I received a gift certificate from my boss to go to Mark McEwan's Fabbrica. Interesting--a Scot with an Italian restaurant.
In case you don't know who Mark McEwan is--he's a George Brown trained celebrity chef, and hosts "the Heat", and is a judge on Top Chef Canada. I have expectations....
Fabbrica is located in The Shops at Don Mills, which is an outdoor shopping plaza that reminds me of shopping in the Mugello, about an hour and a half, north of Florence. The shops all have separate entrances, nothing is connected by a "mall", so its much like shopping in a small community.
Fabbrica is beautiful inside, I have to admit. The ceilings are high, the place has excellent decoration, there is a wall of booze behind the bar that would make any Maritimer weep with joy (this includes me!); however, it does feel like a chain. I kept expecting an Earl's style waitress to approach the table, stoop down & ask me "how can I help you?" (you can help me by standing up....).
The Italian and I were first shown to a table that was crammed in between two others, thus preventing any arm movement (we like to eat--sawing pizza requires lots of elbow room). I asked to be moved, and was given a table that was in the path of the bathroom, so we spent the rest of the night being jostled by people traipsing to and fro from the loo.
The Italian boyfriend immediately noticed spelling mistakes on the menu. This does not bode well for our time here. I have to agree with the Italian's pickiness. If you're going to open up an ITALIAN restaurant, the least you can do is hire an Italian to check the spelling on the menu! Crema spelled incorrectly? Provolone spelled "provlone"? A simple Google check could correct this.
We are brought home baked bread (we can see the baker taking it out of the pizza oven). It's wonderful! Still warm and soft, but it kept coming..... The Italian cannot resist bread. I hope we have room for dinner.
The starter salad is beet but the beets have no flavour at all. For a winter veg this strikes me as odd. The pistachios that are in the salad are an excellent touch, adding the missing taste.
Our pizzas arrive. I opt for the Margherita (no surprise there) and the Italian tried the prosciutto e arugula. He liked his, as the prosciutto was excellent. I found that my sauce was bland and had to be salted. The crust was excellent, but the mozzarella was dry. Maybe they drained it? The idea that they used Canadian "Kraft" mozzarella disgusts me. I hope not.
Total cost for dinner was $70, so a bit overpriced for what we had. Out of 10? Maybe a 6.
