Yamato is a popular Japanese restaurant in Yorkville for Teppanyaki, where a chef cooks the food on a griddle in front of the customers with as much flair as he can muster, and sometimes a little song and dance. The highlight of the performance is the onion volcano, which you can see in the video below.
Yamato is a relatively inexpensive lunch option for the entertainment value you get, all while enjoying a steak or seafood with rice and vegetables. I highly recommend the fried rice option. There are other typical Japanese items on the menu as well, but that's not why people go to Yamato, so why bother?
There are some places one goes to just to kick back and enjoy a simple meal. Diners as a whole fit that bill most of the time as who can argue with the calming effects of eggs, greasy potatoes and a good stiff coffee?
I'm sure everyone has their opinion on the best or trendiest greasy spoon in Toronto, and honestly... I'm pretty reluctant to write about Flo's. Not that the food is bad, it's pretty good. I don't want to tell everyone where it is, because it's my diner!... and I better not see you there. I've been going there since I came to Canada in high school, one score and some odd years ago.
It used to be in this really cool Art Deco building on 10 Bellair across from Harry Rosen, a stone's throw away from a derelict ruin of a theatre marquis / parking lot which is now the entrance to Pottery Barn.
Oh I so loved that place, what comfort and nostalgia.
"Built mid 1980s, Retro brushed steel Art Deco dining car restaurant....Originally called 4D's Diner when first opened, later location of Flo's, demolished in 1998 for condominium 10 Bellair (photo off the internet)" - Greg Stacey on Flickr
Thanks to Mona Bhalla for the 4 photos below. I swear I'll get an iPhone one of these days.
They have a pretty decent menu of diner classics including various melts and sandwiches, but we really end up there for the all day breakfast, usually their excellent eggs benny or some variation thereof.
I usually get steak & eggs sunny side up with some egg bread and home fries.
Diners are so deeply embedded in the fabric of North American culture. Here's a clip from the upcoming Tom's Restaurant movie a.k.a. the "Restaurant" in Seinfeld.
Which also happens to be the diner in this 90s hit... yeah I'm really dating myself!
Located at the Park Hyatt Hotel in Yorkville,
Morton's is a little taste of the windy city in Toronto. Chicago is well known as a steak loving city, and it's great that Toronto has one of the few international outposts of the renowned Morton's of Chicago steakhouse chain.
Jumbo Shrimp Alexander
The jumbo lump crab cake is some of the best crab cake around, with large chunks of tasty crab meat and not much filler.
Jumbo Lump Crab Cake
Cold Water Lobster Tail
Morton's uses USDA Prime beef, aged from 23 - 28 days, for some juicy, flavour filled and perfectly cooked steaks.
Chicago Style Prime Bone-In Ribeye
Morton's has an excellent selection of desserts. Some of their signature desserts like their decadent Hot Chocolate Cake and their Upside-Down Apple Pie require some time to prepare so it's best to order those with your mains.
If you're in the mood for a classic, white linen, fine dining experience with succulent steaks, fresh seafood, and good wine, then Morton's should definitely be on your list.
If you haven't yet dropped by the Magnum Pleasure Store at Yonge and Bloor, then you probably should before it closes its doors on August 30th. The store at 11 Bloor Street West is Magnum's first North American pop-up custom ice cream parlour. It was supposed to close last month, but due to overwhelming consumer demand, has stayed open a little longer. Line-ups on the street take almost an hour prompting many passers-by to scratch their heads wondering why people would queue-up for a $6 ice cream bar. Upon ordering your Magnum, you get a choice of Vanilla or Chocolate ice cream to be dipped in a white, classic, or dark chocolate shell. Next comes a selection of 21 toppings, from your luxurious maple fudge to more exotic rose petals, to wacky popping candy, and even bacon! To finish things off, you get a choice or white, classic, or dark chocolate drizzle. Feeling adventurous, I asked for a chocolate ice cream bar, dipped in white chocolate, topped with popping candy (Pop Rocks), Nerds, rose petals, and honeycomb. Though they appear to have run out of honeycombs, so it was just drizzled with honey. I must say Pop Rocks on an ice cream bar is quite and interesting sensation! As you can see from above, it looks like the 60's threw up on my ice cream. It was quite tasty, though a little heavy on the Nerds, which kind'a overwhelmed the other flavours. All in all the Magnum Pleasure Store is a fun and novel experience to try at least once. But personally, all this bespoke treatment can't hold a candle to Magnum's grocery bought Double Caramel.
