Aura by Cashew & Clive - Vaughan

This is not a comment on the gallery which I will give 5. This a Tomato salad in the restaurant which was billed as the Ontario Tomato Salad and I looked forward to a full tomato, cheese, herb lunch. What I got was 25cents worth of tomato plus three small slices of cheese, 5 cents worth of lettuce and 2 cents worth of bottled balsamic dressing. And the service was less than friendly. Geez, don't mind paying $15 for a lunch salad but would like to see at least $3 worth of ingredients. Left hungry.

This restaurant was really busy in the middle of the day on a weekday. People were lined up waiting for a table. We were not disappointed: the food was very good although the menu wasn't large. Service was a little slow but friendly.

We were looking forward to our lunch at the McMichael Collection. The Boeuf Bourgignon was in a tasty sauce, but most of the few pieces of beef were inedible due to a large amount of grizzle. The portion size was more of an appetizer, not what you would expect from the price of the entree. We ordered the Peach Crumble for dessert and were NOT TOLD it was "deconstructed". We were anticipating/expecting a warm peach dessert with a crumble topping. Instead, we received a platter of ingredients with slices of peaches that were not equally cooked, so it was difficult to cut some of them. The shortbread medallion-sized cookies were tasty, but did not make up for the disappointment in the rest of the dessert. Overall, a major disappointment. The female server seemed disinterested in our reaction to the food we were served.

We visited for lunch. Our main course was very nice - I had the quiche of the day, which had a side salad that was excellent. I ordered the tunnel fudge cake for dessert. By that time the restaurant was quite busy. After a while the waiter told us it would be another 10-15 minutes as they were backed up. Quite a while later I asked if it was coming, and he said it was being finished off. Well, it had been finished off all right - it was as dry as could be! I would have been better off saying don't bother when he said earlier that it would be a while. So great mains, not so great on the dessert.

After an inspirational morning in the McMichael galleries, we were delighted there was table space for 15 of us to eat in their (Aura) cafe at lunch time. The quality of both food and coffee was superb and the view across the nearby treetops from our tables was calming. We all left feeling sated both physically, intellectually and spiritually.