TASTE SASKATOON
Restaurant patio overlooking The Willows golf greens a peaceful choice for lunch.
I don’t golf, but I like golf courses, especially when they have a sunny restaurant patio overlooking the peaceful, undulating greens.
For that reason, I recently took my sister (who doesn’t golf either) to dine al fresco at Il Salici, the restaurant at The Willows Golf and Country Club. It was a marked contrast to the traffic, parking lots and backsides of buildings that greet many patio diners in the city.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not knocking the urban patio, but this was more peaceful, by a country mile.
Il Salici is Italian for “the willows.” The lunch menu offers a mix of Italian and non-Italian dishes, so don’t be surprised to find pollo alla griglia next to chicken quesadilla, or minestrone di fagioli on the same page as The Willows cheeseburger.
Oddly, there’s not a single Italian item on the appetizer menu so we bypassed the chicken tenders and dry ribs and settled on the spinach and artichoke dip. At least I could imagine ordering spinaci e carciofi in Italy.
My sister Maureen makes an awesome spinach and artichoke dip so perhaps it is unfair to compare the two, but Il Salici did not live up to that taste expectation. It was good, but really needed more of the spinach and carciofi and less of the cream cheese.
The serving portion was large; we would have been satisfied with half as much as the other half went to waste. However, we were grateful — or should I say grati — that the kitchen granted our request to substitute flat bread for the tortilla chips.
On to our salads. Magnifico!
Maureen ordered insalata di giardino, which translates to garden salad, but this was not the humble lettuce-and-wedge-of-tomato that often passes for a garden salad in other establishments.
Two bunches of purple lettuce were wrapped in al dente ribbons of carrot, scattered with pine nuts, goat cheese and dried cranberries, and topped with a long spiral julienne of carrot looking just like a bow.
She gave her impression between bites: sweet, tangy, crunchy, delectable. Mmmm. So good.
I had the caprese salad, deliciously pretty with alternating slices of red tomato, yellow tomato and mozzarella cheese with a sprinkling of fresh basil and an earthy balsamic reduction. It tasted as lovely as it looked. The only thing that could have improved the salad is lusciously ripe tomatoes and, perhaps, a sprinkle of sea salt.
Next, the lasagna alla Bolognese, classic lasagna with meat sauce.
According to our server, it was baked while we ate our salads and came to the table piping hot. The mozzarella cheese was wonderfully browned, as were the tips of the Bolognese sauce, which coddled the lasagna like a glove.
There was no skimping on meat or tomatoes and the seasoning of Italian herbs was perfect, as were the thin layers of pasta, spinach and ricotta cheese. I’m quite sure it was the most delicious lasagna I’ve had in a restaurant in Saskatoon.
Or perhaps it was the combination of fresh air, warm sunshine, friendly service and the leisurely pace of our lunch overlooking the greens. It was altogether lovely.
Someday soon, I’d like to return to Il Salici for dinner. That menu includes molto Italian classics listed in the typical fashion of antipasti, insalata, primo, secondo and dolci.
Dinner prices are in keeping with fine dining. For lunch, appetizers and salads are $10—$15; sandwiches and burgers $9—$14.50; pasta and pizza $11.50—$24.
Il Salici is in The Willows Golf and Country Club at 382 Cartwright Street (go south of the city on Clarence Ave., turning west just after the railway overpass).
It’s open Monday to Saturday 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. for lunch and 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. for dinner. Sunday hours are 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. to 10 p.m.