The new Four Seasons Toronto just opened, the 90th in the chain's 51 year history. It features an upscale restaurant by Michelin-starred chef Daniel Boulud. The new hotel is quite a necessary reboot of the old location just down the street, but as with all things shiny and new, sometimes we reflect upon what came before it. Often in nostalgic haze, we long for the comfort and coziness of things that aren't up to more exacting current standards, but at the same time don't feel as precise nor as rushed. Some people still like vinyl...
AVENUE
As I was dining at Avenue in the Four Seasons hotel, I felt a pining for a past that had not yet occurred. During the course of my meal, I was informed that both of the two remaining restaurants in the hotel, Avenue and Studio Café, would serve their final meals that Sunday, the 25th of March. The other restaurant, Truffles, one of the more popular dining establishments of its time and scene of many a kiboshed Summer and Winterlicious reservation, had closed a long time ago.
To be seated in a dated hotel restaurant and be handed a newspaper by the attentive but unhurried staff while I take time to look out the window as I contemplate what dishes to explore is a rare treat in a bustling metropolis like Toronto. I'd imagine that as I tasted each item in my private little space that I'd be transported into the past, both my own and extrapolated other selves, à la Proust eating his madeleine. Except that Proust was probably sickly, in cramped quarters, and not very much enjoying his day off.
Elderflower Blossom
I'm not quite certain how I ended up ordering the Elderflower Blossom, a decidedly unmanly drink. Was it all the times I went to Ikea for Swedish meatballs, where I found Elderflower drinks in various forms, leading my subconscious to associate Northern European culinary traditions with 80s 4-star hotel dining? As a kid I had imagined the cool grown-ups smoking menthol cigarettes, flying Pan-Am to their yachting getaways, drinking classic Martinis of Tanqueray with a splash of vermouth and a couple of olives, and of course eating fondue, head cheese, and gravlax. Was it that not too long ago I was served an Elderflower cocktail in Cirque du Soleil's VIP tent, and the saliency of that memory guided my finger down the drink menu?
More likely it was my penchant for complicated highly engineered things that led me to that decision. I mean, on a scale of sublime complexity it topped the list in front of me, with its sake, Grey Goose, Elderflower, and white cranberry. A close runner-up was the Lychee Martini, with Grey Goose, lychee juice, and pitted lychees. But since I grew up on lychees, the novelty of this drink ran thin with me.
There were other Martinis, or colloquially Martinis, that I could never really mention without doing a mental pause. I'm somewhat of a purist in that I like my Martini (there is only one kind) in the aforementioned classic variant, using only gin, not vodka, and most importantly stirred, not shaken, contra to how Bond would have us believe it more sophisticated.
Navy bean and chorizo soup
The soup of the day was navy bean and chorizo. Light and healthy, it brought back memories of Christmases past, and of a far more decadent and likely heart-stoppping dish. Chorizo de Bilbao was something I would only see around the holidays when my grandmother would make Callos, a traditional Filipino/Spanish dish of tripe and bovine knuckles with chorizo and garbanzos stewed in a rich tomato base, eaten with garlic-buttered toasted baguettes and slices of aged Edam cheese.
Sweet chili tuna tartare - avocado, ponzu dressing
After my soup I had a small serving of the tuna tartare. Okay maybe I should retract that earlier lychee statement, not all things oriental fall flat with me. I could never get tired of raw tuna. I suppose a proper hotel would not only serve haute continental cuisine but reach out into fusion i.e. East-meets-West. But I guess even if they did add ponzu to it, tartare is hardly a Japanese word. The word "tartare" is whimsically thought to have been inspired by the Tartar or Tatar people of Central Asia as they apparently ate raw chopped meat (no tuna in the steppes). So I guess it is fusion since it looks like beef tartare, only with ponzu... and no raw egg, anyway.
Steak and salad - romaine hearts, fried onions, Ontario blue cheese dressing
The steak was definitely retro: pale looking greens, thin fried onions, and the practice of cutting into a piece of meat that has not adequately rested, whilst serving it on a white dish dusted with paprika, which was promptly washed away by a stream of juices, depriving the huge medium-rare steak of any prospect of succulence.
