La Palette is a French resto in Kensington Market. The room is small, cozy — shabby-chic, with pretty floral linens, red leather-y chairs, and a little bar. Mr. Rabbit and I arrived on a Thursday at about 7:00 and were promptly seated (sans reservation). We were given some ordinary, but not unpleasant crusty bread with butter — but no menus. It took about five minutes before our server came fix this oversight. OK.

Wine list was interesting, and we ordered a Argentine Malbec, and a Chilean cab — both totally quaffable, and coming it at around $10 per glass. Note that La Palette has a nice (and rotating) selection of beers too. I would have had the framboise, but I was in a red wine mood.

The special menu had some interesting offerings (a rainbow trout, a build-your-own mixed grill of exotic game meats — horse, elk, ostrich), but we both ordered from the regular menu. We couldn’t find a starter that really interested us, so we skipped that part. And then we waited. Again. We waited for quite a while, and for some of the time with empty glasses…

Finally, the food arrived. Mr. Rabbit’s horse steak was huge, perfectly grilled, and exceptionally tender. If you want horse, this is definitely your place. It was plated with a nicely mixed veg medley, buttery and taste-y. I was originally going to order the chicken (I know, boring… but a properly roasted chicken can be succulent), however, I let our server talk me into the duck confit. I think this was a mistake. The confit came plated with more-or-less the same veg medley as Mr. Rabbit enjoyed, and also some quite-good yam frites (big and squishy, as opposed to matchstick-y). But the duck itself had a very thick and chewy skin, really almost jerky-ish in spots, and really didn’t perform in that falling-off-the-bone manner that makes confit such a delight. It was OK — just OK, maybe barely OK.

Dessert. We ordered a flourless chocolate cake, and Mr. Rab had a coffee. And we waited, eventually, with an empty coffee cup. We waited so long that we didn’t even want dessert anymore, but when we finally caught our server and attempted to cancel the order, she bolted off to the kitchen and immediately produced our cake. And it was outstanding. Even our growing crossness with the lame service couldn’t ruin its pure, rich chocolate-y-ness, or the perfection of the accompanying coconut ice cream.

I dunno what to say about La Palette. The grilled meat and the dessert knocked it out of the park. I can even live with my mediocre entrée. But the bad service was ruinous. The staff was pleasant enough, but they really had to work to be so inattentive in such a small room. The room was not full, not was it particularly busy. In fact, our servers spent time hanging out and chatting with the kitchen staff while we looked at our empty glasses and waited for dessert. This place has grown-up food, and grown-up prices, but the staff seemed totally amateur. I don’t need sycophantic crumb-scraping, but I do expect a glass of water, and I don’t expect an empty wine glass. Plus, I think they could take it up a notch and use linen napkins (OK, now that’s super-fussy).

Would I go back… a very qualified maybe (for the grilled meat, and that cake). If this place could get it together, it would be a charming option, but last night, it was ultimately just annoying.

The damage: three glasses of wine, two entrees (our entrees were $30 and $25, with the menu topping out at $48 for the mixed grill… some dishes were closer in the $18-$25 range), one dessert, one coffee came to $108 (with taxes, but before tip).

One more note: we did get a free glass of wine, but we’re not sure whether this was because:
A) they screwed up our wine order (although they didn’t acknowledge this, so we don’t think they knew. We didn’t alert them to the problem because it was more trouble than it was worth);
B) they were trying to palliate us for our obvious annoyance at the dessert wait;
C) between the two servers, one of them just forgot to bill us.
Honestly, we think it was probably C. And I know it probably earned us extra time in purgatory, but we did not confess.

Posted on September 28th, 2007 by rabbit
Filed under: Toronto, Restaurant Reviews