Trinity Reach Farm Summer Dinner

So I’ve been anxious to post about my most recent culinary adventure with the boys at Trinity Reach Farm (TRF, for short)! Atlas, I have time and am excited that they will be the first ‘official’ post to my Pretty Yummie food blog .

Just to give you a bit of background, 20somethings Paul, Jacob and Dave have been renting out a house within downtown Toronto for the past while. They work at restaurants by day (or night I guess since they work dinner shifts) and the rest of the time, they up keep their ‘farm’ in the backyard of the house. Not just any regular farm though… one with a chicken coop and 3 healthy hens. Vidafine recently wrote about the experience visiting their urban farm. You can read about it and see the video here.

So, they have recently decided to take their talents and bring it to the next level! They are beginning to offer ‘dinners’ to interested patrons right inside their home! They prepare everything in house, using some of the freshest ingredients that they get from the market, and also from their own garden. We were the 2nd group to experience the wonderful dinner that the Trinity Reach Farm team prepared! Can I say it was sooooooooo good!

From the time we were planning our dinner menu to when we sat down, the items that we were going to have changed. Shows how dedicated they are to freshness and good food! (They went to the market that day and picked up whatever was the best and created some wonderful dishes)!! They usually host dinners on Monday evenings only (for now) with a max group of 8 people. So I decided to round up a few Vidafine people and some of my other foodie friends to have a taste!

To start, we had ‘drinks’ and a really nice cornbread in their backyard patio (unfortunately no pics of that). They brew their own beers and ciders so we got a taste of that too! After some mingling, we headed upstairs to begin our amazing experience! One of their room mates had left, and so a room upstairs opened up for them to use as a ‘dining area’. It was a really cozy and intimate setting that was perfect!

Then we sat down and looked at the menu. Very creative idea! (note: the room mate who had left, his name was Chris!) Hungry yet? hehee We also ordered a bottle of white and a bottle of red wine.

They were very professional and the ‘service’ was great! They chatted with us in between dishes, explained what each dish and cleared our area on a consistent basis. Everything that came out was fresh and hot.

1) We started with homemade bread and cultured butter.

2)Following that we had a Elk Carpaccio (my first time), Farm egg (courtesy of their backyard hens ), drizzled with wild blueberry preserve, evoo (extra virgin olive oil) topped with gorgonzola and arugula.

The taste was very good! meat was tender and sweetness of blueberry preserve was a nice touch!

3) Following that we had a Baby Beet Salad. Some of us weren’t a fan of beets to begin with, but the way that it was prepared and tasted was really outstanding. Notice the colour of the beet is white? These are baby ones and they seem to taste much better than the ‘aged’ ones.

4) Next, we had homemade Ravioli with Ricotta and Arugula inside. It was then tossed in a sage butter sauce. The sage leaf on top was crunchy too!

At this point our tummies were starting to get full (at least for the girls… but not me. :/ hehehe)

5) The next dish was duck! It was a Everspring Farm Duck Roast and Confit (confit meaning it’s been cooked in it’s own juices ) It was cooked just perfectly! It was surrounded by preserved cherries that they had made too! It was delicious and definitely very filling! The meat was not dry/tough either. It sat on a potato cake. For veggies, there were cooked beet leaves which tasted similar to spinach.

6) Finally, dessert time! Prepared by one of the girlfriends of the TRF family, it was a Peach Gallete. Ginger ice cream, peach tart and fresh peaches. It was the perfect end to the meal!

The evening was well received by all guests and we were definitely full after the meal. We spent a little longer chatting away and had some home made ‘mint’ tea using the leaves of their mint plant.

(our final bill for 7 people, a nice touch at the bottom )

We will be sure to come back soon to catch up with the TRF boys and see what else they have in store for us
If you are ever interested in this sort of dining experience, feel free to get in touch with TRF yourself, or I can pass you along to speak with them directly!

You can check out the Vidafine Flickr page for more pictures of their Urban Farm!