Chef Mani Binelli, who has cooked at big-name Toronto restaurants like Canoe, Centro, and Auberge du Pommier, has a new restaurant on Dundas West near Dufferin. The Guild says if it’s on the menu, it was made in house. Fresh-made pastas, cured meats, sausages, spices, sauces, preserves and pastries - Binelli also has a hot box smoker that he uses to smoke meat.
The space in particular was fascinating - it was converted from a 20-year-old flower shop into a 90-seat restaurant by Binelli himself. The dining tables are made of 100-year-old Ontario barn wood, refinished and built by Binelli. The birch bark bar and hostess stand are made of fallen Haliburton forest trees. Dining chairs are covered with coffee sacs from The Guild’s coffee supplier. The tin ceiling was hand pressed by a Guelph, Ontario artisan. There is a massive open kitchen and full view chef’s table as well. The bathroom walls fascinated me, as they subbed out wallpaper for some shellac and pages from a classic food encyclopedia.
The cocktail menu read very "manly" to me from start to finish - the two cocktails we sampled ("Mother's Tough Love" with Gosling's Black Seal rum & house-made ginger beer and "Dun West Trading Co." with El Jimador Reposado tequila, Leyenda mezcal, benedictine, spice pineapple shrub, lemon, West Indian orange bitters) may have put some hair on my chest! They were strong and bold but nothing is worse than a weak cocktail - you feel completely ripped off. So I'd rather a nice strong one than a weakling! Good drinks for winter as they definitely warmed me up.
My favourite dish was the Seared Omega Pork Belly with tequila peach compote and kimchi. The kimchi wasn't overpowering as I thought it may be, and the tequila peach compote is something they need to keep doing, because it was HEAVEN alongside the pork belly. I'm weird about pork belly, I'm very particular about the way the fat is rendered, and I can't stand when it ends up being chewy. They got it right here - this was my favourite pork belly I've had ANYWHERE as the fat was rendered perfectly and it was extremely flavourful. It may not look like much below, but looks can be deceiving.
Some other highlights: Their house-smoked chicken had a rich smokey flavour that fake liquid smoke can't compete with, so I'd recommend that you grab something house-smoked off their menu. It's a real treat. Also, whatever Quebec goat cheese ended up in their aged balsamic marinated tomato salad was killer good (I forgot to ask, as one tends to do after a long day at work and a few cocktails!) - shredding the arugula in the salad was a little different, I think I may have preferred whole pieces, but the flavours were excellent. Enjoy the food porn pics!
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?
Here are some photos from Guu Izakaya, on Church St., just north of Gerrard. The best way to describe it would be Japanese tapas. It's essentially a bar with a lot of small tasty food items to go along with the drinks.
A couple of interesting items we liked were the deep fried pumpkin croquette with a boiled egg inside, and of course my fav Japanese street food, Takoyaki a.k.a. deep fried octopus balls.
We checked out Hanoi 3 Seasons for an inexpensive night out. North Vietnamese cuisine offers a kick in the tastebuds, whilst feeling light yet satisfying, slightly different from most of the other predominantly South Vietnamese restaurants around town.
The Vietnamese Coffee, available either hot or cold is definitely a standout. It's really strong yet very easy to drink, with notes of rich mocha and a sweet creaminess to it.
Goi Cuon - Fresh Shrimp Rolls (Vegetarian version contains Tofu) $3
Hen - Sautéed Spicy Baby Clams served with Crispy Rice Crackers $7
Cha Ca – Hanoi 3 Seasons - Hanoi-style Grouper with Dill & Shrimp Paste $11
Served with Vermicelli & Salad or as Soup
Pho Do Bien - Spicy Shrimp, Calamari & Mussels with Tamarind Soup $7.50
Café - Vietnamese Coffee (hot/cold) $3
Hanoi 3 Seasons is located at 588 Gerrard Street East at Broadview.
There is also a Leslieville location at 1135 Queen Street East.
We’ve heard a lot about Country Style over the years, (no not the donut chain, the Hungarian restaurant) so we finally decided to check it out last weekend. We weren’t expecting to be wowed since it was on the list of comfort food spots for many people. I’m writing about it anyway not because it’s trendy or a particularly excellent dining establishment, but because like many mom and pop shops that cater to niche markets or stay low-cost and under the radar, places like this have staying power and are an integral part of their community.
Though my first instinct was to try the Chicken Paprikash with Perogies for an app and perhaps some Goulash on the side, we had limited stomach room and opted for their signature Country Style Wooden Plate for two.
