100 Simcoe Street
Toronto, ON
416-979-7172
http://www.monsoonrestaurant.ca
Food Style: Asian Fusion
Dress: Smart Casual
Monsoon’s atmosphere is as great as the taste of the food they serve. Dark and very intimate, it has a very avant-garde Asian interior.Service was friendly, excellent, and timely. While some restaurants start you up with bread, Monsoon provides you with non-potato chips. As in sweet yams, cassava, and some other root vegetables. It was very unique as the small chip basket had an array of different flavors from sweet, salty and spicy.
Non-Summerlicious Appetizer
Tiger Prawn and Dungeness crab with a Thai Citrus Salad ($16)
This dish was good. However, we were paying a premium on the food. The value in this was the presentation. 4 fair sized prawns which must have been huge before cooking. Shreds of crab meat with a low-acidity citrus salad. The appetizer did its job leaving you craving for more food.
Summerlicious Dinner ($35)
Appetizer: Sosnicki’s Certified Organic Ruby Beets and Asian Pear Salad
When I go to a grocery store, beets are never on my list so I decided to try this out. It did not disappoint. It had a very unique taste I found. It was almost sweet like candy but not a of a processed kind. It had a very natural-occurring flavor. It had some side baby spinach and other greens. The 3 pieces of thinly sliced pears added to a full-bodied presentation. Good stuff!
Entree: Ultra Rare Tuna with a Scallion and Leek Pajon and Mirin Tamarind Paint
This sounds pretty exotic but the taste and texture of the food proved to be even more foreign in the mouth. The tuna was seared on both the top and the bottom. It was cooked 1/8 of an inch both sides. The remaining 6/8 inches between the cooked sides was straight up raw tuna. If you enjoy Japanese, this is definitely a twist on tuna sashimi having a large steak-like portion partially cooked. I have no idea what pajon is but it looked like a thin crepe whose tastes reminded me of a crossover between a pancake and the wrapper they use for Chinese dumping. The leek gave it a lot of flavor. As a side vegetable, the dish was accompanied by some glazed garlic bok choi. It was the most amazing bok choi I ever had.
Desert: Rhubarb and Strawberry Crumble with Lemon Chantily Cream
What I like most about this dish is that if you felt like you were ripped off cause all the portions were too small, this will prevent you from complaining because I believe the size of this desert was very generous. I had trouble trying to dust it off but I kept on going because it was so good. Eating until your stomach hurts from exceeding capacity is not a good idea but how often will you get a chance to eat something so fancy. One thought that came to mind is that there is nothing Asian about this.
Conclusion
I enjoyed this particular experience because it was not your typical beef, chicken, salmon, pasta Summerlicious entrees you would come to expect. I would definitely come back to this place outside of “-licious” events. I would also recommend it to people who are tired of greasy Chinese food and would like to try a new twist with asian fusion.
Rating
4.5 out of 5 chopsticks.