Bijou Restaurant

It's birthday season at our house. Those who know us best know it's all about the food.

We had a wonderful meal at our friends' house on Saturday night, watching the sun set over the creek while we ate wonderful food, drank good wine and talked and laughed far into the night.

As if that wasn't enough to celebrate another year, our good friend Fiona took us to our favourite restaurant in Stratford - Bijou - last night.

It's an amazing place, with a daily blackboard menu. The choices are almost too good to decide. But no worries, we've never had a bad meal there.

The staff is young and knowledgeable. Once we'd enjoyed cocktails and placed our orders, we left it to our server to do the wine pairing. His choices were exactly right for the wide variety of foods we were enjoying - gazpacho, a charcuterie plate, and slow-roasted trout for appetizers. And then skatewing, beef and lamb for the main course. A variety of desserts and a cheese plate rounded it all out nicely.

We left sated and vowing to make it a yearly birthday tradition. And to find many more excuses to go back in the intervening months.

We realized as we walked in that we had left the camera at home. But as Fiona said, sometimes you should just eat the food and not spend all evening taking pictures of it.

Next time we go, we'll be "on assignment" and bring back lots of lovely photos for you to see.

In the meantime, head on over to the website. Read up on their philosophy, drool over the sample menus. And vow that next time you're in the area, you'll add dinner at Bijou to your list of "Must Do's"!