Vanilla Corn Pudding - maple brown butter caramel, goat cheese ice cream
Dessert was a rich and gamey affair rather than they typical parade of sweetness. The vanilla corn pudding felt like a Southern and tropical hybrid, with the mellow hint of Madagascar vanilla infusing its velvety base. The accompanying goat cheese ice cream was a little tart, a little refreshing, and lots of tasty punch.
Studio Café
Studio Café was a little less less formal than Avenue, and offered prix fixe menus for lunch and dinner. Lunch was priced at $19.61in honour of the Four Season's founding year. We had the 3-course "Yorkville Prix Fixe" $49 dinner menu which included 2 glasses of wine each.
The food was good, and I shall list what we had below. But rather than dwell on the gustatory characteristics of the cuisine in this other Four Seasons restaurant (I'm pretty sure I've talked enough about food above) I shall expound on why for me at least this place will be sorely missed.
I came of age in the late 80s with all the Keith Haring art, Fido Dido, Duran Duran, Max Headroom et. al. Stepping into Studio Café was like a blast from the past, with all the colourful glasswork, the spartan yet modern furnishing, and the feeling of being in the space where the establishment once lunched.
That decade was also the zenith of plating dishes as if they were wall art, with geometric shapes and streaks of colour. The decadence of the those years past immortalized by the infamous characters of Gordon Gekko and Patrick Bateman still lingered in that quiet, vibrant, and contemplative space.
Ironically, the same reasons why I enjoyed my time at the two restaurants above are the very same reasons that they no longer exist. They were relics that were stylistically and economically untenable. Most people would think them subpar, but some will surely miss them. Why is Instagram so popular and emotive? -- not because of fidelity and quality, but because of associations of memory and abstractions of the soul.
We went to MoRoCo Chocolat in Yorkville for the Night of Delight soirée by Krups and All-Clad. Amid the bubbly, chocolate fountains, macarons and s'mores, we got to check out All-Clad's latest cookware and the highly engineered marvels from Krups.
These two luxurious brands don't just look good, they are also technologically advanced instruments that cater to a more discerning clientele. We tried some coffee from the Krups Barista EA9000, which won't be out until 2013. It's equipped with its own burr grinder and digital controls. It's the only fully automatic one-touch-cappuccino machine with automatic rinsing. Pretty fancy. The video below better illustrates the point:
All-Clad specializes in bonding dissimilar metals to take advantage of various thermal and magnetic properties to create its advanced cookware. Depending on which line of cookware you choose, they either have aluminum, copper, or stainless steel cores in up to five layers. Some even have enhanced magnetic outside layers for induction cooking.
Yorkville is known for its poshness, with celebrity studded dinners at Sassafraz or people watching at Remy’s patio. Before the Lamborghinis and Ferraris line Cumberland St. for happy hour, are there any workaday eats and treats for the locals? We set out to find out. Here’s a handful of eats and treats to occupy those summer lunchtime hours.
Caffe di Portici
At the corner of Scollard and Yonge, across from the Masonic Temple now MTV, Caffe di Portici’s patio and its adjacent park gives a little extra sense of space so rare downtown. Yes, I do realize the area was once called Uptown, but sprawl keeps moving these lines up.
We started with an Insalata di Pasta -- tri-colour fusilli, artichoke, grilled vegetables, red onion, balsamic vinaigrette. It tasted really fresh and healthy, a pleasant surprise for a starter the we almost considered an afterthought.
The real reason we’re here is the scrumptious pizza. They have an excellent crust at Caffe di Portici. Not quite Neapolitan, in that it’s not really elastic, but it has excellent firmness and chewiness. What I do love about their pizza the most is the option to add 2 eggs. Having runny yolks from eggs baked into your toppings is amazing. And the rest of the toppings are kind’a unique too.
We had the Chorizo Pizza -- chorizo, green onions, potatoes, cheddar on tomato sauce + of course 2 eggs. I love potatoes on my pizza. These weren’t your common scalloped potatoes, but nicely seasoned soft chunks. And the chorizo tasted pretty authentic too, with great seasoning and a good bite.
