Susur.com/lee

$35 Dinner plus taxes and gratuity

Cheese burger spring roll – Pickles & smoked chili mayo in lettuce wrap
Szechwan hot & sour soup – Shredded vegetable & Chinese doughnut fritters
Peking Cucumber salad – Crushed cucumber, roasted sweet onion red pepper, mint, feta & Asian vinaigrette

Fresh Ground green curry chicken – Sweet pea polenta, butter almondine, sundried tomato jam oven dried pineapple, chili mint chutney
Pan roasted Salmon with spicy Chinese sausage – Winter melon broth
Spiced Slow Braised Beef – Romano bean puree & daikon puree

Crème caramel
Panna Cotta
Tong Yuen

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FOOD: Overall 8/10 (Click on the pics for larger pics)

Warren	Zena
Cheese burger spring roll Pleasently surprising considering its name and immediate WTF thought. It is advisted to eat the Spring Roll with your hands, after wrapping it in the lettuce. I ate some of the roll w/o the lettuce and it tasks exactly like a cheeseburger, it was great. Wrapping it in lettuce makes it taste more like a cheeseburger even. A cheeseburger with a nice crunch. Very tasty.	Peking Cucumber salad This salad was pretty good as well. Though I’m not a great salad evaluator, to me it was a salad with a thai/peanut buttery vinaigrette. It was pretty good though, definitely not a fusion I would have expected.
Spiced Slow Braised Beef This was pretty good as well but I’ve had better entrees (and the portion wasn’t great). The puree was great but I just may not be a fan of braised anything. As I ate this, it felt similar to the Braised Lamb I had at Didier. I mean, the meat was incredibly tender and soft, it just didn’t do it for me.	Pan roasted Salmon with spicy Chinese sausage While this wasn’t what I had chosen, this was exceptionally good. The taste was spectacular, mixing salmon, chinese sausage, and turnip…turned out to compliment each other incredibly well. Even if you had the salmon and sausage, without the turnip, its a completely different taste that combining the three together. I wish I had ordered this.
Tong Yuen Not knowing what this would be, it was a nice surprise. For about 1 or 2 seconds upon putting this in your mouth, it feels like a soft oreo. But as you bite in, you get an incredible number of different flavours, sesame seed, oreo, coconut, peanut…the taste changes every moment but it’s an overall a great dessert.	Crème caramel This was really good, a liquidy caramel on a soft custard. Very refreshing itself, or with the whipped cream it came with. While I would order this, I think I made the right choice with the Tong Yuen because it’s less likely to get something like that elsewhere. At least, the fusion version of it.

Overall, out of the 6 items, I thought all of them were good, worth getting or trying. I think I found 4 to be exceptional though (not the salad, or the slow braised beef). I would definitely like to come back and order some of those again.

SERVICE: 7/10
Waiter wasn’t great…I dunno. For what we were paying, I would have expected a little more…professionalism? No…courtesy? I dunno…just seemed a tad unwelcoming. I think the appetizers came in at 6:40, even though we were seated at 6:00. And I don’t believe we took that long to order. Also, our table was really close to others, beside us. Like, it was tough NOT hearing 2 other conversations. One of the best parts though is that with every dish they brought out, they described exactly what it was, and often provided tips on how to eat it (Cheeseburger Spring Roll). I don’t think I’ve been anywhere that does that…when the food comes, I just wanna eat it so it’s tough waiting that 30-45s for them to talk about the dishes. But it’s good to know…I enjoyed that. Extra marks for that.

COST: 8/10
35/person = 70 + Tax/Tip was about $95. Damn, I just realized that we put a 22% tip…because I calculated tip based on the total (cost+tax = 79) rather than just the cost (70). Damn, I miscalculated. I was thinking that for a 70 cost, before tip and tax, 95 was a lot…Well, if I did at 18% tip, it woulda been like, 92 so not that much different. Ah well. Compared to other Winterlicious places, the cost to food ratio is good. At least for Z. For me, I think I was still a bit hungry after…I woulda enjoyed being stuffed like Wildfire rather than looking for McDonalds after (which is sorta what I did except I didn’t get anything). But I mean, this was one of the cheaper Winterlicious places so again, that ratio was accurate.