The plate was a combination of a Cabbage Roll, Wiener Schnitzel, Parisian Schnitzel, Fried Sausage, Beets, Rice, and Home Fries. The schnitzels were thinly pounded and incredibly large. We liked the Wiener (sounds like a sausage, but it's not) Schnitzel's breaded crust better than the Parisian's egg coating. We loved the firm and well seasoned fried sausage. The cabbage roll was a complete meal unto itself, not just because it was a huge, but also because you pretty much have your carbs in the form of rice, as well as meat and vegetable in it all together. We also had a side of dumplings, which in this context are plain doughy little things and not the stuffed Asian kind.
That was certainly more than enough food for the two of us, and we ended up taking the rest home. Because I'm Filipino, I had the leftover schnitzels with steamed rice and a little ketchup, like a Filipino-Spanish torta. It is comfort food after all.
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.
Hockley Valley Resort is a resort one hour from Toronto (near Orangeville). We had the good fortune of touring the resort, eating at one of its three restaurants, and meeting their General Manager John Paul Adamo via the folks at Pilot PMR who gave us and a few other bloggers a lift (thank you!)
Upon walking into the resort, there is very much a family feeling about the place, which is likely because it's a family-owned business (it was first purchased by John Paul's father and, at the time, it needed a lot of work). Mark and I found it to be both sophisticated and stylish without being pretentious.
Here's a quick rundown on the resort's three restaurants Babbo, Tavola, Restaurant 85 as well as the wine cellar's "table for two" and their Farmer's Market:
Eating at Tavola is a unique and participatory experience - first, you get to walk in their garden and pick items that their talented chefs will turn into your dinner - talk about fresh and local. You can also go into their kitchen and write a message on the kitchen walls - I could've stayed in there all day reading all the messages (which are now creeping onto the cieling). You'll get to start off your meal by tasting the chefs' in-house cured meats and cheeses, and you'll also get a tour of the wine cellar. Tavola consists of a single table in a separate room beside the kitchen, so it's very intimate - not like a restaurant at all but more like sitting around a dinner table with friends and family.
Restaurant 85 seats the largest number of people and, as far as we know, is the newest of the three restaurants.
Babbo is somewhere in between the other two restaurants in size, and it looked like a great place to grab a drink and relax.
We thought this idea was genius - there was a table for two in the area where they keep their wines - no, it's not a wine cellar in the basement, it's a beautiful glassed-in walk-in wine cellar. That would probably qualify as the quietest, most intimate dinner you could have with another person since it literally is just the two of you - that would be the PERFECT gift for a pair of married wine-lovers: Spend your anniversary dinner in there!
The resort holds a Farmer's Market every third Sunday. They don't charge the vendors anything. Jean Paul emphasized repeatedly that it's not a revenue stream for them, but rather it's their way of showing support for local producers.
For those who want to do more than just eat while at Hockley, (weirdos!) there is skiing and snowshoeing in the winter, and in the summer they have a great saltwater pool and a golf course. There is also a year-round spa.
In case you are curious about exactly what we ate at Tavola, here's the full menu - can I just add that the Tawse Gewurtztraminer was TO DIE FOR?! We were served different wines with each meal from Ontario and Italy and the Gewurtz was, as usual, my favourite. Favourite dish was the cod wrapped in prosciutto, hands down. Also really appreciated the neat idea to candy celery and put it in a dessert - very unique and actually worked quite well in terms of flavour!
Executive Chef:Rabii Jaouhari
Restaurant Chef:Daniel Mezzolo
Lunch
First Course:
Served in Kitchen
House-cured & Imported Cheese & Salumi
Antipasti
Second Course:
Potato Soup
Crispy asparagus, parmigiano foam, truffle oil
2008 Viewpoint Estate Winery, Arneis, VQA Lake Erie North Shore, ON
Third Course:
Scampi Bagna Cauda
Slow poached in olive oil & thyme
2010 Tawse, Gewurztraminer, Quarry Road VQA Niagara, ON
Fourth Course:
Tortelli
Filled with 3 years aged parmigiano cream, Pingue speck
2007 Le Clos Jordanne, Oaked Chardonnay, Jordan Station, ON
Fifth Course:
Fiddlehead Risotto
Braised fresh house sausage
2008 Foreign Affair, Sauvignon Blanc, VQA Niagara Peninsula, ON
2004 Daniel Lenko, Select Harvest Vidal, VQA Niagara, ON
Ninth Course:
Dessert
Pistachio crème brulee + raspberry, apricot, orange house made truffle + orange vanilla marscapone cake with raspberry & strawberry sauce
Also have to give a big shoutout to Hockley Honey for the amazing creamed white organic unpasteurized wildflower honey (try saying that five times fast!) they gave us. Delicious!
