Grazie Ristorante - Toronto, ON

Last week I went on a trip with W to Toronto and Montreal. We took an early flight and ended up in Toronto about 4-ish. We only had drinks and bits-and-bites during the 5 hour long flight so we were famished. We stayed at a friend's place around Yonge and Eglinton but she hadn't got off work yet so we decided to walk down Yonge St. to see what we could find to eat.

We saw there was quite a number of Italian and Asian restaurants and settled on Grazie Ristorante. At 5pm the restaurant was relatively empty but it had filled up by the time we left. I guess we just missed the after work crowd.

Grazie has a lot of yummy sounding pasta choices on their menu. They separate the pasta by the type of sauce. I had some difficulty making a decision!

Complimentary bread was brought to our table with butter. The bread wasn't warm. It wasn't anything special.

 Cefalu $15 - Spaghetti with grilled chicken, fresh spinach & ricotta pesto (pine nuts)

W and I both went with a Extra Virgin Oil and Garlic based sauce for our pasta. W ordered the Cefalu shown above.

 Avellino $14.25 - Fettucini with prosciutto, spinach & a porcini mushroom butter

And I ended up choosing the Avellino because of the mushroom and spinach. The waiter comes by asking if you want parmesan and pepper on your plate. I liked my dish and it tasted good. I wasn't too sure that mushroom butter meant it was only the butter or if they were going to add actual mushrooms in but was glad that it actually came with the mushrooms. I liked that the dish didn't feel too heavy, it was the right amount to satisfy me. But for the portion, it's just a tad pricey. The service was ok. The food came out quickly but they took a long time to come with our bill, I guess they were busy with other customers. All in all a nice, casual place to have some pasta.