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Toronto Life - The Dish

The latest buzz on restaurants, chefs, bars, food shops and food events. Sign up for the Dish newsletter for weekly updates. Send tips to thedish@torontolife.com

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Must-Try: the beautiful, fresh and flavourful sashimi at JaBistro

Must-Try: JaBistro SashimiJaBistro’s sashimi, cut expertly by chef Koji Toshiro, is outlandishly fresh and ­flavourful. One night, the selection included ocean trout, sea bream, uni and, for adventurous diners, the chewy and ethereally ­sea-scented lobster sashimi. $100. 222 Richmond St. W., 647-748-0222.

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Friday Night Bites: tables for two at Café Boulud, Nota Bene and Samuel J. Moore

FRIDAY NIGHT BITESIt’s 4 p.m. on Friday, and you don’t have a dinner reservation. Still, there’s no need to fret (or waste your night waiting for a table). We just called some of the city’s hottest restaurants and found three that can squeeze in two for dinner tonight. Now it’s up to you to get dialing and snag a table before they’re all gone. Today: Café Boulud, Samuel J. Moore, and Nota Bene. 

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A new seafood spot named Geraldine is moving into Cowbell’s previous Parkdale digs 

Former Cowbell chef Peter Ramsay, who also did a stint as the chef de cuisine at Sidecar in Little Italy, is opening a new seafood restaurant in early July at 1564 Queen West, where Mark Cutrara’s bistro Cowbell resided for six years before closing in February. Geraldine is named after Ramsay’s grandmother and will serve seafood instead of meat. The restaurant will also do afternoon tea on the weekend—a dainty departure from Toronto’s current obsession with gut-busting brunches. [NOW]

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Chocolate Brunette Pastry Company brings more gourmet cupcakes to Yorkville

Chocolate Brunette Pastry Company

Cocoa raspberry shortbread (Image: Distill Design)

Chocolate Brunette Pastry Company recently opened at Ave and Dav, selling truffles, Italians sweets and their own whipped-cream-and-mousse cupcake bombs. The boutique food shop’s hedonistic creations, like the sweet revenge cupcake filled with toasted walnuts and milk chocolate ganache and the vanilla coconut cupcake topped with mascarpone coconut mousse, look like they could rival the nearby, newly opened, Prairie Girl Bakery’s cupcakes in their epicurean insanity.

Chocolate Brunette Pastry Company. 182 Avenue Rd., 416-834-9711, chocolatebrunette.com

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Another nostalgia-themed food truck takes to Toronto streets

Beach Boys Food Truck

(Image: Facebook)

First, Crossroads Diner, a food truck covered in painted images of 1950s American icons and serving kitschy diner food, popped up in Toronto two weeks ago. Now, a roving restaurant with a ’60s California surf culture theme has hit the city’s streets. The Beach Boys Food Truck is painted aqua blue and sunshine yellow and is serving classic American greasy spoon dishes, like mushroom garlic burgers and chicken fingers and fries.

Beach Boys Food Truck, beachboysfoodtruck.com, @beachboystruck

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Introducing: Ardor Bistro, a new Peruvian restaurant on Ossington from the owners of Celestin

Ardor Bistro

(Image: TJ Tindale)

Name: Ardor Bistro
Neighbourhood: Ossington
Contact Info: 59 Ossington Ave., 647-351-5100
Owners: Brothers Ivan Tarazona and James Bailey (Celestin)
Chef:
Ivan Tarazona

The Food: A modern take on traditional Latin American food. Dishes include fish ceviche, grilled octopus salad and Peruvian riffs on classic bistro mains, like steak frites with chimichurri, duck confit with quinoa and sous-vide chicken with yellow pepper sauce. There’s also a six-course tasting menu for $45.

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Coffee and Tea

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Tim Hortons is making a new blend of coffee for the first-time ever

Tim Hortons is making a new blend of coffee for the first-time everFor the first time in the coffee-and-doughnut giant’s near 50-year history, Tim Hortons is creating a new roast. In a half-century of existence, the iconic Canadian company has added doughnut holes (Timbits!), muffins, croissants, tea, biscuits, cookies, rolls, Danishes, bagels, espresso drinks, chili, breakfast sandwiches, Cold Stone Creamery ice cream and most recently frozen lemonade—but its coffee has never been augmented or altered (which is as impressive as it is dull). The new brew is a bolder, darker version of Timmies’ standard blend made from South American beans rather than their standard Arabica beans. Although the coffee, which is called the Tim Hortons Partnership Blend (it was developed with a German nonprofit organization that supports fair-trade coffee farming), won’t be sold fresh at the franchise’s locations just yet, grounds are available in a 343-gram bag for $7.69.

