Azure Restaurant & Bar is located at 225 Front St. W. at Simcoe St. in Toronto’s downtown core, and is part of the Intercontinental Hotel. Azure has a cavernously large interior of plenty of glass. This is a higher-end establishment with white napkins wrapping the silverware, and possibly due to the correspondingly higher price it was certainly wasn't as full as the last place we went to, which was packed... occupancy was about 10 to 15%. Coffee is included; even though it is ordered from the wait staff and is put on the table as a carafe, it does not appear on the bill.
Coffee was good, a dark roast with some bitterness possibly indicating that it wasn't 100% Arabica, but that could just be me and it was still enjoyable. Chicken-apple sausages were the first I've had of these and were quite tasty, although the flavour was muted enough that they were pretty much just sausages. Bacon was tasty but was a bit dried out and chewy... I got some more from a fresh batch and it was still rather chewy, but a little less dry. Happily, the maple pork farmer sausage was fantastic and delicious and I haven't had any exactly like this before. Home fries were a little dried out but I expected that they were the last of the bunch; they were deliciously seasoned and among the best I've ever had.
I'm not big on tomatoes by themselves, but the Roma herb-infused potato was at least edible, whereas a plain raw tomato would not be. Greek yogurt parfait was fantastic, with a layer of berry at the bottom, then yogurt and granola on top... almost worth the price of admission right there. Muesli was good, although similar to the parfait but understated and milder. Scrambled eggs were excellent with a nice buttery flavour, which didn't need anything added. Baked beans were good but they were clearly a commercial variety out of a can.
From the charcuterie, smoked salmon aka lox was very flavourful without it being overly fishy and was delicious, another almost-worth-the-price-of-admission item which is very expensive so justifies the extra. Blue cheese (my favourite) and havarti were excellent, cheddar and marble fresh but nondescript. Sliced chicken breast and ham were fresh and very good. Prosciutto was a bit salty but otherwise good, pepperoni was good but understated.
Oatmeal had plenty of toppings such as brown sugar, cinnamon, almond slices, raisins and cranberries. I overdid it on the cinnamon and it was excellent. There are two Chinese breakfast options: youtiao and congee. The latter has many toppings including chili oil, sesame oil, soy sauce, ginger, cilantro and white pepper. I ended up putting fresh sliced ginger, white pepper and chopped cilantro leaves on. It wasn't a bad combination although I overdid it on the white pepper as usual... too used to making my own KFC-style breading! There wasn't much cheese flavour in the youtiao but I'm not sure how much there is actually supposed to be as not familiar with it... it wasn't bad.
I usually stay away from the pastries as I fill up too quickly on them, but I did have a blueberry and lemon scone which has an accompaniment of Nutella and also a berry filled pastry both of which were very good and fresh. Weekend breakfast was $38. This is pricey, but not excessively especially considering the lox and other offerings in the charcuterie, there wasn’t anything bad and several items were excellent.
Rating: 7.5 – 8 / 10
