Summerlicious 2016 Restaurant #1: Against the Grain Urban Tavern

Against the Grain Urban Tavern located at 87 Laird Dr in Toronto

I used to be a giant fan of the LiciousTO series in Toronto — Summerlicious and Winterlicious every year since university — but ever since attending more and more exclusive foodie events in the past two years and going out to enjoy food quite often, I don’t feel as big of a need to run out and participate in the Licious TO restaurants.

With that said, I did attend one Summerlicious participating restaurant this year with a few friends for dinner ($28 prix fixe) and it was great! 🙂

We went to Against the Grain Urban Tavern at its Leaside location near midtown (major intersection is Eglinton Ave. E and Bayview Ave.).

There is plenty of parking available

We found these hanging light bulbs really cool

It was a casual, family-friendly, and modern restaurant serving western (pub) food with sandwiches, salads, pizzas, and the like. It was spacious, had two levels, a patio, and the service was efficient.

A modern restaurant to enjoy your favourite bar food

Against the Grain Urban Tavern Summerlicious 2016 menu

I ordered the Tavern Salad which had a myriad of house greens, kale, pickled beets, roasted edamame, goat cheese with a maple balsamic vinaigrette. There was a lot of salad shoved into the small shallow bowl.

Tavern Salad
-kale, house greens, pickled beets, roasted edamame, goat cheese, maple balsamic vinaigrette

I got the Wild Mushroom Pizza as my main. It’s not often that I go for the vegetarian choice of a meal but I think I should do it more often to vary things up and include more veggies in my diet this way. The Wild Mushroom Pizza was a lot bigger than I had anticipated with its round shape covering the entire plate.

Wild Mushroom Pizza
-thyme cream, roasted mushrooms, caramelized onions, fior di latte, mozzarella

I really liked its thin crust and it tasted light for a pizza with lots of roasted mushrooms on it. The mozzarella was perfectly cheesy too :).

I loved the thin crust! It was barely there

I tried a bit of the Salmon Stuffed Crab Cakes that Betty got and absolutely loved it!! If it weren’t for me trying something different, this would have been my choice for the prix fixe dinner. The entire crab cake was definitely all crab meat! It reminded me of the amazing one I had had at Diana’s Oyster Bar & Grill earlier this year. :9

Salmon Stuffed Crab Cakes
-spicy avocado creama, asparagus, wild rice salad, almonds

For dessert, I decided upon the Chocolate Cupcake. I almost always choose something chocolaty for my desserts when given a choice so this was no surprise. Unfortunately, I thought that the chocolate cupcake was quite dry and really wasn’t that good.

Chocolate Cupcake
-berry compote, salted caramel, mascarpone cream

Another view of the Chocolate Cupcake

Rosa’s Ice Cream Sandwich looked absolutely phenomenal!! I liked how there were two scoops of ice cream squeezed between the two cookies instead of the usual one scoop; it made it look nicer than the average ice cream sandwich.