Terre Rouge located at 162 Enterprise Blvd, Unit 1 in Unionville

October 25, 2017:  Terre Rouge is a brand new restaurant specializing in fine dining French inspired bistro in Downtown Markham.  It’s one of the many new openings to pop up in the Highway 7 and Entreprise area.

The Executive Chef of Terre Rouge is Forrest Liu, where I have had the pleasure of tasting his food previously when he owned Carmen’s Steakhouse downtown.  From that visit, I remembered the meal fondly as that was where I had some of the best steak tartare, black cod, and food in general ever in Toronto.  I was really excited to try Terre Rouge and see what this new project of his was like.  (Fun fact:  I actually went to high school with his wife!)

Located in Downtown Markham near the Markham Cineplex

Two floors

The cocktail party and celebration that night was very well organized and such a intimate yet large party of guests.

Party is set up!

Terre Rouge has two levels and they also have an outdoor patio on the second floor.  The space is so chic and upscale that once all of the standing tables are removed on the first floor, you can tell that diners will have a really good time enjoying a private party and meal.

We started off with drinks on the second floor of red wine, or chardonnay, or sauvignon blanc.  The cocktail snacks started coming out throughout the night and kept on coming.  There was a photo contest on Instagram that night too.

All staff on deck to get the party started

Second floor lighting

So chic and with a full bar

Drinks for us

😀

My glass of Sauvignon Blanc

I’m glad that I arrived early at 6 p.m. to see the space before it filled up with guests very quickly by 7 p.m.  Their parking lot is also not very big so when it came to a big event like this, I’m sure some of the guests had to park further away at the cinema parking lot.  On a regular night though, I’m sure parking spaces are adequate.

Chefs making the foie gras mousse

That night, they served a number of cocktail food like truffle fries, salmon tartare on crostini, steak tartare on crostini, brie cheese and berries on crostini, cauliflower soup, calamari, foie gras on brioch, mushroom pizza , and then later on sample sizes of main dishes like black cod with a spinach risotto, duck on mashed potatoes, and sliders.  Towards the end of the night, dessert was also served in the form of cheesecake on a spoon, vanilla ice cream on a spoon, and also black sesame nitrogen ice cream!  It was all extremely impressive and the staff did such a spectacular job at serving the food all night long for us and cleaning up our garbage too.  The drinks kept flowing on the second floor too.

The Foie Gras Mousse with pistachio, hawthorne cherry compote, and brioche was absolutely amazing!  The foie gras mousse was so smooth and flavourful.  The brioche was crispy and gave a nice crunch to the sample.

Foie Gras
-mousse with pistachio, hawthorne cherry compote, brioche

The Salmon Tartare was very fresh and tasted good!

Salmon Tartare

I liked the Truffle Fries!

Platter of Truffle Fries

Twinning with Casey

This was a nice Cauliflower Soup.

Cauliflower Soup

Cauliflower Soup

The Beef Tartare had grass fed Angus beef and quail egg on toast.

Beef Tartare
-grass fed Angus beef, quail egg, toast

Gorgeous!

Yum!

The Calamari with Tzatziki Sauce was so good!  I was impressed with how crispy and nicely fried the calamari was but yet it retained its smooth texture without being chewy at all.

Calamari with Tzatziki Sauce

This was so good!

This was Baked Brie with Mixed Berries on Crostini with Sage.

Brie, Baked, Mixed Berries, Crostini, Sage

Mmm, I loved these sliders!  It was a compact burger with lots of taste!

Sliders

So good!

This Black Cod dish was my highlight favourite dish from even when Chef Liu worked at Carmen’s Steakhouse.  It was black cod with miso glaze, peashoots and served with spinach risotto.

Black cod with spinach risotto

Bite-sized goodness!

I really liked the mashed potatoes from the Duck Confit with mashed potatoes sample.

Duck Confit with mashed potatoes

Actually shareable!

Cheesecake on a spoon!  This was amazingly delicious, dense, and rich despite being just a taste on a spoon.  That’s when you know it’s a quality dessert when even a spoonful tastes amazing. 🙂

Cheesecake on a spoon

Amazing cheesecake!

My second drink of the night:  Gin & tonic.  Mmm, I was so impressed with the bartender with this drink.  This was a very well done gin & tonic!

Gin & tonic

The vanilla ice cream on a spoon was good and dense too!

Vanilla ice cream on a spoon

This is one of Chef Liu’s specialties:  Liquid nitrogen black sesame ice cream!  Liquid nitrogen ice cream is at an all-time trend now and the same for black sesame flavours!  This was a great thing to be able to sample at the grand opening event.  I’m sure many people thought so as well!

Liquid nitrogen black sesame ice cream

A lovely sample that is best eaten after crushing it with your fork :0)

A video below to show the liquid nitrogen smoke from the ice cream coming out.

Liquid nitrogen black sesame ice cream in a tub that I got to try with

As I was taking a photo of the tub of liquid nitrogen black sesame ice cream, the staff there asked me if I wanted to play with it by crushing it to release more liquid nitrogen.  I couldn’t say no!  Here is the video below showing me doing so. 😛

It was very jam-packed with people there at certain points of the night

I was able to try everything that night except for the mushroom pizza.  Everything was high-quality as I expected it to be from Chef Liu (I expected nothing less after that amazing meal at Carmen’s two years ago) and perfectly executed by his staff.  It was a really fun evening of eating, drinking, and hanging out with fellow foodies.  It was nice to have a smaller crowd of foodies than usual (most of the guests were industry members or family or friends).  There was a photobooth too where we took pictures at.

Photobooth photo 1

Photobooth photo 2

The Deputy Mayor of Markham and some councillor members also attended the event.

Grand opening remarks

Deputy Mayor of Markham

View from the second level

I can’t believe I actually stayed for the entire duration of the event from 6 to 9 p.m.  The night kind of flew by with eating the cocktail sizes that came out and hanging out with the foodies.  It was also really nice that one of the chefs talked to Chef Liu about my not having tried the mushroom pizza (they had run out of everything by the end of the night) and Chef Liu personally told me that I could go back to the restaurant and try their mushroom pizza on the house.  How kind!

I’m excited to come back to Terre Rouge to taste their food in a sit-down dinner!

Very classy and chic restaurant

Thank you for having me at this event! 🙂

FTC Disclaimer:  Although Terre Rouge reached out and invited me to a complimentary tasting for their grand opening, the opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of the restaurant.