Sara Waxman, OOnt, is an award-winning restaurant critic, best-selling cookbook…
Diners today fall into several genres where age, gender and financial status are irrelevant: 1) There are those who enjoy good food with friends in a more club-like atmosphere where the music is on the highest decibel, conversation is animated and requires shouting, and everyone is having a great time. 2) There are those who come to enjoy a leisurely meal with friends, have conversations on meaningful as well as frivolous topics, and exchange thoughts on the presentations and flavour nuances of the dishes they are served. 3) Let’s do lunch instead of dinner.
Tonight, we are in the genre 2 mood, and meet for dinner at the Deauville Club, the restaurant in the newly opened Revery Hotel. Entering this lovely, calm and sophisticated restaurant with rose coloured suede banquets and chairs, rose tables to match and soft lighting, reminds me of what we see in the black and white Hollywood movies of the 40’s. This is the perfect room for an intimate conversation, and I’m suddenly glad I wore a nice summer dress.

Cocktails are delightful: Cafe Coca is the classic espresso martini enhanced with coconut and Pandan Sour is as delightful and fragrant as it is sparkling color. The menu offers a fusion of timeless French classics and global culinary inspiration. Most items are marked dairy free, gluten free, plant-based, etc. We plan to share a few dishes, trusting that the kitchen will parallel the sumptuous decor.
In casual conversation with our server, we learn that the Chef is newly arrived from Poland, and that the staff is a veritable United Nations who bring their own expertise with them. How exciting and refreshing this is in a new restaurant.

Never mind. Our mains arrive in due course. Paella is deconstructed from its usual mode of service in a paella pan, and each ingredient: shrimp, chicken, calamari, scallop, chorizo—sliced as if for pizza—rather than chunked for paella, garbanzo beans and saffron rice are arranged on the plate.

Muscovy Duck comes with fine accessories of fingerling potatoes, onions and purple cauliflower. But the attitude of the dish is disturbing. As with every dish so far, it has the appropriate flavour quotient, but the food tastes as if it has been pre-made and re-heated. We are at a loss for words.


Deauville Club, 416-596-2810, 92 Peter St, Toronto
Sara Waxman, OOnt, is an award-winning restaurant critic, best-selling cookbook author, food and travel journalist and has eaten her way through much of the free world for four decades, while writing about it in books, newspapers and magazines. She is the Editor in Chief of DINE magazine.