Jamie's Italian

Just because you have a baby doesn't mean that you can't celebrate New Year's Eve! To be fair, I actually rang in the new year at home, watching the ball drop on TV (yes I saw Mariah's "performance") and sipping champagne quietly while my son was asleep in his crib. BUT I still wanted to have a good dinner to say goodbye to 2016, and we knew Jamie's Italian would be both delicious and baby friendly so we went back to one of our favourite spots.

Restaurant: Jamie's Italian
Location: Yorkdale
Meal: dinner
Day: Saturday
Son's Age: 9 months

Another perk about Jamie's Italian is that it is attached to Yorkdale, which has covered parking, which means I don't have to worry about running through an outdoor parking lot in the snow with my baby. Jamie's also had a special New Year's Eve prix fixe menu for the evening.

Accessibility: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Obviously we have been here multiple times so you can refer to my other blog posts for details about accessibility, but this is pretty much as good as it gets. They also allowed us to park our stroller next to our table, even though they had brought a high chair for my son.

I love the little NYE message they had on the chalk board, and as you can see, my son was pretty excited too. 

Service: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

The servers are always prepared to work with families that have babies. They were extremely helpful and attentive, and they brought a bowl of hot water for me to heat my son's lunch up as well. 

The server was also smart enough to place the bowl of hot water on the exact opposite side of the table from where the baby was sitting. 

Food: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

The prix fixe menu actually came with a glass of prosecco, which is exactly what I wanted to kick off  our New Year's Eve dinner. 

For my appetizer, I had the egg raviolo with mushrooms and Parmesan. 

This was fantastic! When you cut into the raviolo, the egg yolk just oozes out like a delicious sauce. The pasta tasted fresh, as was to be expected given that they make the pasta in house. The mushrooms and cheese were just the perfect complement. Next I ordered the branzino.  

It doesn't look special in the photo but the fish was perfectly cooked and the flavours were not overwhelming. Finally, the dessert was served family style, and my husband and I ordered the panettone. 

This tasted like a cross between a fruit cake and a bread pudding, and I mean that in a good way. It was such a pleasant way to end a beautiful meal, although I do acknowledge that I would have preferred if we could order our own separate desserts.

Overall: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

There's a reason why I keep coming back here, and that's because, not only is the restaurant food amazing, but I always feel at ease bringing my baby here, so it's not like we are disturbing a romantic meal for anyone.