Yoco Froyo
Yet another Frozen Yogurt place you may ask? Well yeah! The quality of froyo at Yoco doesn’t even approach Menchie’s, but location, location, location. If you happen to be chillin’ in the park right by former mayor Barbara Hall’s giant $250,000 rock, you’d be more inclined to cross the street than ride the 2 or 3 subway stops to the Annex.
Yoco has kind of an Asian twist, as you can also order smoothies and bubble tea. There’s a lot of fruity yogurt flavours as well, and even a green tea flavour. My advice is stick to the fruity flavours, avoid the normal flavours like chocolate or cappuccino as the base yogurt has a more sour note than typical froyo. The mango and green apple flavours were decent though.
Maybe they should’ve spent less money on the fancy Sony LEDs above the yogurt dispensers and a little more on the ingredients.
Metropolis Bake Shop
The oddly named “bake shop” is actually a Korean lunch spot where you can get your filling yet healthy meal on the cheap. For $7 you can get bibimbap -- rice, glass noodles, beef, carrots, bean sprouts, mushrooms, spinach and a a fried egg + a side soup and kimchi. For the same price you can get a hot soup instead.
The photos below are of pork bone soup, and a spicy beef soup. The soups come with lots of veggies + a bowl of steamed rice and some sides that randomly change from kimchi, to pickled potatoes, to tofu. The pork bone soup actually has tons of meat in it if you’re not squeamish about breaking a pig’s spine apart and picking in between the joints. An excellent flu season meal. The soups are also very hot as they are served in the pot they’re cooked in and vigorously boil for minutes after they arrive at your table.
Metropolis is in the Cumberland Terrace, on the ground floor by the Bay Street entrance. It’s a relatively quiet spot right beside high glass windows that let a lot of light in from Cumberland St.
Crème Brasserie
Crème is tucked away in the Renaissance Courtyard, a little alley joining Cumberland St. and Yorkville Ave., right beside the old Four Seasons hotel. It has a great secluded patio that is bright and airy yet shielded from direct sunlight most of the time.
We had a Cappellini with a more than ample amount of fresh mussels, lobster, and calamari. We also had the best salmon dish. It had a very decadently creamy and rich sauce with a lot of buttery and woodsy mushroom taste. The salmon was stuffed with spinach and sat on a bed of perfectly cooked potatoes and asparagus, topped with a juicy slice of tomato. That was a yummy weekday lunch!
To end our Yorkville lunch adventures we have some authentic gelato.
.Gelato Simply Italian
I don’t know if I want to call it Simply Italian, .Gelato, or just that gelato place. Either way, they have some of the best gelato I’ve ever tasted. Certainly as good as anything I've had in Florence, though there are specific spots in Toronto that do particular flavours better than others. It’s located in this little nondescript spot under a parking structure beside Hemingway’s that used to be a sandwich shop. Looking at the pictures you can only imagine how good everything tastes. I order with my eyes coz all the flavours are in Italian. I mean I have a rough idea of what things are, but since you can see chunks of the fresh ingredients, visuals are a pretty safe guide.
My favourite flavour thus far is Bruttomabuono, which is essentially Ferrero Rocher in gelato form, with tons of crunchy hazelnuts and globs of chocolate hazelnut ribbons in a chocolate base. The vanilla strawberry is also a good bet with loads of fresh strawberries. The hazelnut gelato is also really good. One time they had a balsamic flavoured gelato which was tasty but excessively sweet. There are also heavier frozen custards and lighter sorbets. A good and bad thing about this place is that the flavours always change. It’s good in that you can try different things, it’s bad in that the next time you drop by for something you love, it might not be there any more.
So that’s a brief sampling of Yorkville food in daytime. A little French, a little Korean, a little Italian. It’s a great neighborhood to walk around, with an eclectic mix of shops and places to eat.
A Valentine's Day prix fixe dinner is kind of a tradition for Stacey and me. For some reason there didn't seem to be too many establishments with a Valentine's Day menu this year. It must be the economy. Even more difficult to find is a place that offers a high calibre meal at a decent price. Luckily we stumbled upon a 4 course $65 prix fixe at Sorrel.
Well I didn't exactly stumble upon Sorrel. I had occasioned to go there on an office Winterlicious lunch and was surprised at how far they stretched $20. At the time I was impressed with the quality and artfulness of their cornish hen wrapped in prosciutto, when many a Winterlicious restaurant would've peddled you some form of protein-free pasta.
