Lee

Ah Valentine’s Day, the one day of the year where it’s perfectly acceptable to shamelessly eat a box of chocolate and not look back. But with the good comes the bad- everything seems to have an increased cheese level of 1000, not to mention the ridiculous amount of pressure to make it the best night ever places it only second to New Years Eve for the most overrated night of the year award. Personally, I think Valentine’s Day is great, it’s a celebration of love! That being said, there’s no reason to not be more loving all year round. Why designate only one day of the year to show your loved ones how much they mean to you? There is nothing wrong with having more flowers, fancy dinners, and chocolate in your life (as long as you’re hitting the gym after).

I arrived in Toronto just two nights back, so for the first time, Nish and I celebrated Valentine’s Day together. Although Valentine’s Day is today, we celebrated a night early since Friday night is always date night for us.

Anyone who knows me will tell you how big a fan I am of Chef Susur Lee. I’ve tried both Luckee and Lee, and both are amongst my favourite restaurants in Toronto. Nish took the reigns on planning dinner, and although I was skeptical at first (he has a track record of taking me to the worst restaurants), I was so pleased to find out he’d booked Lee!

Upon arriving, we were presented with both the a la carte menu as well as the Valentine’s Day four course menu. Since we’d already tried most of the dishes on the a la carte menu on previous visits, we decided to go with the Valentine’s Day special.

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We started with the Singapore Slaw. If you’ve ever been to Lee, you’ll know that the Singapore Slaw is an absolute must-have. It’s a 19 ingredient salad (yes nineteen, you read correctly), and will forever ruin all other salads for you because it just sets the bar too damn high.

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A sea of colours, textures, and flavours.

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The second course was some sort of slow roasted beef which melted in my mouth. It was so tender I didn’t even need a knife.

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Since Nish doesn’t eat beef, so he got vegetables in coconut curry.

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I didn’t have the heart (or gall) to ask him for a bite out of fear that he would stab me with his fork, but from what I gathered he enjoyed it immensely.

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Next up, Lobster and Shrimp. It came with braised beef, mashed potatoes, crispy kale, and some sort of green sauce that changed my life. The lobster was cooked to perfection in a rich sauce which I scraped off my plate with a fork. It was a sophisticated sight indeed.

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Having stuffed ourselves to pant button popping levels, we gently settled into a food coma. To be completely honest, I wasn’t sure if I could handle dessert…

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LOL who am I kidding, I inhaled my dessert. A chocolate banana berry cake with passionfruit ice-cream.

As you probably already guessed, I highly recommend Lee. Make sure you book in advance because it gets busy, especially on weekends!

We capped off the night with an episode of Friends before I slipped into a jet lag induced slumber. Basically my idea of the perfect Valentine’s Day. Hope you all have a wonderful love-filled day!

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