I (the Stacey half of Tasting Toronto) am admittedly a little bit noise sensitive - it's funny, I live right downtown and can sleep through total chaos with no issue at all but when I'm trying to concentrate on something important to me, the noise around me can drive me to distraction. Enter my trusty iPod to drown out the world when needed!
But that sooo doesn't work when I'm in a noisy restaurant trying to scream across a table to Mark or one of my friends, of course.
I was intrigued to find out that ten years ago the San Francisco Chronicle was the first daily newspaper to introduce "noise ratings" in its restaurant reviews. Although that stat is a bit dated, noise ratings in the restaurant review world is a pretty interesting idea and it got me thinking whether or not that would affect my decision to go to a particular restaurant.
After much thought (so much thought that I NEARLY HAD TO REACH FOR THAT iPOD!) I concluded that I don't think a high noise rating could initially keep me from trying a restaurant whose menu was making my mouth water, but if it was ridiculously loud once I'd gone, it could certainly keep me from going back. I love beerbistro with all my heart but damn, it can get loud in there! I'll still go back. Their mussel bowls and beer-infused desserts are worth it.
But I also wonder if more Canadian publications and blogs will start rating noise levels in their restaurant reviews... I guess it could be hit-and-miss as it depends which night you visited the restaurant (Saturday nights are probably more raucous than Wednesday afternoons). What do you guys think? Will it become more popular to rate noise in reviews? Would a high noise level stop you from going to a restaurant in the first place or prevent you from returning?
[Thanks to my friends at Zoomer 96.3 FM for the info - they are leading the charge against noise pollution in dining establishments with their Anti-Noise Pollution League.]
I both love and hate the fact that I will never get around to all the restaurants in Toronto. On the one hand, there's nothing better than knowing I will live in this city the rest of my life (woohoo!) and will STILL never get the "restaurant blahs" because there is always something new and exciting to try. Maybe next on our list will be dining in the dark - shout-out to my coworker for letting me know this one will be opening soon: http://www.thestar.com/living/article/649452.
On the flipside, restaurant turnover in this city makes someone like myself a little nervous. I still remember running to the "Susur" part of Susur Lee's two namesake restaurants once we caught word that he was leaving for N.Y. He trained chefs in his place, but still, we needed the Susur Lee experience before he left forever (okay, really, I hear he still comes back to town now and then, but again, I'm a total food loser, and I had to get there before he left or else I'd somehow feel cheated... I know, not logical, but the propsect of missing out on good food makes me irrational!). So we frantically called day-in and day-out to get a reservation. We got in, and the food was pretty good, but I think I'm still haunted by the wall lined with Colonel Sanders statues painted all white (yes, THAT Colonel Sanders, the one of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame). I was also panicked (okay, really, I think I'm overexaggerating, but please don't pin me as shallow or bizarre for being panicked about a restaurant closing!) when I caught wind of Scaramouche potentially closing, and made sure to get there in time. That's where I tasted the best scallop of my life... see? I have reason to get crazy when I hear a true Toronto culinary institution might be closing! It might be the best food I've ever tasted! I even freaked out when an obscure Indian buffet near my house closed with no notice but I realized it had just moved further down the street, so I still have a chance to go there... I hope... oh wait, here comes the paranoia, maybe it closed today and I didn't even know haha!
I think turnover gives me all the more reason to want to document the places we've been as a public record of their tastiness.
All that said, here's a preview of what's to come:
Our picks for the top three sushi restaurants in the GTA.
An update on Mark's birthday dinner at Bocca on Baldwin Street (we've all had good lamb and bad lamb... we'll fill you in on what the lamb experience was like at Bocca).
Some out-of-town photoblogging (we recently went to Moto in Chicago, home of reknowned gastronomic chef Homaro Cantu, and had a 20 course 5-hour-long meal. Pictures of every course were taken and Mark typed the info down on his phone so we'd remember what was in each amazing dish).
Also watch for Taste of the Danforth updates in August plus some guest-blogging from other food-obsessed friends of ours.
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
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