This is as fancy as you can get with a very fair price on extremely tasty not-so-tapas tapas dishes.
As a sister restaurant of Beckta Food & Wine, Play Food & Wine is a more casual dining experience, but the taste looks (cause I haven't been to Beckta to compare) just as good as the premier fine dining Beckta.
Located close to the Byward Market on 1 York Street, it's neighborhood brings out the strollers and tourist going for cute boutiques and to eat at places like just like Play.
It's on the corner of York, doesn't look too big... that is until you walk in. Two levels with a long narrow corridor that seats plenty.
When I went for lunch (on a Saturday), it wasn't overly busy, but we made sure to make reservations in case. We were seated by the window and we were greeted with a very professional yet friendly waiter. With a menu like theirs, you're bound to ask questions, and our waiter was more than happy to answer ALL of our questions. He seemed very knowledgeable in the ingredients/menu. I was very pleased.
For lunch, they offered and very reasonable deal (I think better than Summerlicious/Winterlicious). From this menu (some exceptions) you can choose 2 dishes for $20. They are tapas dish-sizes, but my friend (who's been here many times before) mentioned that the sizes are much larger than an average tapas dish.
It was a very hard thing to choose only 2. They had a main entree list that began from top to bottom according to their 'heaviness" -steak being the heaviest menu item and soup being their lightest.
As promised, ART.IS.IN bakery still enters into my meals even though I eat elsewhere. The complimentary was... ART.IS.IN sourdough. And oh my, I must tell you, it was my favorite yet.
Incredibly soft on the inside, with a enough chewiness and not-too-hard exterior with a very great flavour to their sourdough bread. And this time I much preferred the butter than the cold-pressed canola oil dip.
On with the show, I choose what I rarely order when I go out:
Tuna Tataki | edamame | seasame | soy | fennel-orange | yam chips
Original price: $15.00
The tuna was very nice. It tasted fresh and was seasoned nicely. My only dislike was the hardness of the exterior. It was a bit too dry/hard for taste. But the sauce that was drizzled on was a mouth of absolute perfection.
My second go-to for this dish was the fennel salad. I ate it up like I was a poor man. It wasn't overly sour, but had a hint of sweetness that made the flavours of the fennel incredibly tasty. And the fennel was so light in my mouth that it could have melted.
The yam chips were good, but nothing too special.
Overall, it was a delicious combination of foods and flavours. I felt like I was tasting a million flavours in my mouth from these 3 items on this plate. I was very happy!
If I could have licked my plate (without anyone noticing it, I would have.)
And onto my 2nd dish, which I was very intrigued about.
Boar Sausage | tempura | acorn squash relish | Caraway mustard
Original price: $14.00
This was amazing... maybe.. just maybe because they deep fried the sausage. ;p
But the sausage was very flavorful and not at all game-y. It was deep fried to perfection and not soggy at all. The acorn squash relish was somewhat lacking in flavour but the Caraway mustard was extremely tangy and spicy. I liked it but I also couldn't take too much of it. So I decided to mix the squash with it and it became like one -both the mustard and squash complimentary one another perfectly.
I was absolutely blown away by how good the food was. The portions of it was simply more than enough for my stomach. It was tapas food, but I must agree with my friend that they felt much more filling than any tapas food places I've been to (i.e. Guu, Don Don Izakaya in Toronto).
Anytime you want to impress out-of-towners, come to this place.
Do I even need to rate this place?! Okay fine, it may have to compete with ART.IS.IN (in different ways) with a big 6/5 stars.
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