Top of the Fair is located in London (the Ontario one of course!) approx. 200km WSW of Toronto at the harness racing track at 900 King St. There are floor-to-ceiling windows to watch the racetrack from, a racing feed TV at every table, and a betting counter right in the restaurant. In-season it offers a Friday evening dinner buffet when the harness races are being run. Note that after making a reservation, a Google Calendar entry will automatically be added with a one-hour duration, but this limitation can be disregarded as it’s just a default OpenTable duration; table is from arrival until close. Being only three hours in duration, seasonally on a single weekday night, and so far from Toronto, it was a challenge to get there, but we're always up for one... if the results are worth it. AYCD pop is $3 which is reasonable and is Coke products.
Mishy loved the roast beef which is the star of the show and indicated that it was perfectly cooked, juicy and with just the right amount of fat. I do agree was better than average for buffet roast beef, very moist and tender and well-cooked, worth being the star of the show. Watch out as the provided horseradish is not creamed, so is very hot. She also loved the jus although I found it dilute and would have been better-than-average if it wasn’t.
Watermelon, feta and arugula salad was a nice flavour combination and enjoyably different. Harvest orzo salad was alright but understated. Curried chickpea and broccoli salad had some broccoli odour but thankfully tasted better than it smelled and was enjoyable. As I expected, the taco salad with its Mexican flavours was my favourite and I should have had seconds.
Potato gnocchi with forest mushroom ragu was pretty good, although not exemplary, but still enjoyable. Honey mustard roast chicken was a good moist, well-cooked standard roast chicken, as the honey mustard sauce was quite muted, but at least it was still good as roast chicken. Creamy red skin garlic mashed potatoes were very tasty with the savoury garlic, chives, and it seemed a butter flavour, but weren't really any different than better-than-average plain mashed potatoes elsewhere.
Mishy said that the Mediterranean vegetables had a flavour like Band-Aids (she’s used this before), and I think that was due to the marjoram(?) in the seasoning, but I didn’t mind it and thought it was original. Beer-battered fish and chips at least had malt vinegar for the chips, and they appeared to be made on premises rather than commercial. The fish itself and batter was quite good, on a level with a specialized fish-and-chip shop. The tartar sauce is definitely made-on-premises as is better than the stuff out of a bottle, more savoury and with dill notes.
The charcuterie board was, as best as I can describe it, lame, a mess of irregular cheese pieces that appeared to be leftover ends, and one or two prosciutto pieces on the whole platter buried under them. At least they tasted better than they looked, and the smoked gouda was quite “goud”. Cheddar was alright too... there were no other cheeses. The one piece of prosciutto I managed to score was fresh enough. Potato bacon soup was alright, although the seasoning was a little odd, and it really didn't have all the flavour and/or savour it should have given the bacon. Mishy didn’t like it.
For dessert, Mishy said that the caramel cheesecake was divine; I also loved it. Even 200 km from Toronto they still had the ubiquitous King’s Pastry cakes, specifically the strawberry ones. Cherry mascarpone cake was delicious although it seemed more lemony than cherry. Piña colada trifle was an alright trifle except for the missing piña colada, which both of us found undetectable. All of the desserts were pastries on one table; there was no ice cream, pudding, etc. There wasn’t anything bad, undercooked, etc. at Top of the Fair but it seems to err on the side of bland, save the roast beef which was excellent. This would have been a sufficient $40-45 dinner given the prime timeframe, and comparing the offerings to those elsewhere, but unfortunately it was $55.99, which I average out as being $12.50 too expensive. Unfortunately, the final rating suffers significantly for this.
Rating: 7.5-8 / 10 - 2.5 value adjustment = 5-5.5 / 10