A steak dinner at Noce (Image: Renée Suen)
Big-spending downtown Torontonians have taken in the past few years to whining about Winterlicious, but the two-week dining festival, running from January 28 through February 10, remains popular for a reason: it offers great value, particularly if you choose your reservations well. Here are a dozen of Toronto Life’s best bets. They’re older, more established places, generally, with kitchens that clearly care. And though we haven’t yet tasted the restaurants’ 2011 Winterlicious menus, they’re full of interesting, delicious-sounding picks.
Amaya The Indian Room
This Leaside favourite was the first restaurant in the city to combine excellent Indian cooking with western-style service, surroundings and sommellerie. Its Winterlicious dinner menu is bargain-basement: $25, with options including mango-curry-coconut prawns, Rajasthani lamb shank curry and roasted marshmallow ice cream (so much better than kulfi). When a hot restaurant like Amaya prices its special menu so low, it’s natural to wonder if it’ll live up to its usual standards. We’re betting yes.
Pro tip: If you can’t get in here, try Amaya’s more casual sibling, Amaya Bread Bar. The Winterlicious menu is the same, though the surroundings aren’t quite as polished or charming.
Ame
The Rubino brothers’ latest incarnation on Mercer Street is one of the most beautifully designed restaurants in the city. Though the regular menu is priced a bit high, the Winterlicious version, at $45 per person for dinner, offers decent value. The menu is meant to be shared between two diners, and includes miso-marinated striped bass, wagyu beef rice, sushi and sashimi, among other choices. Don’t expect the usual stuff; chef Guy Rubino lives to make food more interesting, more complex and better tasting than it sounds, and the sushi, though great, can be a little whack. The cocktails are weird and wonderful and will quickly run up your bill.
Auberge du Pommier
This is easily one of the most romantic restaurants in the city, all crystal and linen polish set in a 150-year-old woodcutter’s cabin. The kitchen is French and fancy, but with a good measure of Canadian-style worldliness for balance. We’re betting on the $45 dinner menu, which looks like excellent value. Choices include Wellington County beef au poivre over a butternut squash, pearl barley and sunchoke ragoût, coq au vin and warm spice cake with crème anglaise and armagnac-soaked prunes.
Biff’s Bistro
Oliver and Bonacini’s classic downtown bistro can be easy to forget, as it’s been open for nearly a decade, and its Front and Yonge location isn’t as trendy as Ossington or Harbord. Still, it’s one of the best bistros in the city: solid and welcoming, with excellent, always-from-scratch cooking (they make their own pickles, bread and mustards) and an Old World charm that manages to sidestep the usual bistro insidiousness all the same. The Winterlicious menus—$20 for lunch, $35 for dinner—look very good; dinner choices include rabbit rillettes with that house mustard and mulled prunes, gâteau de poisson, braised pork belly with choucroute and apple gastrique, and medjool date cake with toffee sauce and lemon chantilly. The steak frites from Biff’s regular menu is excellent; the Winterlicious version should be good if they don’t dumb it down for the cheaper price.
Chris Nuttall-Smith is so predictical it’s sad. Oh how I wished we had a Frank Bruni in this town.
December 22, 2010 at 11:54 am | by PierreIsn’t Canoe closing for renovations?? No Mark McKeown restaurants taking part in Winterlicious? I hear most staff and chefs HATE Winterlicious…but it’s a great opportunity to get out during the January ‘doldrums’ and enjoy the food diversity this City has to offer, without ‘breaking the bank’.
December 23, 2010 at 7:12 am | by NancyI’ll never set foot in Noce again. The last time I was there, they were still doing the old “plate splitting fee”, hyping a dessert that allegedly took an hour to prepare (nothing like pre-selling something that people normally wouldn’t order) and doing the old “would you like flat or bubbly water?” trick to lure you into an expensive bottle of water. The food is fine…but the tricks are moochy.
December 23, 2010 at 9:46 am | by RossvegasTo add further to Rossvegas’s comments: most of these menus are designed to make money for the restaurants and offer very little in the way of good value. Please do not waste your money….
December 23, 2010 at 11:14 am | by David3 O&B restaurants? Seriously? Nice reporting.
December 23, 2010 at 12:28 pm | by mattagascar@Rossvegas… plate splitting fee exists for a reason. You are sitting on valuable real-estate in that place eating half portions and drinking tap water! Of course they charge your cheap ass.
December 23, 2010 at 11:23 pm | by WoodFood@mattagascar… So the menu is designed to make money for the owner? How dare they try to profit! Why else would any buisness run a promotion except to make money!
I think you mean David? Give your head a shake man.
December 24, 2010 at 9:10 am | by mattagascar$45.00 per person plus a bottle of wine, tax, and tip still adds up, and the food and (especially) the service can be quite disappointing. Would never return to Canoe again for this very reason. But each time we bravely set forth hoping for the best, although must admit to fewer memorable meals each year and beginning to wonder if it’s still worthwhile. I remember one year when my hubby and I went to a different Summerlicious restaurant every night for a week and had wonderful meals each time.
January 12, 2011 at 4:25 pm | by 905rGot agree on Auberge du Pommier. I’ve dined here several times over the years…. And you don’t have to dine with a lover…romance is for everyone. Here’s a mention on my blog (2010). http://wp.me/pDQWN-S
January 13, 2011 at 1:00 pm | by may georgina deloryHahahahah good one mattagascar …. 3 O&B empire restaurants what about something new and daring. Hahahahah I wish, this list is the same from 5 years ago. Seriously whats the newest resto on the list? Good idea but bad reporting.
January 13, 2011 at 1:36 pm | by Julie DrozdowSpeaking of something old, hear come the smug TL readers. *eye roll*
The intro to the list said that they were the best bet restaurants. Nowhere did they say anything about newest restaurants and they actually explained quite extensively that these were older more esablished restaurants. Maybe you should actually read through the article before you rush to bash it. Or better yet, just read something else. Nothing worse than a reader who continues to come back to bash a publication they clearly have gotten bored with.
January 13, 2011 at 4:41 pm | by ReadPleaseBeing a chef who has worked many a winterlisious/summer. This is an attempt to drum up business in an otherwise quite period. Even though this really is NOT an accurate portrayal of the restaurant(s), it is an introduction! If your a true foodie you will recognize this, and in the event the “taste/ execution ” meets/ exceeds your expectation. you will return, spend/enjoy/ hire…. Top places never “Sit Back”! YES! The event(s) is a big time pain, & in many cases the clientele are SUPPER,SUPPER CHEAP! @ the end of the day, it is the community coming together to showcase POSSIBILITIES! Enjoy! Blessings to those who do have to work it! Especially kitchen staff!!!!!
January 14, 2011 at 4:31 am | by ChefEh?What a great short list…makes trying to pick a place so much easier, although now I think the competition to eat at these places will be that much more difficult…and while these foodie festivals are awesome, some are not so awesome…see http://gracefulglutton.blogspot.com/2010/07/summerlicious-success-or-fail.html
I am most excited about Lucien.
January 21, 2011 at 1:54 pm | by AnabelWhat a dull, stodgy list. I miss James Chatto.
January 22, 2011 at 3:10 pm | by molesPersonally I would not recommend Corner House for a Winterlicious meal. From my experience about 3 years ago they CRAM in as many people as they can setting up extra tables in places where tables shouldn’t be. I would be curious if they are even meeting fire code regulations. I got placed over a heating vent and it was not a comfortable meal. Luckily we were in the first seating because the people in the second seating (or later in the evening) were all lined up along the stairs waiting for their table because there was no room in the “lobby” (as there is no real lobby).
January 28, 2011 at 11:18 am | by jeff