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Merchant’s Workshop

The best part of my job is the amazing friends I have made. Although we don’t all work together anymore, we try to get together as often as possible to catch up. This get together was months in the making and it was a perfectly relaxed night of wine and good food.


What we ate: Bread and Butter – matchstick sourdough, house cultured butter ($4.00)

I love bread with a passion, so I may or may not have forced my friends to get this. It was pretty standard, the butter was really yummy though!


What we ate: Foie Gras Pate ($12.00)

This was on special and I forgot to note down the exact name/ingredients. The foie was really rich but not excessively so. If I had to nitpick, I wish they served us more toast points. We literally saw a server run across the street during service to buy a loaf of bread from the corner store…

We each got one little toast point which wasn’t nearly enough for the serving of pate. When we asked for more bread they provided us with two toast points (essentially one slice of toast.)


What we ate: Mushroom Tartine – mushroom parfait, pickled mushrooms, thyme ($9.00)

This was delicious. I adore mushrooms and this was a perfect dish for me. Honestly I could have inhaled this whole thing by myself!


What we ate: Beef Tartare – chili, chive, shallot, mayo, sourdough, peanut ($15.00)

This was a really interesting take on beef tartare. It definitely wasn’t what I was expecting when we ordered it, but it wasn’t bad. I probably wouldn’t order it again, but it was nice to try. The texture of the beef was a bit off, it tasted like cooked ground beef. The addition of peanuts however was interesting, and worked well with the dish.


What we ate: Mushroom Risotto – foraged mushrooms, Taleggio cheese, thyme oil and ramp dressed cress ($22.00)

As mentioned earlier, I’m a huge fan of mushrooms so this dish was right up my alley. It’s pretty hard to get risotto right, and they do it right here. It was so good we ordered another one after!


What we ate: Black Garlic and Pork Agnolotti – caramelized onion puree, manchego cheese, parsley ($19.00)

Unfortunately this was my least favourite dish of the night. The filling was quite bland and the overall dish just fell flat for me, especially since the server hyped it up so much.

Would I come back? Yes, if I was in the area. For me this is definitely a hidden gem on the Drive. I don’t venture out to that area often, but the dishes here were solid and I would recommend it to anyone in the area looking for a nice dinner.

Merchant's Oyster Bar Menu, Reviews, Photos, Location and Info - Zomato

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