was quite small in size, and consisted of 4 little rolls served with two large slices of rye bread. I sampled a portion of one of the rolls, and it was quite delicious, although the taste of cream cheese and smoked salmon all but overwhelmed any of the lobster meat's flavour.

Our entrees came out after a few minutes, and were brought to our table two at a time, which always makes for an uncomfortable wait as those without entrees must sit in anticipation of the arrival of their meals. Thankfully, the orders came quickly, and soon we were all enjoying the circulation of the condiment server, who came by to each of our potatoes to dress them with butter, sour cream, bacon bits, and chives. My hubby found his buffalo steak to be "good, flavourful, and tasty." My generous portion of prime rib (which looks like the ones pictured, except was more cooked along the edges than shown) was served with Yorkshire pudding, au jus on the side, some steamed baby carrots and a large floret of broccoli, and of course, the baked potato. The 7 oz. steak was a little overdone for my order of rare, but was tender and moist and full of flavour. The Yorkshire pudding was also quite light, which I was pleasantly surprised to taste; generally, I find Yorkshire pudding to be far too dense and heavy to complement the prime rib, but this was not the case tonight. Though I didn't find the garnish to be terribly unique, the prime rib was wonderful and I gladly polished it all off.

Then Granny was brought a sparkler-topped apple and lemon meringue pie, which she generously offered us some forkfuls of. It was delicious and only mildly lemony, which was perfect for a lemon-hater like myself.

In spite of a few highlights in our meal, however, as a whole we thought that the food was good, but not spectacular. The fine-dining aspects of the restaurant were ruined by the less-than-amazing decor, and although touches like the condiment boy helped give the eatery a more ritzy feel, the cuisine did not. Despite the menu's boastful descriptions of original (or at the very least, jazzed up) fare, our meals turned out splendidly standard. The cost of the meal was acceptably priced considering the cuts of our meat, but overall I would not equate Mirabelle with fine dining, but rather, with pretty good food in a pretty decent environment.

Rating: 7.5 / 10