Saturday, December 20, 2014

Aroma, Oooooohhhh Mama!

It's no secret we love Aroma, the incredible restaurant in the Saskatoon Radisson hotel.  This is definitely one of our favourite restaurants, and it should be on a list of some sort of one of Saskatchewan's best

Chef Trevor invited us in to try some new dishes on the house, and last night we took him up on his offer.  We grabbed our usual table in the lounge, and were pumped to see that Paige would be our server - she's our usual when we come in at night, and we love how she always has a smile on her face, and she's always so cheerful and positive. 

We were given three appetizers to try:


One was a charcuterie board, with a few different kinds of cured meats, cheeses, crackers and housemade brioche crisps, local lavender honey, a tomato fennel jam, pickles, grapes, and golden beet.  The beet was an incredible addition to the charcuterie board, and something we've never had before.  It paired so well with the blue cheese, and the other soft cheeses.  There were so many fun taste combinations to play with.


The next appetizer was a take on shrimp cocktail, with garlic butter prawns, and two sauces to dip them in, Saskatoon berry ketchup, and horseradish mayo.  Umm, horseradish!?  YES!

 

The prawns were perfectly cooked, and full of garlic butter flavourPrawn perfection.

The third appetizer blew our minds, and we wondered why we hadn't ever ordered it before.  It was Pineview smashed potato poutine.  Clearly someone must have known how much we love poutine.  And bacon.  And deliciousness. 


This thing was insane.  It is made with smashed, local baby potatoes, chicken, bacon, and cheese curds, and smothered in an incredible gravy.


I tried to hoard it all, but Christopher kept having bites.  He's lucky he's cute!

I loved how crispy the potatoes were.  This was such an interesting twist on the classic poutine, and it was very, very satisfying.  We'll definitely be ordering this dish in the future.

And as if that wasn't enough, Paige brought us out this gorgeous dessert board, with Kahlua pot de creme with fresh beignets, that were so warm and soft.  They took us back to New Orleans.  Also on the board was peanut butter pretzel cheesecake, which was one of the best desserts I've ever had.  I am not big on sweets, but this wasn't overly sweet, and it had such a lovely crust, and smooth center. 


All these incredible dishes ...


And there wasn't a speck of food left.

Thank you to the amazing team at Aroma - you guys are the best!

Needless to say, we went back for breakfast.


And, lucky as we are, Kelly, our favourite day-time server was there to greet us at our table.  We're always happy when we start our morning out visiting with her, and eating the well-rounded breakfast.

If you live anywhere near this place, do yourself a favour and visit it soon!  Order a wood-fired pizza, the best spaghetti and meat sauce ever, any of the food pictured above, or anything else off of the menu, and you won't be disappointed.  If you're feeling saucy, you might want to try one of their caesars to drink too ... it's like a meal in itself.

We're already excited for our next visit to Aroma, which will likely be for a late-night pizza tonight.

What are you up to this weekend?

1 comment:

Lisa from Lisa's Yarns said...

Yum! That all sounds amazing, especially the potato poutine! And I am not a huge sweets fan but I would love a couple of spoonfuls of the pot de creme as that is a dessert I love that happens to be gluten free! That is awesome that you got to try all of this for free - it's nice that this restaurant recognizes that you guys are great patrons! If I lived in the area, your review of Aroma would certainly make me go!

My weekend has been great. On Friday night I went to a German-style Christmas market with 2 girlfriends and then had a quiet night in with Phil after that. Yesterday I got coffee with my friend that just got married at this bike shop/coffee place that makes THE BEST drinks. I had a smoked sea salt mocha and it was divine. Then last night Phil and i celebrated Christmas. I made a light Greek pasta dish with shrimp and a Greek salad and he brought macarons for dessert. And then after dinner we made these Italian Almond cookies that won a recipe contest in the local paper and happened to be GF as they were made with almond flour so that was fun.