Remember last year when Chris Cosentino, one of the pioneers of the offal revival, visited Toronto for undisclosed reasons and claimed he could smell Chinatown from three blocks away? Or when Richard Blais, the molecularly inclined winner of Top Chef All-Stars, tweeted about the interesting tasting menu he’d just lunched on in Toronto? Or when Italian food legend Lidia Bastianich dropped in at All the Best Fine Foods? Turns out they weren’t here just because they love us—they’re all guest judges on season two of Top Chef Canada. Other notable judges and tasters include—and let us be clear, this is a bit of a spoiler for those who really like to keep their Top Chef Canada viewing pure—east-coast chef Michael Smith, season one host Thea Andrews (no hard feelings, we guess!), chef-about-town Matty Matheson of Parts and Labour, Leafs assistant captain Colby Armstrong, Susur Lee and his soon-to-be restaurateur sons Kai and Jet Bent-Lee, Toca’s Tom Brodi, Roger Mooking, Top Chef Masters winner Marcus Samuelson, last season’s winner Dale MacKay and his adorable son Ayden, Keisha Chante, Rick the Temp Campanelli, Lorenzo Loseto of George, Charlie’s Burgers mastermind Franco Stalteri, husband-and-wife dynamos Marc Thuet and Biana Zorich, Odd Bits author Jennifer McLagan, Vancouver Indian restaurateur and chef Vikram Vij and assorted competitors from last season, not to mention the somewhat bizarro guests we already told you about, like Alan Thicke and Mike Holmes. (Whew!) Not bad.

The bar at Gusto 101 (Image: Gizelle Lau)

Gusto 101, the latest shiny new thing to appear in the perpetually-in-construction King West neighbourhood, opened its doors last Friday. Built out of a dilapidated old auto garage, Gusto 101 is still decidedly King West—and that’s exactly what owner Janet Zuccarini (Trattoria Nervosa), director of operations Jill McAbe and designer Alessandro Munge were going for. Inside, the bare cinderblock walls are outfitted with industrial-style light fixtures, and old licence plates hang on a wooden beam. The open kitchen shows off the restaurant’s centerpiece: a Tuscan-style wood-fire grill.

In the kitchen is executive chef Daniel Mezzolo, previously of Hockley Valley Resort. The dinner menu was designed mainly by Zuccarini and focuses on bold Italian flavours. There are antipasti, like char-grilled octopus ($13.49), and fritti, like arancini with wild mushrooms and fontina ($9). Of course, there’s pasta: rigatoni with braised oxtail ($13.79), ricotta gnocchi with pork sausage ($13.79) and pappardelle al funghi with portobello, oyster and porcini mushrooms and truffle paste in a light cream sauce ($14.79). The wood-fire oven is responsible for the pizzas like the polpette, with tomatoes, mozzarella, meatballs and smoked provolone ($13.79), and mains like Moroccan “brick chicken,” which is cooked sous-vide then finished on the grill and served with Swiss chard and garlic smashed potatoes ($17). Desserts come in mini-portions and include mascarpone tiramisu, dark chocolate mousse with caramel, olive oil and sea salt, and wild lemon air: aerated limoncello with fizzy candy, candied celery and a sprinkle of ground coffee ($3 each or $8.50 for a combo of all three).

On the drink menu: cocktails, a robust selection of Italian wines and Vini di Gusto, Gusto’s own wine, which is on tap for a buck an ounce. The wine is made in the restaurant’s own winery (located in the basement), where stainless steel vats of malbec and sauvignon blanc are hooked up to the taps upstairs. The operation is a branch of Vintage One, an urban winery based in the Junction.

Starting February 20, Gusto 101 will serve lunch, and brunch will follow in March. Come April, the restaurant’s huge 90-seat rooftop patio will open for dining or drinks, along with a streetside patio facing Portland.

