I had my eye on Atomica, a pizza and wine bar in Kingston, for some time. We had it on our to-do list this holiday, but bought a pizza stone and decided to do it ourselves instead.
I made a simple dough by combining:
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup water
2 tablespoons olive oil
The dough was on the dry side and next time I would probably make a yeast version. We made up for the lackluster dough with our ingredients (clockwise from top left: homemade tomato sauce, mozzarella, prosciutto, bbq sauce, pineapple, pear, caramelized onions, brie, chicken, garlic sausage).
Our first pizza had pineapple, chicken, onions, and bbq sauce (on Evan's half) and prosciutto, brie, pear, and bbq sauce (on my half). We also added some mozzarella after we took the picture.
Our second pizza had pretty much every ingredient and had tomato sauce instead of bbq.
Evan manned the stone.
And for some extra at-home gourmet flare, we had some leftover champagne from New Years Eve.
With Atomic bumped off the list, we decided to eat at Harpers, Kingston's newest burger place (which also happens to be owned by the proprietors of Atomica).
The place had good atmosphere and some interesting drinks. I tried their beer float, which was oatmeal stout and vanilla ice cream.
I'm not much of a stout gal so I found it a bit hard to finish it, but it was interesting to try.
I had the slider sampler for dinner (I'm a sucker for a sampler). The three sliders I tried were the classic (secret sauce, lettuce, tomato, pickles & red onion), the umami (brie, balsamic candied onions, soya glazed shrooms, white truffle aioli), and the greek (feta, sauteed spinach, green olive- sundried tomato pesto). The umami was my favourite. The brie and aioli made it really creamy and the onions and mushrooms had a nice punch. The greek was good, but the texture of the spinach on the burger was a bit hard to get used to.
Evan had the delicious (gouda, avocado spread, onion rings, south carolina BBQ sauce) mainly because he likes to have onion rings on his burger. He seemed to like it a lot.
Sometimes its nice to have a meal that has a little something extra to it. Special ingredients, a nice atmosphere and good company is what gourmet is all about.
