Stage is at 1307 Gladstone, close to Fernwood Road. Parking sucks in the area, park in Gladstone close to the Fernwood Community Centre about 1/2 a block away.
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Fernwood might finally be coming of age and be able to support decent local restaurants. I lived in the area in the late 1980s and nothing managed to survive. The location at Gladstone and Fernwood is a beautiful small streetscape of heritage buildings but for a host of reasons it has never manage to be what it could be.
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Stage is operated by the same people that opened Paprika in Estavan Village, George and Linda Szasz. This is a tasting wine bar, a concept I like and have really not seen in this city.
It was fixed menu with some amazing food and few things that just missed. I started with some pork belly that had been deep fried into little fries with a spicy mayo - very nice. Then came an agnolotti with nice reduction on it - better pasta than I could make, but the sauce could have used some acid to take it from good to brilliant.
My "main" was duck breast with a spinach in phyllo thing and a duck sausage. The breast melted in my mouth, the sausage was drier than I would have like and screamed out for some sort of mustard.
The almond cake at the end was wonderful, I have no idea how they managed to get it out of the pan given how it fell apart on my fork and in my mouth.
I ordered the win pairing to go with the meal and I was impressed at how good the selections were. At Camille's it was our only complaint that the wine pairings using only BC wines was not as good as it could be. Stage made inspired choices with the wines.
We will be going back on a regular basis.
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