TNs: TWec (TM) at Raca Café & Bar & OPUS: Local Chard, Ripasso, Updated with XISTO!

Berserkers,

Last night the Toronto Wine Elitist Cabal ™ went out for a night on the town to spend more time with our American friend and honorary member Judge Bernard Schwartz from California who will be returning to the US this weekend. Unusually, this time the pick of the venue and the arrangements were done entirely by the guest of honor himself as he brought board member Jay Shampur, their mutual friend Mac who also joined us previously at BOSK, and myself to an amazing little venue in the west end of the city we’d never been to before called Raca Café and Bar.

Before we go on, I wish to warn everyone that I am going to do something unusual for one of my TWEC ™ night out posts and open up unexpectedly with a rant. I don’t mean a conservative “how dare they grow weed in vineyards” rant, either. I mean an overdue hate-filled rally against the bulls**t small-minded small-penised Hitler wannabes called food critics. I’ve always hated them but never have I actually wanted to put a bullet right between their eyes as badly as I do now. If you disagree or just aren’t interested, feel free to skip right on down to the lovely wine and food pics and descriptions.

Why the hate? Take a look at this extremely negative review I’m going to link you to and then come back and read my descriptions, see my photos, and evaluate for yourselves whether or not these so-called professional reviewers are anything other than spoiled entitled alcoholic liars with clear agendas designed to hurt the restauranteur because they felt their asses weren’t being kissed enough: Raca Café and Bar: A talented Toronto chef who deserves better - The Globe and Mail

Now compare this to our experiences below. This is how restauranteurs actually behave with regular people who have passion for food and wine, show they care about and understand the sacrifices those in this industry make surviving on low pay and a lot of hard work and passion – I only make about $60K CDN a year and I’ve never met a head chef in Toronto who’s made more than I do, let alone high rollers like Jay and Judge Schwartz and their friend Mac – and always say please and thank you. It’s not like chefs and the restaurant staff in this city quake in their shoes when they see us enter and go “Holy crap, the TWEC ™ just walked into the place! Dear God, they could ruin us! Everyone at your absolute best tonight!” They act this way because they care deeply and see that we care just as deeply about them. And if you don’t want to take my word for it, just look at all the positive YELP and TripAdvisor reviews for this place.

The bottom line is this. The experience we had at Raca Café & Bar is so totally opposite to that of a professional food critic that I am personally advising this entire board, if they weren’t already inclined to do so, to completely distrust and ignore any paid professional food critic. Period. I’m not talking about taking what they say with a grain of salt, I mean putting them out of the business of food reviewing forever. While I am not adverse to taking them out to a cornfield and pulling a Joe Pesci in Casino or GoodFellas , you might get caught which would be bad for you so the best I can advise is to ignore them and show them the Internet has finally put the power in the hands of the people where it truly belongs. End of rant.

Now on the food and wine. Raca Café & Bar is the namesake passion project of Chef Ivana Raca. At 17, she took her first restaurant job in the kitchen at North 44 and local celebrity chef Mark McEwan made her his first female saucier in just 3 years. She was then the sous-chef at ONE Restaurant and at age 24 she became the first female executive chef at McEwan Foods. Raca Café & Bar is her first solo project, a small 30 seat eatery with one of the absolute smallest open kitchens and floor staff I’ve ever seen in a fully functioning restaurant. Chef Raca, her two sous-chefs and a waiter ran the entire place. Honestly at times it felt more like I was eating in her home than her restaurant.

There is no BYOB here, so we ordered a couple of gems off of the list to go with our food:

Organized Crime 2013 Beamsville Bench Chardonnay – Organized Crime is a small family owned winery out here in Niagara. So small, in fact, that the tasting bar is run out of their own house. This lovely local Chardonnay more than holds its own against any entry level Bourgogne with ripe apple and pear flavors that mix with subtle toasty lees and butter flavors. Slight toffee flavor in there. Not as flinty as a good Meursault, of course, but a very smooth texture and a medium-light body makes it very refreshing and an excellent food match. You will find that good local Ontario Chardonnay cannot hope to match the flintiness and minerality of French Burgundy and will substitute in a nice creamy texture but is nowhere near as heavy as a badly overoaked Cali Chard which results in a very nice and inexpensive wine. This is really good for an Ontario Chardonnay. In fact, we ended up having another bottle of it once the food arrived.

