Weekly Lunch Pick
Signatures
Served in the InterContinental Yorkville’s restaurant, the Crunch Lunch promises gourmet food in less than an hour. Can it deliver? By Courtney Shea
Crunch Lunch options at Signatures.
Image credit: Matthew Fox
The place: Despite a make-over just three years ago, Signatures restaurant at Yorkville’s InterContinental Hotel sticks to the dining room classics: white tablecloths, chintz and roomy booths. Light pours in through a wall of windows that look out onto the venue’s most significant selling point: a picturesque patio that fills up during summer and TIFF season.
The crowd: On a Tuesday at 1 p.m., the room is far from bustling. We’re told that on Thursdays and Fridays, Bay Street financiers collide with Yorkville fashion-philes. With expense accounts dwindling faster than you can say “fifty-dollar hamburger,” it’s not hard to see why the power suits might opt for Signatures over Bymark.
The deal: The Crunch Lunch is a promotion running daily from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. that combines gourmet taste (courtesy of executive chef Christopher Perera) with McDonalds haste. The three-part meal—soup or salad, a main course, coffee and cookies—is intended to be served in under an hour. The modest price tag ($20, plus tax, tip and beverage) will appeal to just about anyone these days.
The dish: A house salad delivered more than the standard iceberg-and-carrot humdrummery: a combo of crisp arugula, spinach, radicchio and endive leaves was topped with cherry tomatoes and drizzled with a punchy vinaigrette. An accompanying quiche with spinach, shiitake mushrooms and pine nuts is just rich enough to be decadent, and not so buttery that you feel the need to skip dessert. Top marks for the flaky pastry. All menu items—other mains include a hearty pesto club sandwich and a seafood cobb salad—are made fresh daily. The Crunch Lunch experience concludes with coffee or tea served with a selection of satisfactory cookies.
The time: 1:28:41. Lunch was delicious and worth a repeat visit, but clearly the “crunch” part left something (i.e., 29 minutes) to be desired.
The cost: $27.44.
Signatures, 220 Bloor St. W. (at Bedford Rd.), 416-324-5885, official Web site.
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