When it’s nice out, you just got to sit on a patio! So, me and my family tried a new restaurant (for us), called Villa, on Bloor Street West. It had been recommended by Marni Wasserman, and she knows her food, and what we are after on a menu!
They have a great little patio right out front of their restaurant, and they even took a reservation for us on a Saturday night – that is very, very rare it seems for restaurants in Toronto! The servers were very understanding when we talked to them about my sister’s nut allergy, and even cut our bread and poured our olive oil separately just to make sure there was no cross contamination. We were off to a great start!
We started off with a bruschetta that came with the chopped tomatoes in a small bowl to place on our gluten-free multigrain buns on our own. I don’t even like tomatoes, but I did like the dish a lot – there was the perfect amount of garlic and onions and just the right amount of fresh basil and a light dressing.
My dad ordered a Mill Street Organic beer, which is his favourite! And, even though my sister is holding the bottle in the picture on this post, don’t worry, she didn’t drink any of it!
Now for the main course – we ordered 3 pizzas and a pasta. You can choose one of their pizzas, or make a custom one with 3 different crusts (regular, spelt or brown-rice gluten-free) and at least what seemed to be 40 different toppings. My mom ordered a gluten-free crust with roasted tomatoes, zucchini and hot peppers (no cheese) and they had no problem making it crispy and she really liked it! My sister ordered a very different type of pizza (from what I’ve ever seen!) – she ordered a spelt crust, roasted sweet potato pizza, but made a couple substitutions from their menu. The final pizza she ordered had roasted sweet potato, caramelized onions, spinach, chevre and roasted red peppers and green onions, and she really loved it. Her favourite part was the sweet potato (she asked me to add that into this review). My dad ordered a spicy pasta with brown rice, gluten free pasta. I tried a few pieces and loved it, the flavour from the jalapeno peppers was amazing. Now, it took me only moments to build my custom pizza. It started with a spelt crust with tomato sauce and chevre with grilled red onions, wild mushrooms, arugula, roasted garlic, and wait for it…sliced avocado! That’s right, sliced avocado! I myself had never had avocado on pizza before, but as soon as I bit into that crispy crust pizza, I knew that I would be ordering it next time we go there. It’s like when I bit into the pizza that a grenade of flavour was in my mouth, and when it exploded with the fresh avocado, I was very happy!
I hope you all try Villa Restaurant too, because it’s a great spot for Italian food. Everyone in the family can be happy no matter what your eating habits are. My one request for them – please try and use more organic ingredients. It’s so easy since they could shop for so much at the farmers’ markets!!
- My sister & her sweet potato pizza
- My Avocado Pizza!
- Mill St. Organic Beer