Gusto 101, 101 Portland St., 416-504-9669, gusto101.com

Scaramouche’s Keith Froggett (Image: Renée Suen)

Online restaurant review sites like Yelp and Urbanspoon may have cut into the crowd-sourced territory that Zagat once owned, but the yearly survey still has some clout—and the power to get diners in the door. The 2,266 food-loving Torontonians who voted in this year’s survey were crazy for Keith Froggett, giving fine dining restaurant Scaramouche top honours for food and also placing Scaramouche’s pasta bar in the top 10. But the winners weren’t all about linen tablecloths and tasting menus: The Burger’s Priest, with its epically greasy Vatican City burger, broke the top three for best food, while pan-Asian chain Spring Rolls was voted most popular restaurant (proving that democracy isn’t foolproof).

The best food in Toronto, according to Zagat voters:

1. Scaramouche
2. Chiado
3. Burger’s Priest
4. George
5. Campagnolo
6. Scaramouche Pasta Bar
7. Sushi Kaji
8. North 44°
9. Nota Bene
10. Auberge du Pommier

The Zagat Survey always contains some juicy tidbits about dining culture in the city, like the fact that the average tip in Toronto—despite what you may have heard—is 17.1 per cent (0.6 percentage points more than those cheapskates out in Vancouver, but a lot less than the U.S. average of 19.2 per cent). On average, Toronto’s Zagat voters eat three meals out per week, about the same as New York but fewer than Los Angeles, Dallas and Tokyo. Finally, these Zagat types are impatient: a third avoid restaurants that don’t take reservations, while only six per cent would wait longer than 30 minutes to be seated, which clearly doesn’t explain the lineups at Grand Electric and Guu every night of the week. The annual Toronto Life list of this year’s best new restaurants will appear in our April issue—not being new, neither Scaramouche nor Spring Rolls are eligible, unfortunately.

Farmers’ markets are great….One day they’re going to kill some people though.

—Loblaw executive chairman Galen Weston at the Canadian Food Summit, reflecting on the importance of food inspections (to be fair, he later added, “I’m just saying that to be dramatic though”) [Toronto Star]

Kudos are due on two counts today for Montreal meat mecca Joe Beef. Reason No. 1: the operators of this long-lauded restaurant (David McMillan, Frédéric Morin, Meredith Erickson) have penned a volume—The Art of Living According to Joe Beef—that just took first place in the third annual Piglet Tournament of Cookbooks. This is a tough get, especially considering the judge was Alice Waters, the highly discerning Californian chef who more or less made “fresh and local” into its own religion category of cuisine. “There is a sense of history to the book and their deep love of Montreal is evident throughout,” writes Waters. “I loved the story of ‘Building a garden in a crack den.’” But perhaps the better cause for celebration is Reason No. 2: the Vieux-Port carnivores beat out Christina Tosi’s Momofuku Milk Bar to take the prize.

• Piglet Tournament of Cookbooks [Food52]

(Image: Jon Sufrin)

Last week, we pointed out that city staff had recommended that patio permit applications for Campagnolo and Woodlot (among others) be denied at the February 14 meeting of the Toronto and East York Community Council, which prompted a helpful commenter to suggest things might not be as grim as they’d initially seemed. We called up a pair of councillors—Trinity-Spadina’s Mike Layton and Davenport’s Ana Bailão—who confirmed that, yes, staff must follow the letter of the bylaw in their reports. In other words, they must recommend that an application be denied for a patio within 25 metres of a residential zone—but that doesn’t stop councillors from approving patios that don’t meet every nitpicky requirement.

Layton told us the strict regulations for patios are necessary for obvious reasons (“You just can’t have rowdy university kids keeping you up every Thursday”), but the bylaws don’t distinguish between restaurants and bars and also don’t account for self-imposed conditions on hours or capacity that the establishment may propose to keep neighbours happy. “You can’t tell if [a restaurant will be] a good or bad neighbour just based on a bylaw—you need experience in the neighbourhood,” he said. Bailão added that, in districts like hers where many people have limited English, polls by city staff often fall short of the minimum number of responses, which means staff must recommend the application be denied.