When we arrived for Valentine's dinner, we were mightily impressed with the effort they took to celebrate the evening with candles visible from outside and rose petals all over the sidewalk and on every table inside.
Grilled calamari, tomato black olive relish, grilled treviso
Warm figs and goat cheese have a similar consistency, and almost coat your tongue in a complimentary blanket of sweet and salty goodness. The grilled calamari was surprisingly tender with accents of crunchy char, and bathed in a fresh tomato relish with the perfect level of acidity to balance out the calamari. I was doubly surprised since although I knew it was going to be grilled, I had this image of deep fried and battered calamari rings in my head when I was ordering, as I had often been disappointed with most forms of calamari in a tomato base in the past. Ah, signs of the long work day were showing.
TWO:
Sweet pea & bufala ricotta ravioli, prosecco sage butter
Tagliatelle, black truffle mushroom pesto, basil, parmigiano
The ravioli was some of the best pasta we've ever had, ranking up there with Massimo Capra's wild boar and cherry ravioli and Matt Kantor's hazelnut ravioli. The richness of the sage butter opened up against the light creamy sweet peas and moist bufala ricotta. Sadly the tagliatelle was not so impressive. It tasted too healthy for me. More like some dry whole wheat thing Stacey would sneak onto my plate if I wasn't looking. Maybe morels would've added more punch to it rather than the sparse amount of black truffle flecks.
THREE:
Prosciutto wrapped cornish hen, sweet pea mash, natural reduction
Chicken wrapped in bacon à la Bourgeoisie! The cornish hen was an outstanding haute extension of a culinary classic, richly flavoured with its natural juices and sitting on a fluffy bed of delicious sweet pea mash. I usually have a more flavourful cut than tenderloin since it's usually a choice between taste or tenderness. However this time, the supple specimen of meat was infused with the earthyness of thyme and chanterelles and lightened with the fresh acidity of tomato confit. Rounding the high and low notes was the rich creamy saltiness of stilton.
FOUR:
Chocolate mousse, vanilla bean crème brûlée, fresh local berries
To finish off the evening we totally polished off a dessert trio, leading the waiter to exclaim "You did very good!... You did very good."
If you want to learn about fun things to do in Toronto, see Toronto Smarts. Learn about places to visit in Toronto, get concert information and sports info like when the Blue Jays play the Red Sox.
On an imported slab of heat-retention stone from Australia, you cook your own meal. Looks like fun! However it might be more about the experience than anything else - we heard some not-so-good reviews from a friend recently. We'll try anything once though!
¤Kultura (King East - Furniture District) Heard a lot about Roger Mooking's restaurants - think we're more obsessed with going there because of the fact that he used to be in Bass is Base!
¤ Cafe Gilead (King East - Furniture District) Jamie Kennedy's stuff is usually pretty good so we want to try it. ¤ Guu (Church St - The Gaybourhood) This place is trendy, so some people go there for that reason alone, but we'd be heading there to see what "Japanese tapas" is all about.
Follow a couple of foodies around the city as they discover the best (and worst) of what Toronto's culinary scene has to offer.
You can visit this site for some more info on the bloggers: http://www.tastingtoronto.ca/2009/06/so-who-is-behind-tasting-toronto.html
Upon ordering your Magnum, you get a choice of Vanilla or Chocolate ice cream to be dipped in a white, classic, or dark chocolate shell. Next comes a selection of 21 toppings, from your luxurious maple fudge to more exotic rose petals, to wacky popping candy, and even bacon! To finish things off, you get a choice or white, classic, or dark chocolate drizzle. 
Feeling adventurous, I asked for a chocolate ice cream bar, dipped in white chocolate, topped with popping candy (Pop Rocks), Nerds, rose petals, and honeycomb. Though they appear to have run out of honeycombs, so it was just drizzled with honey. I must say Pop Rocks on an ice cream bar is quite and interesting sensation! As you can see from above, it looks like the 60's threw up on my ice cream. It was quite tasty, though a little heavy on the Nerds, which kind'a overwhelmed the other flavours. All in all the Magnum Pleasure Store is a fun and novel experience to try at least once. But personally, all this bespoke treatment can't hold a candle to Magnum's grocery bought Double Caramel.
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