Pear Diver launches Cooper's Room & Scholarship

Rudy Guo and Michael Blackie

 I was back at Pearl Diver Restaurant once again for a special dinner to launch Cooper's Room a room dedicated to the late Brian Cooper who was the former Dean of Hospitality and Tourism at George Brown College.  George Brown graduate and Pearl Diver partner Rudy Guo talked about the importance of what he learned about hospitality from Brian and his wife Midge that he brings into his business practices. The Coopers always hosted culinary students in their home so Guo wants to continue this hospitality by hosting special dinners at Pearl Diver that will bring established guest chefs and pair them with hospitality students.  These dinners will fund a new "Spirit of Hospitality Scholarship" that will continue these efforts to build the culinary and hospitality community.

Cooper's Room

 Chef Michael Blackie from NeXT Restaurant in Ottawa was the special guest chef for the first of the dinner series events that will help match up future chefs with established visiting chefs.  He was born in Leicestershire, England and raised in Montreal and has cooked around the world in some of the best restaurants including the Windsor Arms (Toronto) Oberoi (Bali) and the Mandarin Oriental (Hong Kong) among others. He is known for his innovative cuisine and has one of the top restaurants in Ottawa.

For the first of these special dinners we sampled an array of things from Pearl Diver's menu and the special creations by Chef Blackie.   From Left to Right.  Shrimp, Oyster, Mussel platter, The Dirty Frenchman, Tempura Cheese Curds, Rare Tuna Sashimi Pizza, and 36 hour sous vide Pork Belly and Digby Scallops.  Not pictured was Pork Ribs and Duck Confit Grilled Cheese. 

My favourites were the Pork Belly and the Tuna and the marinated mussels were great too.

 Pearl Diver has a fantastic pastry chef named Sooji and she rolled out a few of her signature desserts including the much loved Hibiscus cake and the Chocolate ganache Tarte and I really loved the stewed peaches too.

Pearl Diver is always trying to do special things for their customers and there will be a series of upcoming dinners so if you are interested in attending give them a call to see when they will be
416-366-7827 or make a reservation for their 100 oyster Wednesday nights or their Tuesday Oyster specials and leave room for desert because it's fantastic.

Pearl Diver
100 Adelaide St. E.
Toronto, ON
416-366-7827
www.pearldiver.ca
Info@pearldiver.ca
Social @pearldiverTO

Pearl Diver introduces WeChat Wednesdays

Pearl Diver TO

There's another Social APP that originated in China that is rapidly becoming the new thing and it's being introduced to the Toronto market.  I attended a fabulous media dinner at Pearl Diver seafood restaurant for WeChat Wednesday.  I have been to Pearl Diver before but we were introduced to some new special menu items that will be on the menu this spring.  The Pearl Diver restaurants originated in Asia and is fairly new to Canada, there will soon be 7 restaurants in total.

Let me explain We Chat first.  WeChat is a new app that is also a loyalty program. It's a hybrid type app like whatsapp, twitter, instagram and facebook combined.  It was developed in China and has over 600 million users.  A lot of the users in China use it to communicate for free to family members in Canada so this is why they are looking to expand to North America to grow the number of users and therefore grow the benefits of using the app.   Unfortunately because my cell phone is so jam packed with images I didn't have the storage space to load the app but all of my fellow diners did and they were able to connect with each other in the room with the location feature.  I wish I could tell you what the experience using it is like but I won't be able to until I get a new phone that can keep up with me.  So you will have to check it out for yourself but my foodie friends seemed to like the features they were playing with.

PEARL DIVER – WECHAT REWARD PROGRAM

• 1 point for every $1 spend at PD (not including tax & tip)
• Points are transferable – $20 per transfer
• REWARD POINTS (valid until March 31st of every year)

There are multi levels and you can even earn a trip to Shanghai or Beijing. You can make free calls and have group chats and also post moments which are like instagram/facebook posts is how it was explained to me.

Pearl Diver will be introducing a series of WeChat Wednesdays where you can get 10% off your bill if you use the WeChat app.  They will also teach you about oysters with a special of 3 oysters, a glass of beer or wine or a highlighted cocktail for $8.88. They will also have an Oyster special for $28.88 which has 4 different kinds of oysters which change every week.

The dinner we had on WeChat Wednesday was delicious.
The Menu:

• A selection of oysters from the East Coast and the West coast.

• Seared Diver Scallops with watercress, house smoked pork belly, rhubarb and brown butter vinaigrette

• Atlantic Lobster tiger salad, PD ponzu sauce

• Menonite Pork Chop with summer potato bacon hash, braised red cabbage with blackcurrant glaze

• Steelhead Trout with avocado, edamame, broccollini & tomatillo

The flavours are fresh and bold and you can get a really great selection of seafood dishes from this Steelhead trout to a bowl of mussels to their huge selection of freshly shucked oysters.  I think I like the tiny little oysters from the East Coast the best.