How can restaurateurs sidestep the red tape? Owners can talk to nearby residents and work out strategies to prevent noise disturbances, and they can get petitions showing community support. “If they have a petition that can demonstrate significant public support with some conditions, than I can perhaps veer from the path that the staff have recommended,” Layton explained. He wouldn’t say exactly how he plans to vote next week, but he did hint, “Woodlot and Campagnolo have done a significant amount of footwork.” Bailão, meanwhile, said that both Paris Bakery and Pastry and Café Stella are working to drum up some more resident support before their Valentine’s Day deadline.

Hoping to squeeze into Canoe this Winterlicious? You’re out of luck (Image: Jen Chan from the Torontolife.com Flickr pool)

With the end of Winterlicious in sight, we got curious about how this year’s prix fixe madness was going. “Stronger than last year,” said Pangaea owner Peter Geary, who credits social networking with driving last-minute reservations throughout the festival. “Even last night, you could see people taking photographs of their meals and tweeting,” he told us (apparently phones at the dinner table are no longer a faux pas). The folks over at Canoe also noticed the impact of word of mouth, saying, “As soon as we change our voice message to say we have some availability, the phones go crazy.” While quick-fingered foodies have snapped up all of Canoe’s remaining tables, there’s still hope—the people at Scarpetta, Biff’s and Jump all advised diners to call last-minute, since no-shows are still very much a Winterlicious tradition. We also talked to the 10 restaurants whose menus got the most hits from our list of the 61 best bets to find out whether and when tables are still available.

1. Scarpetta
Read our review | See the menu
A few late-night tables can still be found (say, after 9 p.m.) tonight and Wednesday, but Thursday is fully booked.

2. Aria
Read our review | See the menu
Read our food editor’s recommendation »
You can generally get a table during most dining hours—plus, the lunch prix fixe is also being offered on Friday after the festival officially ends.

3. Jump
Read our review | See the menu
For all three days, lunch reservations are full until 2 p.m., and there’s limited availability for early or late dinners.

4. Canoe
Read our review | See the menu
Yeah right. As usual, Canoe is fully booked.

5. Biff’s
Read our review | See the menu
Room tonight and Wednesday for lunch and dinner, but Thursday is quite busy for both. You may be able to score a table if you’re willing to eat early or late.

6. Pangaea
Read our review | See the menu
Read our food editor’s recommendation »
For lunch, Thursday has the most available reservations. Limited space for dinner on all three nights.

7. Luma
Read our review | See the menu
Read our food editor’s recommendation »
If you’re willing to eat at 5 or 8:30 p.m., you may be able to land a table. Lunch is full from noon to 2 p.m.

8. Lucien
Read our review | See the menu
Read our food editor’s recommendation »
The 15-seat bar is open for reservations on all three nights. A few early and late tables are still available.

9. King Street Social
Read our review | See the menu
Availability for lunch and dinner on all three days.

10. Reds
Read our review | See the menu
Tonight and Wednesday are your best bets for dinner, while there are a few lunch reservations available after 1 p.m. on Wednesday.

Even the most casual observer of Toronto’s nascent food truck scene knows that the biggest barrier to, say, Southern California–style food truck bliss isn’t the snow—it’s the rules. In November, we showed how a new red tape–cutting mayor teamed up with entrepreneurial restaurateurs to spur a flourishing of new roadside grub slingers in Calgary. Now the good folks over at Toronto Food Trucks have put together an infographic showing exactly which hoops need jumping through if you want to set up a new truck in this city:

Created by Toronto Food Trucks

Inside the sleek space that used to house Bar One (Image: Meaghan Binstock)

Back in July, the owners of Trinity-Bellwoods staple Bar One announced they were shutting its doors after an 11-year run. Six months and one gut job later, the dramatically transformed space, complete with sleek burned wood panelling and constellations of bare hanging bulbs, has reopened as Ursa, with brothers and first-time owners Jacob and Lucas Sharkey-Pearce at the helm. Jacob, the executive chef, is no stranger to the industry, with a pedigree that includes Thuet Bistro, Centro and the Windsor Arms Hotel. And while Cosimo Mammoliti of Terroni fame is the restaurant’s third (and mostly silent) partner, the menu is almost the exact opposite of that chain’s carb-heavy Southern Italian comfort food (the brothers started off as teenage employees at the Queen Street location).