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Recipe: gluten-free pumpkin muffins at Bunner’s that taste every bit as good as the butter-jacked counterparts

Toronto Life Cookbook 2012 Recipe: Pumpkin Muffins
Toronto Life Recipes | Breakfast
PUMPKIN MUFFINS
By Ashley Wittig
Bunner’s

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A summer oyster bar is joining the eclectic mix at 99 Sudbury

(Image: Facebook)

The sprawling former glass factory at 99 Sudbury St., tucked between West Queen West and Liberty Village, has seen all kinds of businesses come and go—an after-hours club, a film studio and the much-loved restaurant Mildred Pierce. It even hosted the popular pop-up ramen bash Slurp Noodlefest in April. Now joining the venue’s hodgepodge of occupants, which currently includes a professional MMA school and a monthly flower market, is a temporary oyster bar called Cool City Oyster Yard from chef Michael Pataran, who the nearby Cadillac Lounge recently brought in to add smokehouse barbecue to its menu. The 74-seat patio-bar runs from June to October and is serving sake cocktails and shellfish. The restaurant may just be the right fit for the ever-changing space: a breezy neighbourhood spot to slurp up oysters and put back early evening drinks with a view of Liberty Village’s expanding condo-scape.

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Beloved Riverdale hangout Rooster Coffee House has a second location

(Image: Rooster Coffee House)

The east-end neighbourhood café cherished for its Loïc Gourmet sandwiches, goodies from Café Jules Patisserie and Pilot Coffee Roasters (formerly Te Aro) espresso opened a second shop on King Street East near Parliament Avenue yesterday. The new spot is using the same Pilot espresso beans as the original location, but serving sandwiches and salads from Cinq catering. George Brown students and Corktown condo-dwellers are clearly excited: by 10 a.m. there already appeared to be line-ups stretching around the block.

Rooster Coffee House, 333 King St. E., roostercoffeehouse.com, @Roostercoffee

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Introducing: Marky and Sparky’s Smokehouse, a new spot for southern barbecue in the Junction

Marky & Sparky's Smokehouse

(Image: Caroline Aksich)

Name: Marky and Sparky’s Smokehouse
Neighbourhood:
The Junction
Contact Info:
520 Annette St., 647-748-4227, Facebook
Owners:
Frank “Sparky” DiGenova (Butcher by Nature) and Marcus “Marky” De Simone

The Food: Slow-cooked southern barbecue made from meat from Butcher by Nature. The menu includes all the BBQ classics: wet or dry baby back ribs, chicken wings, brisket and pulled pork. All meats can be ordered on a sandwich, and there’s also a butcher platter, which includes every protein on the menu.

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Live Market brings healthy lunches and gourmet coffee to Liberty Village

(Image: Karon Liu)

Liberty Village is now one step closer to becoming a yuppie’s dream. Live Market, a collaboration between Jennifer Italiano, who owns Live Organic Food Bar in the Annex, and Ezra Braves, who owns the Dundas West coffee house Ezra’s Pound, opened last week at the corner of King Street and Atlantic Avenue. The organic café, which serves espresso and gluten-free, fair-trade-certified wraps and salads, as well as Live Organic’s juice cleanses, is perfectly at home among Liberty Village’s 24-hour gym, doggy day care, hip mid-market furniture stores West Elm and EQ3 and Zumba studio.

Live Market. 134 Atlantic Ave., livefoodbar.com, @livefoodbar.

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La Société introduces special menus from the city’s style set

Bloor bisto La Société (Image: Gizelle Lau)

The buzzy Bloor Street bistro wants you to eat just like Toronto’s fashion elite. Charles Khabouth’s Yorkville restaurant is creating special menus based on stylish Torontonians personal recipes. The menus started in April with healthy dishes and fun cocktails from the people at The Coveteur, and this month fashion icon Jeanne Beker is sharing recipes for her Moroccan spiced snapper and chestnut crêpes. Next month, socialite Suzanne Rogers is up. If her cooking is anything like her fashion, we expect very rich, very bold dishes topped with the culinary equivalent of a whole lot of lace.

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New gourmet takeout shop selling cheesy comfort dishes is opening in the Junction

Cut The Cheese, the latest restaurant capitalizing on the childhood food nostalgia trend, is bringing upscale versions of grilled cheese and mac ‘n cheese to The Junction this summer. Like Kensington Market hipster mainstay The Grilled Cheese, Cut The Cheese’s menu is amusing in its specificity and alarming in its disregard for early onset heart disease—everything has cheese.

The Dish

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Introducing: Woods, a fancy new restaurant in St. Lawrence Market from the former Modus chef

Woods

(Image: Megan Leahy)

Name: Woods
Neighbourhood: St. Lawrence Market
Contact info: 45 Colborne Street, 416-214-9918, woodsrestaurant.ca
Owners: Bruce Woods and Robin Singh
 Chef: Executive Chef Bruce Woods (Modus, Brasaii, Centro) and Chef de Cuisine Anthony Davis (Sidecar, Cowbell, The Roosevelt Room)

The Food: An eclectic menu with a farm-to-table ethos, including appetizers like wild Digby scallops and seared Quebec foie gras and mains from spaghetti and meatballs to roasted Muscovy duck breast with dried cherries and duck egg béarnaise. There’s also a bar menu (dishes are in the $10-15 range) for the after-work cocktail crowd.

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