Dessert:

• Dark Chocolate Delice with cherry compote, passion fruit coulis, cocoa nib & peanut brittle
• Hibiscus Poached Peach & Hazelnut cake with mascarpone, blueberry compote and toasted pine nuts.

This Dark Chocolate dessert was my favourite thing.  I could have eaten 2 platefulls it was so good.
The pastry chef has been working on trying to use less butter and sugar in desserts while retaining full flavour from natural ingredients.


For more information about Pearl Diver

Pearl Diver 100 Adelaide St E, Toronto, ON M5C 1K6

Reservations 416-366-7827

FB: https://www.facebook.com/pearldiverto/
WeChat: PDToronto
Twitter:  @PearlDiverTO
Instagram: @pearlDiverTo
Website: http://pearldiver.to/pearldiver/

Hours of Operation

Mon to Wed - Noon to 12am
Thurs & Fri - Noon to 1am
Sat - 4pm to 1am
Sun - 11am to 12am

Pearl Diver has delightful seafood

Restaurant:      Pearl Diver
Location:        100 Adelaide St. East, TorontoT
What:              Lunch
When visited: October 30, 2015
Social             @pearldiverTO

I was invited to check out the quaint little restaurant Pearl Diver for lunch and I brought a friend with me who loves seafood.  Unbelievably I have lots of friends who don't like fish or seafood and especially not things that are raw.  I know I kind of get it.  It sounds gross but I suppose because my mom had a love of seafood from her memories of getting shrimp that was just out of the sea and eaten fresh on the seaside in Europe it was always something she loved and she would make shrimp stuffed tomatoes when she wanted to make something fancy for guests.  It was always kind of more of a special occasion food in my house.  The odd time my dad would get mussels from St. Lawrence market or they would send me to pick up some fish and chips for dinner.  Maybe once or twice a year we might have king crab claws.   To me fresh seafood isn't an everyday thing and I enjoy it when I have it and more so when it's made well.

On an an extremely sunny and unusually warm Friday afternoon in October we headed over to Pearl Diver for lunch.  The place is a bit out of the way tucked across the street from St. James park.  It's maybe a bit out of the usual restaurant locations but you can't miss the brightly painted yellow exterior with the black canopy.

The inside as you can see looks very warm and cozy with dark wood bar and light wood tables and a large menu board with all of their types of oysters.

I think this restaurant is more of an evening bar restaurant type of place so it wasn't busy when I visited but I was there at 1pm and a lot of people go for business lunches between 12-1pm.

The lunch menu varies slightly from the dinner menu but of course there are mussels and oysters and calamari that are on both menus.  Of course we couldn't pass up a plate of Oysters.  A dozen for $15.  Served on ice with ginger and lemon wedges and side sauces of hot sauce and wine vinegar.

My friend said she could eat about 6 of the oyster towers in one sitting.  I like my oysters with a bit of hot sauce, some lemon and the red wine vinegar for a nice spicy briney flavour.  They oysters we had were from New Brunswick but I didn't catch the name of them. I am not familiar with all of the kinds of oysters so I don't want to guess even.  But I really enjoyed them.

Then we had the Deep fried panko crusted calamari served with a sweet chili sauce.   They had black sesame seeds in the coating and were nicely seasoned.

We wanted to order the Shrimp Po Boy sandwich but weren't sure how big it was going to be even though we planned on sharing it.  It is meant for one person but we shared it to try it.  It is 2 or 3 large shrimps served on a brioche bun with lettuce, onion and a remoulade sauce and pickles.  My friend got the side with the pickles and she wasn't a fan but I enjoyed my half a lot.  It can with a huge amount of fries but they got cold pretty quickly so I didn't finish them all.  We really didn't need fries with all of the seafood we ordered.

The dish that had the best flavour was the Mussels in a lemongrass coconut broth.  It was served with the lightest grilled focaccia bread but I think the bread was just good on it's own because the smokey char kind of covered up the taste of the broth.  Order this but don't dunk the bread, just eat it and enjoy it.  We ordered another order of the bread it was so good.

After we had all the great seafood the waitress said they had some sticky toffee pudding for dessert.  Well that is one of my friends favourite desserts and I like it to so a no brainer we said yes and didn't even need to look at a dessert menu.

This sticky toffee pudding was probably the lightest one I have ever had.  With a bourbon maple sauce on top it just melted in my mouth.  It was a great sweet finish to the seafood lunch.

We really enjoyed a nice relaxing lunch in this cosy spot and I hope we get a chance to go back and try some of their dinner menu sometime again soon.

What we ate:

CRISPY CALAMARI - sesame and panko crust, sweet chilli, ginger and lime dip - 8

MUSSELS AND FOCACCIA – coconut cream, ginger, chili, garlic, lemongrass & cilantro - 13

SHRIMP PO-BOY - Battered and spiced Argentine shrimp, tartar sauce, pickle, red onion & lettuce - served with side salad or fries - 13

Dozen Oysters for $15

STICKY TOFFEE PUDDING, dessert special 

*Disclaimer:  The meal was complimentary but all of the opinions and the photos are my own.