Just a Taste: TusQ

For this Valentine's Day, we decided to try something new and I was recommended TusQ by a good friend of mine in the past. I used to eat in this building when it was Mykonos and it always had a nice intimate setup.

Location
TusQ is located on 21st Street right across from the Bus Stop.

Environment
The restaurant was really nice, you enter through a downstairs door and are able to eat upstairs or downstairs. The lounge is known as StaQatto and offers dueling pianos performances. We managed to eat upstairs where an intimate experience is created for you and your company with the help of dim lights, a nice centrepiece and a candle. Our server and Sean (the manager) were very helpful and polite as well.

Menu
Sometimes I go out and eat and want to have a lot of choices or sometimes I want there to be a few perfected items. In this case, they had a two page menu of mouth watering dishes. There are appetizers, soups, salads, pasta, and all sorts of meat dishes including seafood. TusQ also offered a three course Valentine's Day meal for the evening.

Food
To start we began with the asiago tomato brus'ketta with baked baguette slices. It was very fresh, the tomatoes and onions had a nice blend of herbs and lime over them to give a fresh taste. This was followed by a glass of Purple Cowboy Tenacious Red which was recommended by our server and we were very pleased (I will be buying a bottle of this next time I swing by the LBS).

Next was our main course and I ordered a medium rare 9 oz. New York strip loin in a root beer reduction with a dill whipped potato, ginger and red wine vegetable medley and a lobster tail. I was happy with all parts of the meal, the beef was cooked properly, the root beer sauce was savoury (I was skeptical at the start) and I loved the mushrooms but I plan on replacing the whipped potato for a pesto jasmine rice in the future.

We finished off with a chocolate spongecake with raspberry jelly and peanut butter ganache on the side. This was delicious, I usually am not a dessert guy but could have polished off this large piece of cake by myself.

Conclusion
I am very happy with my first experience at TusQ. I recommend it as a place to go on a special occasion or even a place to grab some drinks. The service was good and the food was as well. They made the Valentine's experience a good one for us and it seemed like everyone else was enjoying their time as well!

Yours Truly