Feb Fest

Here comes Kingston Feb Fest, the winter festival that serves as a tourist attraction during the drab winter months and if there is one type of crowd it attracts, that is certainly kids and families with kids. The market square area is brimmed with people who are there either to watch the kids playing hockey games with the seriousness of real hockey players, or to listen to concerts (which don't really come up until late afternoon), or simply to walk around amidst wafts of smoke coming from the hotdog stands and melting ice sculptures scattered here and there.

I was attracted not just to be in a place of communal festivity, but I have my eyes set on some of the finest restaurants that participated in the feb fest through their own way: tapas with a choice of beer or wine for 10 bucks. This is probably one of the cheapest way to experience different flavors offered around the town without depleting your wallet. Because I had a relatively busy schedule this weekend, I was only able to try out 3 restaurants: Casa, Chez Piggy and Aquaterra. All of them were fantastic. In Casa, we had slow-braised beef served with risotto-like rice in a wine and tomato mixture sauce with shaved Parmasean on top which tasted like heaven. The texture and the temperature were quite perfect and when the cheese melted slowly on top as you were eating, it became another layer of gooeyness made even better by the slight saltiness that comes with the cheeze. In Chez Piggy, we had their oxtail pot pie which is more like a oxtail soup / stew with a layer of dough baked on top. It was probably the most uninteresting of all three but the oxtail meat were delicious and appropriately fat. The dough itself had interesting chocolaty taste which I assumed they used dark chocolate bits in making the dough. I have always loved bread with dark chocolate baked inside, the epitome of my experience being in the Wildfire in Sydney with their signature dark chocolate bread, and Chez Piggy's dough was no exception. The wine was decent (Sandbanks Merlot from what I remember) which was mild and fruity. Last but not least, we went to Aquaterra and their tapas was slow-roasted shredded beef on top of little pan fried pan cakes made of potatoes, cabbages and buckwheat (the buckwheat part borrowed from the waitress). They are quite amazing as the beef is tender yet moist and the little cakes are very well made and are not floury at all. The red wine they served was quite interesting, It was Sandbanks Boco Noir  which is not only fruity, but has a very nice tanginess / spicyness at the end which was quite nice and worth trying again in my opinion. It is also available from LCBO.

Overall, I was more than satisfied with my restaurant choices and their quality tapas. Wish I have the opportunity to come back every year and be in a state of food happiness every year.