Ursa serves contemporary Canadian cuisine, but bucking the trend toward meaty comfort food, the kitchen emphasizes techniques that preserve the food’s nutritional value as much as possible. Greens are compressed in a vacuum to create the texture and feel of blanching, without the nutrient-harming boiling water. Cultured probiotic kefirs, yogurts, tofu and butter are made in-house. It’s an approach that’s informed by the brothers’ background in diet and nutritional consultation for athletes. “It’s like something you do as a mother,” explains Lucas. “You don’t necessary tell someone you’re taking care of them, it’s just something you do.” Still, this is far from stereotypically bland raw vegan food, and meat still makes the cut—it’s just served in smaller portions with unusual cooking methods, unusual ingredients and—you guessed it—nary a deep fryer in sight.

A pretty display of shaved root vegetables like burdock, parsnip and various types of radish comes with kefir, pickled walnuts and walnut vinaigrette ($13). The pork loin and cider-glazed belly are accompanied by lentils, kale and Jerusalem artichoke ($24). A mixture of wild mushrooms and tiny chestnut agnolotti are bathed in a kombucha-sherry broth poured tableside ($13). Desserts include a raw chocolate mousse with pumpkin kefir cream and hibiscus syrup ($9). Ursa may disapprove of greasy deep-fried indulgence, but thankfully the health-conscious ethos doesn’t go as far as banning alcohol. Bar manager and sommelier Clayton Cooper offers a list of mainly Canadian, Italian and French wines, plus a selection of boozy cocktails like the Vast Improvement: gin, Aperol, Lillet Blanc, white wine and orange bitters ($13).

Ursa, 924 Queen St. W., 416-536-8963, ursa-restaurant.com

(Images: Food Network Canada/Insight Productions)

With the sophomore season of Top Chef Canada set to premiere on March 12, Food Network Canada has finally introduced the 16 chefs hoping to cook their way to $100,000 (and, lest we forget, a GE Monogram kitchen). The group (which, perhaps responding to feedback about season one, is a tad more multicultural) once again contains six Torontonians, among them Marben’s Carl Heinrich and Ruby Watchco’s Ryan Gallagher. Tasting the food will be new host Lisa Ray, alongside head judge Mark McEwan and resident judge Shereen Arazm and a spate of guests that includes culinary personalities (Top Chef Masters winner Marcus Samuelsson) and sundry celebrities (handyman Mike Holmes, actor Alan Thicke, Kenny vs. Spenny’s Spencer Rice). We round up the Toronto contestants, starting with Victor’s David Chrystian »

(Image: Fraser Abe)

Dish readers gazing out the windows of their westbound 501 streetcar might have noticed the recent boards covering the entrance to Brooklynn at Queen and Northcote. No, the bar, co-owned by Zak Kellar and Ryan Boudah (and definitely not named after hipster ground zero), isn’t shuttering forever—in fact, it’s expanding. We spoke with Kellar, who told us that when the neighbouring Dufferin-Queen Animal Clinic moved across the street, the building’s landlord offered them the opportunity to grow. The place will now house a small art gallery, mostly featuring the work of their friend Krista MacFarlane, and the capacity will increase from slightly over 100 people to slightly over 200. So in case you ever felt there weren’t enough places on Queen West to get sloppily drunk before taking in a little art, your prayers will be answered. The renovated space is expected to open by this weekend.

