Sage Restaurant, Toronto

Went with a group of people to try Sage near Bay and Bloor as we needed a place to eat close to a friend's house. Now that I've been there I realize that we probably should have chosen something for the food and not for the location.

The first impression was nice enough with the restaurant's nice, if a little boring, decor, a pleasant hostess and good seating location. As soon as the first course came out the first impressions vanished. The leek and potato soup was thin and pretty much flavourless. I couldn't tell where the leeks came into the equation. And the potatoes were nearly non-existant. The soup was also excessively peppered making the soup taste like peppery water. As someone at the table had commented, the soup tasted like something from a can. I'll go one further and say that canned Campbell's soup usually tastes better than the soup that was served to me that evening.

The next course was penne primavera. The dinner menu overall didn't look inspired so I went with what should have been the safest bet. The penne didn't leave any kind of impression at all. I wish I could say that it tasted homemade or as unique but it was about as bland and boring and average as primavera could get.

I don't think my dinner companions fared any better either with "tempura" salmon that looked more like fish and chips, and a stuffed chicken course that was barely stuffed with anything at all.

Dessert was also a large dissapointment. The supposed creme bruleé was barely charred at all on top and I failed to taste anything resembling espresso. Like the other courses we had, the taste was bland yet again.

To be fair this was a winterlicious dinner and it is possible that the restaurant could do better given different circumstances. However, I thought part of the point of winterlicious was to allow people to come and try food at restaurants they typically wouldn't go to and build a larger customer base. In this case I believe Sage lost 5 potential customers.