Dine Out 2012: Smoking Dog Bistro- Candied Bacon Chocolate Fudge ~ Eating With Kirby

Smoking Dog Bistro is a little French Bistro located in Kitsilano on W 1^st Ave. I was intrigued by their dine out menu this year so I went to try it out with Dirtygirl, Cupcake, Dup, and Meta Knight.

I made reservations before checking their urbanspoon page and when I did, I was quite taken back by how many negative comments there were. Needless to say, after reading all the comments I began to doubt my decision of choosing this place for dine out.

The decor is very pretty and has a romantic feel to it. I particularly liked the flower centerpieces.

The presentation of their dine out menu is quite unique, no? I don’t think I’ve ever seen a menu in a form of a scroll before.

The complimentary bread arrived first and came piping hot. It was quite delicious.

Dirtygirl and Cupcake ordered the Thinly sliced Flank steak with ratatouille and red wine glace de viande as their appetizer. As you can see, it was incredibly small.

They both thought the flank steak was too salty and had a burned/ charred taste to it. I had a bite and I thought it was okay.

I was the only one to choose the Stuffed Portobello with chevre goat cheese, roasted red pepper filet, baby arugula, roasted pine nuts, and carrot and beet curls with balsamic nectar. I was expecting a large Portobello cup stuffed with cheese, red peppers, and broiled to melty cheese perfection. This was not the case here. I thought everything was quite tasteless and bland. The Portobello should have been the star but it was completely lost in the background.

Meta Knight and Dup both ordered the Smoked Salmon Terrine, the only winning appy. It comes with house made red onion jam, grilled French baguette, and pickled golden beets.

The smoked salmon terrine went beautifully with the grilled French baguette and all the condiments complemented the salmon quite well. I would recommend getting this for your appy.

Almost everyone at our table ordered the Braised Lamb Shank with sun dried tomato soft polenta and sautéed haricot verts. They were very generous with the portion size as the lamb shank was humongous.

I absolutely loved this dish because the meat literally fell-off-the-bone. It was juicy, meaty, and went perfectly with the sundried tomato polenta.

Unfortunately, Cupcake and Meta Knight’s lamb shank was undercooked and became very tough to cut. This was the complete opposite of my dish. Cupcake endured his lamb shank while Meta Knight asked for a new one.

Dup was the only person who did not order the lamb dish. He instead wanted to try the Trio of Mushroom risotto stuffed in a roasted pepper cup with cilantro veloute.

He completely regretted ordering this dish because he thought it was mediocre compared to all of our giant hunks of meat. I tasted his risotto and I thought it was absolutely delicious! I guess it’s a matter of personal taste. If you are a fan of risotto or mushrooms, this dish is for you. If not, you probably won’t like it at all.

Cupcake and I ordered the French lemon pie with raspberry coulis and hazelnut whipped cream. I thought the lemon pie was wayyyy too sour but I really enjoyed the hazelnut whipped cream.

Dirtygirl and Meta Knight ordered the Wild berry parfait with raspberry coulis and white chocolate whipped cream. They both only ordered this dessert because they saw the kitchen bring so many of them out. Apparently, you should never judge how good the food is by what other people are ordering because they both thought it was disappointing. It tasted like frozen berries layered with whipped cream.

For dessert, Dup ordered the Candied bacon chocolate fudge with hazelnut whipped cream and it was the hands down winner in the dessert category. The bacon in this dessert completely kicked it up a notch by providing a sweet and savory contrast.

It was not too sweet and the fudge was dense yet moist. Basically, everything about this dessert was great. I kicked myself for not ordering this!!!

Overall, I found the dine out menu to be a hit-or-miss. If you order the right dishes (Salmon Terrine, Lamb Shank, Bacon Fudge), your experience will be great, if not, it might just be ‘meh’. My experience was pretty good but that is mostly because I had great company and funny conversations.

Based on these reasons: