Perigee

So, I went to Perigee in August 2006, so of course I've forgotten every detail about each of the dishes.
What I do know though, is that you should go. It's a restaurant in the distillery district (in Toronto - sorry, maybe I should have clarified...I'm not often in Toronto) with a great atmosphere. I think the place sits at max, what...30 people? I'd never been in restaurant that small, however, my dinner date assured me that it was pretty much normal for fine dining institutions.
Anyway, the "neat" thing about Perigee is that they "create" a menu for you. Nothing "a la carte". Just a couple questions about allergies and food preferences and then the dishes are brought to you. This restaurant was also suggested due to their ability to accompany dishes with various non-alcoholic beverages. You'll see the pictures below.
Service was impressive enough that the host remembered my date and thankfully there was nothing pretentious about the evening. It was "stadium seating" as the website calls it. Well, it was stadium in terms of being able to see what was going on the in the kitchen, but thankfully not stadium enough that we were in nosebleed seats. I believe that most of the seats were situated connecting to the kitchen area, but there were a couple tables which were against the walls (potentially only for drinks and not for dining). With each course, served by a server, head chef Pat Riley would casually come over to the connecting edge of his kitchen (often there were nooks into his preparation space where he could step up on a platform to get closer to the diners tables) and present the dish. A nice touch.
I chatted with the dessert chef, as we pretty much closed up the restaurant and found that they were pretty much catering to us. And, well, learned that it's always the safe and sure decision to serve a lady something with chocolate in it. You can serve the man something chocolately as well, but if he's with a woman and she doesn't get chocolate...well, it's a problem. We also got two desserts each out of it (or maybe we were supposed to anyway). Oh and knowing the restaurant business, I'm sure that the kitchen considers how diner's at the same table's meals compliment each other. So smart.
So, enjoy various photos from the night at Perigee: (I could be completely wrong, but I believe that this was the order that the courses were served - photos on the left being for me and the photos on the right being for my dinner companion)
It also seems as though I was too excited to eat my food to take a picture of it first.


































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