Villa Annaberta 2014 Ripasso della Valpolicella Superiore – This perfectly serviceable Ripasso was dark purple in the glass and had a very strong nose of stewed plums and ripe cherries. On the palate, ripe sweet tannins along with light coffee bean and cocoa flavors accentuate a medium light body and tastes of stewed red plums and black cherries. As with most Ripassos, however, all it does is make me want to have the real thing i.e. Amarone.

We actually had a pretty simple dinner consisting of an appetizer each and a main course. Everything, however, was simply spectacular. Four-star quality food quite contrary to what certain bulls**t professional critic reviews would have you believe. I had a fantastic kale salad, and those of you who have eaten kale know that’s one vegetable that’s really hard to make taste good. This salad used young kale, dried blueberries, chopped almonds, and a house made shallot vinaigrette. This was mentioned several times on YELP and TravelAdvisor and other positive blog reviews so often that I had to try it myself I was not disappointed.

Judge Bernie had an absolutely incredible white truffle risotto. Words fail me when describing how absolutely delicious and rich this was.

Jay had an heirloom confit tomato salad. Heirloom cherry tomatoes were cooked confit style and then served up with watermelon radish slices, pine nuts and pulled burratta cheese.

Finally, Mac had the beef carpaccio. Quite contrary to the small plate of thin meat slices with a few veggies I was expecting him to get, the plate that arrived was a full-sized plate of beef carpaccio covered in a ton of shaved Manchecgo cheese, pumpkin seeds, and pomengranate seeds.

Then it was on to the mains. Both Jay and Mac had the vegetarian free-form lasagna. Basically a lasagna assembled on the plate itself as opposed to baked in a pan and so therefore had no constricted shape to it. Lasagna noodles, homemade tomato sauce, nut pesto and a dollop of smoked ricotta cheese.

But that’s enough about their pansie meal. As a friend of mine once said, “It’s not a meal unless it had parents.” The meat lovers Bernie and myself had the awesome Venison Ragout. A ground venison ragout was served with ricotta gnocchi and fresh basil leaves. This was unbelieveably good and I polished off my plate rather quickly.

As we finished our main courses, we were the only table left. Chef Raca herself came out to introduce herself to us and ask how our meal went. We were quite happy to gush over her cooking. Yet again, another example of that personal touch for ordinary clientele and complete strangers just to show she cares. I really wish she had poisoned that food critic to death.

From there, we made our way to one of the most famous restaurants in the city, OPUS. It’s a mainstay in the city for high-end dining with a discrete location, intimate ambience and amazing food. It’s known to be populated by high-rolling regulars and is in fact where Mac, Bernie and Jay all got to know each other. We were joined by a couple more of their friends and then a pair of high-end reds were ordered while I ordered a dessert that Bernie and I shared.

Convento San Francisco 2005 S.L. Ribera del Duero Selección Especial – This RdD was so rich that we were all certain it was Garnacha (aka Grenache) based and not Tempranillo until I looked it up on my smartphone. Good God but this was a great red wine. Rich black currant, chocolate, and coffee flavors. Delicious stuff.

Tran, while I appreciate your criticism, if you look at the date of the article you referenced, it was 1.5 years ago when the restaurant first opened. Considering it’s Raca’s first restaurant, it’s likely that it took some time for the place to find its legs, smooth out service, quality, etc. While CNS is no longer the restaurant reviewer for the Globe (oddly, he hasn’t been replaced - and I believe he left over six months ago), I generally found his reviews to be relatively consistent and representative over the years.

Note that I haven’t been to Raca. Thanks for your notes.

Whoops. I see that I messed up the final part of the post and somehow lost the last post with the Xisto. Here it is.

2003 Roquette e Cazes XISTO Douro – This is a collaboration between Quinto do Crasto from Portugal and Domaine Lynch-Bages. 60% Touriga Nacional, 25% Tinta Roriz and 15% Touriga Franca. Contrary to the previous wine, the tobacco and cocoa and smoke flavors are up at the forefront with the rich red fruit coming in as a secondary flavor. This resulted in an incredibly rich wine and the long aging has given it a smooth texture. Fuller body than the last wine, this was absolutely fantastic with the dessert Bernie and I shared because the fruit was not killed off by the chocolate as the smoke and tobacco and cocoa dominated.

For dessert, I ended up choosing the chocolate ganache torte with caramelized white chocolate ice cream. Great match with our two red wines, especially the XISTO and shows you don’t need Port sweetness but rather a fuller body and texture for a red wine to go with a chocolate dessert.