DESILICIOUS!

Fancy food, fancy price tag

Image credit: TAPAS EASWAR. Home page image credit: Peller Estates Winery & Restaurant’s website.

By TAPAS EASWAR

When you first visit Peller Estates Winery & Restaurant, you’re going to see a beautifully laid out winery and estate.

And that’s really where anything about it that stands out ends. The estate restaurant, which anyone can make a reservation for, feels incredibly upscale, as in shorts and flipflops would not be allowed, but rather, requiring more formal evening wear.

I’m not a person who actively drinks wine, so I can’t say if the wine was good or not, but it was tasty. For a winery, the prices were on par with anywhere else you’d visit for a similar dining experience, which is to say, it’s expensive. The portions were small, served in ridiculous plates – small area for the actual food surrounded by a hilariously oversized bezel, which again, is to be expected. However, despite the small portion sizes, we weren’t left feeling hungry, but that could be due to the bread and ice-wine butter that we consumed just before.

They offered us a palate cleanser, which turned out to be an iced wine strawberry frozen desert of some sort, but didn’t tell us how to have it. Turns out, you need a spoon!

We ordered the Pacific Halibut and the Yorkshire Valley Farms Chicken Paprikas. The food was okay at best, definitely not worth the price we paid. It had flavour, but for the most part, it was kind of bland – something that you could easily have elsewhere for a more reasonable price.

They did give us complimentary wine and desert, which seriously cut down on our bill at the end of the night, and both were portioned perfectly.

All in all, going to a winery and eating in their restaurant is definitely an experience worth having, but speaking for myself, an experience worth having only once.

• Peller Estates Winery & Restaurant is located at 290 John St E, Niagara-on-the-Lake, and their telephone number is 1-888-673-5537.