Skip to main content

Marben. I Think It Means "All Things Amazing."

I am neither a food critic nor an interior designer, but I feel the need to share a small slice of my excitement over last night's dinner experience at Marben.


Things I Loved:
  • The rustic/masculine ambiance. From a giant painting of a falcon, to bathroom sinks deeper than my arm is long, to the woven-wood artwork along the length of the ceiling and the rusted/antique implements used in light fixtures... it felt to me like a hunting lodge. A high-class hunting lodge.
  • Thick napkins. This is just important.
  • Frequent refilling of water glasses. Out of a lovely decanter/jar.
  • The kitchen view. I sometimes was distracted from our conversations by the angle I had into the food goings-on.
  • Their use of locally grown, organic foods. They name their producers on the menu & on a tall chalkboard, and clearly cultivate relationships with them. This started a great little convo on the importance of stewardship and thoughtful food purchases.
  • Tapas-style sharing. For an indecisive person like me, it's glorious to get a taste of multiple dishes. 
  • Friendly and knowledgeable staff. When we asked our waiter an ingredient question he didn't know, not only did he say, "I'll find out for you," but thirty seconds later, a chef stood at our table and not only told us what was in the coleslaw, but explained the entire recipe/process for making it. And then wrote down the specific brand of cheese that we'd all adored (Fifth Town's "Wishing Tree") on a menu to take with us.
  • All. The. Food. We shared: arugula & beet salad, rabbit macaroni & cheese, merguez sausage, a burger with fries & coleslaw, and a cheese plate. But you know what? None of those titles does them justice. Never have I had such delicious beets. My first taste of rabbit floored me. Sausage that isn't splattered with fat!?! That burger was not just a burger. And cave-aged sheep's milk cheese. DAAAAAAAAAAAAAANG.
  • The bread with oil & vinegar. HOW could I forget. Fresh bread with soybean oil and baco noir vinegar. With a hint of maple syrup. So simple. Sooooooo tasty. 
  • And of course, the company. The only thing better than amazing food is amazing food with amazing people.

The One Thing I Didn't Love:
  • My drink. Meh. Seriously, just drink water and eat their food. EAT. THEIR. FOOD. 



Sigh. Blogging this twelve hours later is making my mouth water all over again. Karen took photos, which will be up on Facebook and I will find a link to, if possible. Her food descriptions will also be far more accurate and technical than mine.

Anyone want to go for dinner? Or lunch. Or brunch. Apparently their brunch is phenomenal. I would expect no less.

Comments

  1. i have heard NOTHING but good things about this place!

    i will go with you (:

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hey, Sounds delicious and my mouth is watering! Vanman and I will come for a meal any time convenient for all 4 (:D) of us.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hey, Sounds delicious and my mouth is watering! Vanman91 and I will come for a meal any time convenient for all 4 (:D) of us.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Can I come to Toronto and have dinner with you?

    ReplyDelete
  5. afro: mmhmmmmmmmmmmm!!!!!

    mlw: sure. i'll look at schedules?

    laura: ten thousand times YES!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Simone Weil: On "Forms of the Implicit Love of God"

Simone Weil time again! One of the essays in Waiting for God  is entitled "Forms of the Implicit Love of God." Her main argument is that before a soul has "direct contact" with God, there are three types of love that are implicitly  the love of God, though they seem to have a different explicit  object. That is, in loving X, you are really loving Y. (in this case, Y = God). As for the X of the equation, she lists: Love of neighbor  Love of the beauty of the world  Love of religious practices  and a special sidebar to Friendship “Each has the virtue of a sacrament,” she writes. Each of these loves is something to be respected, honoured, and understood both symbolically and concretely. On each page of this essay, I found myself underlining profound, challenging, and thought-provoking words. There's so much to consider that I've gone back several times, mulling it over and wondering how my life would look if I truly believed even half of these thin

Esse - Czeslaw Milosz

I'm on a bit of a poetry binge this week, and Monday afternoon found me lying on the luxurious shag rug of a friend's tiny apartment, re-reading some of my favourite poets (ee cummings, William Carlos Williams, Czeslaw Milosz). It is an adventure to re-open a collection and wonder what will pop out, knowing something you've read before will strike you afresh, or you will be reminded of a particularly moving line that you had somehow forgotten. Like this piece from Milosz, which floors me. Every. damn.* time. The first time I read it, I lay in a park with a friend (this same friend who offered me her rug as my reading burrow) and demanded that I share it with her. I spoke it carefully, and then, into the post-reading silence, I slammed the book shut, and dropped it as loudly as I could onto the grass. "I'm never reading anything again," I declared, "What else is there to say?" Esse I looked at that face, dumbfounded. The lights of métro st

I Like to Keep My Issues Drawn

It's Sunday night and I am multi-tasking. Paid some bills, catching up on free musical downloads from the past month, thinking about the mix-tape I need to make and planning my last assignment for writing class. Shortly, I will abandon the laptop to write my first draft by hand. But until then, I am thinking about music. This song played for me earlier this afternoon, as I attempted to nap. I woke up somewhere between 5 and 5:30 this morning, then lay in bed until 8 o'clock flipping sides and thinking about every part of my life that exists. It wasn't stressful, but it wasn't quite restful either...This past month, I have spent a lot of time rebuffing lies and refusing to believe that the inside of my heart and mind can never change. I feel like Florence + The Machine 's song "Shake it Out" captures many of these feelings & thoughts. (addendum: is the line "I like to keep my issues strong or drawn ?" Lyrics sites have it as "stro