Restaurant: Wildfire Steakhouse & Wine Bar
Location: 8 Colborne Street, Toronto, ON M5E 1E1
Price Range: $
[wp-review]
To be honest I never heard of or ever seen Wildfire Steakhouse, and now I know why… The restaurant itself is located inside the Cosmopolitan Hotel and the entrance on Colborne street was super easy to be missed, hence whip out your phone and Google Map it! Since it is located around the Financial District area, initially I thought the restaurant would be noisy but I was surprised to see how relaxed and quiet it was inside.
Although it was still bright outside, the restaurant was dimly lighted which resulted into very bad quality pictures lol… Doesn’t anyone hate that?! The above picture is already enhanced, without it you can barely see the decors inside. Despite being located in a hotel, I thought the restaurant was quite small.
Upon arriving, we were given the Groupon menu and were told that we could select one of the 4 types of either wine or beer which were included on the Groupon menu.
The Hors D’oeuvres were freshly made and changed daily based on what’s in season. It came with:
- Polenta fries: though not as good as the ones I had at Richmond Station, it still had a nice crust, soft and creamy on the inside.
- Pulled pork with salsa: dry and bland
- Vegetarian spring rolls: really good! The sauce added a nice kick and it was crunchy.
- Smoke salmon with shrimps: I could barely tasted the smoke salmon, the shrimps were cooked well and it was topped with mayonnaise (I think).
For appetizer I got the escargots and while they were soft and tender, I thought the dish was too oily but had a really strong buttery taste (in a good way!). The panko topping added some crunches with every bite and the sauce wasn’t too garlicky, overall a well-made appetizer.
C got the steamed mussels in a garlic cream sauce and it would have been nice if some bread was served on the side to soak up all that delicious broth! These were decent sized mussels with no empty shells, so that means the mussels did not have any muscles to escape… get it? 😀 Anyhow the cream sauce was incredibly flavorful and had just enough kick to it, and if it was socially acceptable, I would have licked the bowl clean.
While the ribs were nice and tender, it wasn’t the fall-off-the-bone type and was a bit bland. I devoured the grilled shrimps since they were probably the best part of the dish as the fries were a bit limp…
The steak had a perfect medium-rare temperature but it was under-seasoned. The mashed potatoes was too salty and had no garlic taste to it. The steak came with some well-cooked broccoli, roasted red pepper and zucchini.
The texture of chocolate torte was similar to a brownie, it was rich but somehow still remained light. Though it was too sweet for my taste, I appreciated how they used dark chocolate instead and if there was more raspberry sauce to cut down the sweetness, it would have been perfect!
The creme brule had a nice sugar coating on top and the custard had a nice texture, yet it suffered the same problem as the previous dessert – overly sweetened.
Despite having the Groupon menu, the service here was amazing and the servers constantly refilled my water and always made sure we were okay with our food. Overall I didn’t enjoy the food at Wildfire and I wouldn’t recommend this place, even with the groupon deal. The normal price is already quite steep, with that said I thought the $90 groupon was still expensive considered the quality of food here. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good deal but I believe you can pay a bit more and receive better food in restaurants around the area.
Disclaimer: While the Groupon was a gift from my friend, I am not obliged to publish a review on the business. All opinions/thoughts are my own. For more information about my review policy, please click here.