Restaurant: Samuel's by the Park

Perhaps the oddest thing about Samuel's is their wine pricing scheme: glasses cost less than bottles. Now, that statement by itself is obvious: of course, a glass of wine is going to cost less than a bottle. The surprise at Samuel's is that the relative cost is cheaper. You get 4-5 glasses per bottle and, for example, a glass of Jackson-Triggs costs $6 and a bottle costs $33. Even if we go for the higher 5 glasses per bottle, it still costs $3 less to get the equivalent amount of wine in glass form.

But aside from the oddity of the wine pricing (and, for the record, I did not get the Jackson-Triggs) you might wonder how the food was. That question is hard for me to answer, as I'm not really the target audience for this restaurant. The place is not what you would call "vegetarian friendly" as the dinner menu has no vegetarian options. Now, I was here at a big family dinner (17 people) so they had set up a prix fixe menu for us, which did include a vegetarian entree.

The bread they brought out was good, but the olive tapenade that accompanied it was amazing. Definitely the best I've ever had. So often they're too oily or too salty, but this was perfect. I checked the prix fixe menu, which had been printed out for all us on paper. It had "Mr. [one of my last name's] Menu" at the top, which made me think that I was sitting in my uncle's chair. After a moment's investigation, I discovered all the menus thus entitled as he had been the one who booked it. We had a choice of a starter, an entree and dessert. The two starters were caesar salad and the soup of the day (that's another oddity, when they printed up the menus presumably they knew what the soup of the day was. Why make extra work for the waiter who had to identity the soup to us all?) neither of which was vegetarian. The soup was made of chicken stock and the salad had anchovies and bacon in it. So that was a bit annoying (especially as a quarter of the party was vegetarian).

My entree was a spinach risotto with julienned vegetables and shaved asiago cheese. It wasn't bad, but I wasn't terribly impressed. The risotto was a little too chewy and not creamy enough, I couldn't taste the spinach or the asiago and every now and then it tasted burnt. My sister got the same thing and said there was no burnt taste on hers, so its possible I just got the bottom of the pan. Again, I'm not really their target audience so I guess they don't have a lot of experience making vegetarian food not bland.

The dessert was a delicious chocolate cake – the icing was perfectly done, rich and creamy and sweet (without being sickly sweet). I ended up having more than one piece as I got half of my aunt's (she was finished) and part of my sister's (she had left).

Bottom line: the bookends of the meal were excellent and the carnivores seemed to like their meals. I just don't think I could recommend the place to my vegetarian readers [yeah, your many vegetarian readers in Victoria, BC --ed].

Samuel's by the Park
655 Douglas St. Victoria, British Columbia