Regular Menu | Winterlicious Menu

FOOD: Overall 9/10 (Click on the pics for larger pics)

Warren	Zena
Grilled Calamari This was good, I think I would have preferred breaded calamari, I didn’t notice it was grilled when I ordered it -_-; I just saw calamari. I went with this over the salads and soups (of course!) as well as the shrimp cocktail…but I’m not sure if I made the right choice.	Escargots Provençal This was much better than the calamari, the bread + garlic butter was awesome. If I returned, I would get this.
Sterling Silver® New York Striploin I ordered mine Rare and let me tell you, this may have been the best steak I ever had. More on this later…but it was awesome, I was so satisfied, it was a great feeling :)	Wild Mushroom Risotto I also had at least 6 mouthfuls of this, it was great as well. I personally wouldn’t get it because it has no meat! :D but it was really great. I would order this for what it was….but not over the steak.
Pecan and Chocolate Tart The most disappointing part of my meal. I enjoy pecans, and chocolate but I realized after eating this that I don’t enjoy their flavours together. It wasn’t as sweet as I would have liked for a dessert, the crust really diluted the sweetness.	Chocolate Mousse Dome This was really good, I only had a bit though. Z wouldn’t share >:( If I went back, I would choose this.

Overall, out of the 6 items, I was pretty pleased with 4 of them, and would definitely order them again. The Calamari and Pecan items were okay but compared to Z’s choices, they were a disappointment. So the food, overall, gets a 9/10. Points off for the Pecan dessert but extra points for the epicly good steak.

SERVICE: 8/10
I would give them a 9, the waiter was very courteous, attentive of our water (they refilled often). I deduct 1 mark because our reservation was for 6:30 and we had to wait until 7:10 for our table. Ouch. But once we were seated, everything was all good. We were seated at 7:10, they took our order and probably by 7:20, we had our appetizers, which was awesome. I guess they have tons ready but still…that was nice. Also, as soon as we finished our appetizers, they gave us our entrees. The wait time for food for the appetizer and entree was very little. The wait time for the dessert was a bit longer than expected but Z and I were both stuffed so we could use the eating breather :)

COST: 8/10
45/person + $20 for 2 Martinis + 8 Side order of Back Back Ribs = 118 + Tax/Tip was about $160. Hmm, it was about the same cost as Didier. While I found the food a bit more exotic at Didier, the food was definitely done well. I enjoyed my steak at least 3 times more than my Didier lamb (but I’ve since discovered that lamb might not be a taste for me). I mean, for Winterlicious, the price was pretty good considering for the amount of food we got.

Steak

Let me tell you. At this point in my life, I’ve never enjoyed anything as much as a good steak. As a child and teen, I would eat steaks well done. I don’t know, I had some fear of red, uncooked meat, instilled by my parents I believe. When I was going out with Z, 6.5 years ago, I was still eating well done steaks. And I hated them (big surprise). She introduced me to medium steaks and I loved them. But I’d often get overcooked steaks, receiving medium-well to well when I ordered medium. So I started under-cook-ordering. I would ask for medium-rare but would often/always get medium or medium-well.

And there is nothing worse than a bad steak. By bad, I mean over-cooked. You can’t really take it back or get a new one cuz you’re hungry. Wait, what’s worse than an over-cooked steak is paying a lot of money for an over-cooked steak. And that would often happen.

Even when I visited a steakhouse (I can’t remember the name) for a medium-rare New York Striploin, I received it medium-well. It was so sad :( I was so hungry too, I didn’t time to get a re-fired one or something else, so I just ate it.

Anyways, earlier this week, Z made me rare steak. I don’t think I’d ever had rare. While it was too rare for her it was absolutely perfect for me. I realized rare steaks are the way to go.

So I ordered my steak rare at this steakhouse…and oh. my. f*cking. god. It was so good. I’m totally craving a good, rare steak now…even though I just had one.

My mouth is watering as I write this….

RARE STEAK >>> BACON >>> CHICKEN >>> LAMB >>> ANYTHING

Though Sidecar’s Over Roasted Chicken will beat Bacon, that place might be the only place where chicken >> bacon.