Our main course: roasted sea scallops with a sweet apple-vanilla chutney (Image: Andrew Brudz)

At Reds, the 12-year-old Financial District staple of the power lunch crowd, award-winning chef Michael Steh has created an uncommonly attractive Winterlicious lunch menu ($20). Unlike so many, which require careful planning to weed out the duds, the prix fixe offerings here feel practically fool-proof (in addition to our selections, high praise goes to the spinach salad with duck breast and the bacon-wrapped beef tenderloin). We start with the ham hock and pig’s head terrine, which is formed into a patty, deep-fried and served warm. It’s smoky, salty and crispy, with a sweet apple and pear sauce that benefits from the coarse texture of stone-crushed mustard seeds. We suggest tiny bites; you’ll want to savour this dish. Next up, roasted sea scallops with a sweet apple-vanilla chutney. The plump bivalves arrive perfectly blackened on the outside and are served on a bed of creamy pumpkin risotto, with the added crunch of salt-candied pumpkin seeds. For dessert, the panna cotta tasting is an adorable collection of three flavours: strawberry with white chocolate–covered rice crisps; tart lemon with meringue; and rich Nutella with crushed hazelnuts. You’ll want to hurry up and get here before the prices soar back after February 9.

The cost: $39, including tax, tip and a glass of pinot grigio ($9).

The time: 70 minutes, with a reservation.

Reds, 77 Adelaide St. W., 416-862-7337, redsbistro.com

Nothing like an old-fashioned on the glacial rocks

Seizing on a new and unique way to sucker people into paying exorbitant prices for water-based products, a man in Chile chipped five tonnes of ice from a glacier in Patagonia, which he allegedly planned to sell as “designer ice cubes.” The Guardian reports that cops busted the man as he was driving a refrigerated truck with about $6,200 worth of illicit ice that would have wound up in fancy cocktails in Santiago, Chile. The ice, by the way, was taken from Jorge Montt, which ranks among the world’s most rapidly shrinking glaciers—it’s retreating at a rate of half a mile per year, according to the Guardian. In addition to making us not want to live on this planet anymore, this story leaves many lingering questions. Is glacier theft the next big bartending trend? What other landmarks might we desecrate in the name of a perfectly chilled old-fashioned? Could the Leafs raise some extra cash by selling cubes of centre ice? Read the entire story [The Guardian] »

(Images: cocktail, thebittenword.com; glacier, Luis Argerich)

More like probably denied (Image: Jon Sufrin)

Summer—a.k.a. patio season—is still months away, but that isn’t stopping the Toronto and East York Community Council from raining on everyone’s parade in advance. Seven proposals for “boulevard café permits,” including from Campagnolo and the Queen West location of Dark Horse Espresso Bar, are on the agenda for the upcoming Valentine’s Day meeting of community council. In each and every case, city staff members have recommended that the application be denied. (To be fair, most of the time at least some nearby residents have opposed the patios.) At the same meeting, the Greektown on the Danforth Business Improvement Association will continue its battle against Toronto’s inconsistent rules on patio hours. Last year, a stretch of Danforth eateries won the right to keep their patios open until midnight, but a few party animals just couldn’t help themselves and broke curfew—so city staff has recommended the privilege be withdrawn. See the full list of doomed patio proposals after the jump:

Dark Horse Espresso Bar
684 Queen St. W. (patio on Euclid Avenue)
Patio for 22 patrons
Staff report | Proposed floor plan

Campagnolo
832 Dundas St. W. (patio on Euclid Avenue)
Patio for 30 patrons
Staff report | Proposed floor plan

Woodlot Restaurant
293 Palmerston Ave.
Patio for five patrons
Staff report | Proposed floor plan

Café Stella
1261 Bloor St. W. (patio on St. Clarens Avenue)
Patio for 28 patrons
Staff report | Proposed floor plan

Mullins
537 College St. (patio on Euclid Avenue)
Patio for 49 patrons
Staff report | Proposed floor plan

Paris Bakery & Pastry
654 Lansdowne Ave. (patio on Wallace Avenue)
Patio for 40 patrons
Staff report | Proposed floor plan

White Swan Restaurant and Lounge
836B Danforth Ave.
Patio for five patrons
Staff report | Proposed floor plan

Greektown on the Danforth pilot project
Extended patio hours for the Greektown on the Danforth BIA
Staff report | List of participating businesses and violations