Last week I went to Cafe Linnea for dinner. It was the first time that I’ve been there for dinner, outside of their dinner launch event. I’ve been there for brunch a couple times and each time which is always delicious. They are the sister restaurant to Duchess, and have just started to offer macarons, cakes, and other pastries by Duchess at dinner.

For food, we opted to get several small dishes to share. We got the Beef tartar, the beef croquette, mussels, and the foie gras. The larger dishes didn’t appeal too much to me and I just wanted to try more things.

To start off our meal, we received some amuse bouches. These were shaved porkloin tartines. Nice little bites, and a great way to start the meal.

The mussels are tossed with cream, ramps, and finished with tumeric butter. These were great and the sauce was delicious. I probably should have asked for some more of their delicious sourdough bread to use to soak up the rest of the sauce.

The Foie gras is seared and served on brioche, with hazlenut butter and blueberry jam. The contrast between the sweet and savoury was good, but the nut butter was too overwhelming and it was difficult to even taste the liver. I know that liver can be an acquired taste, but it’s being masked too much in this dish. Tasty, but could have used less nut butter, and more liver taste.

The beef tartar was probably my favourite dish of the night. It comes with diced beef, seasoned with cold-pressed canola oil and pickled mustard seeds, served with crème fraîche, horseradish, crispy capers, pickled shallots, and dill. Nice balance of flavour and overall very enjoyable.

For dessert, we went with the St. Lucia and the Chocolate & Fennel. The St. Lucia is a coconut sponge cake, with orange, rum, passionfruit curd, ricotta moouse, demerara sugar meringue, and a sesame tuile. I really liked the tartness from the passionfruit curd and it really balanced out by the sesame tuile. The chocolate & Fennel is a smooth muscovado chocolate with a praline crunch, liquorice cream, salted caramel, creme fraiche, and fennel. Very rich and smooth, but of the two desserts, I liked the St. Lucia more.

Overall, I had a good time at Cafe Linnea. I prefer their brunch over their dinner, but everything was quite good, and the desserts are a nice touch. It’s nice to be able to just get 1-2 macarons for dessert and not have to commit to an entire piece of cake!