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It’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: Scaramouche, The Gabardine and North 44
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Splendido chef de cuisine Patrick Kriss to take over the kitchen at Acadia
Patrick Kriss at Splendido’s pass (Image: Renée Suen)
If you haven’t heard a lot about Patrick Kriss yet, you will soon. Owners Scott and Lindsay Selland have revealed to Torontolife.com that Kriss will be stepping into the role of chef de cuisine at Acadia when Matt Blondin departs for Momofuku Daisho at the end of the month.
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Yet another new izakaya on the way: Nejibee
Toronto will be positively awash in new non-sushi Japanese restaurants this year. First there was Don Don Izakaya, which opened up in February. Then Kingyo, the popular Vancouver izakaya, announced plans to open an offshoot in Toronto this year. As well, there are three new ramen joints on the way: Santouka, from Japan, and Raijin and Kinton, both from Vancouver, the latter of which has its grand opening this Friday (it also has a new, somewhat Black Hoof-y website). The most recent announcement: Nejibee, a Japanese izakaya chain specializing in teppanyaki, will soon be opening up shop on Wellesley Street just west of Yonge. The only question: will Nejibee’s welcoming salute be able to match Guu’s enthusiastic call or Don Don’s drum?
Nejibee, 24 Wellesley St. W., 647-748-2882, nejibee.ca, @NejibeeIzakaya
Friday Night Bites: tables for two at Stock, Chiado and La Société
Read the rest of this entry »It’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: Stock, Chiado and La Société.
Friday Night Bites: tables for two at Table 17, Fabbrica and Marben
Read the rest of this entry »It’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: Table 17, Fabbrica and Marben.
Terroir 2012 recap: what we saw, heard and ate at the big annual food industry meet-up
Kevin Gilmour (sous chef at The Drake Hotel) was assisted by his crew at this pork carving station. Hunks of roasted pork were served over a peanut-ginger slaw (Image: Renée Suen)
Last week, 500 members or so of Canada’s food and hospitality industry gathered for Terroir VI at the newly renovated Arcadian Court. The theme for this year’s symposium was “The New Radicals,” a new generation of chefs that have a collaborative and unconventional approach to cuisine despite their conventional training. Symposium chair Arlene Stein had arranged a line up of the industry’s finest from Canada and abroad, assembled on panels featuring restaurateurs, writers and chefs from the old and new vanguard—most attendees agreed this year’s crop was the best yet (before the event we spoke to Australian chef Ben Shewry, as well as sustainable aquaculture champion Barton Seaver and natural wine advocate Alice Feiring.).
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Charles Khabouth and Hanif Harji to host Spanish pop-up at Storys this week
This is what the Storys building looked like as Soho House (Image: Gizelle Lau)
Last fall, Charles Khabouth (La Société, Cube) and Hanif Harji (ex-Kultura, Nyood) promised to combine their restaurateuring powers and start up a new culinary venture or three. One place, Storys, housed in the four-level complex on Duncan Street which hosted Grey Goose Soho House during TIFF, is something of a blank slate at the moment, but will eventually include a restaurant and cocktail bar, along with copious event space. For the next three days, however, Khabouth and Harji, along with chef Stuart Cameron, are hosting a three-day pop-up in the building, where they’ll be serving “an exquisite selection of innovative dishes that expand on Spain’s uncomplicated approach to fresh, seasonal, savoury food.” The tapas menu will include jamón ibérico, and there will be plenty of wine and cocktails as well. Seating is first-come, first-served, and we’d expect lineups. The pair’s other new ventures—Spanish restaurant Patria and “modern saloon” Weslodge, both on King West—are slated to open this summer. [Storysbuilding.com]
Canadian restaurants fail to place in the S. Pellegrino Top 50—again
The triumphant Noma crew, with bearded chef René Redzepi in the middle (Image: World’s 50 Best Restaurants 2012 sponsored by S.Pellegrino and Acqua Panna)
Let the ritual speculation and recrimination commence. Once again, no restaurants from Canada made it to the list of the world’s 50 best restaurants, as compiled by Restaurant magazine (and sponsored, conspicuously, by S. Pellegrino). And just like last year—but unlike 2010—no Canadian restaurants made it to the consolation prize list of numbers 51-100. Is it because Canadian cooking is insufficiently ambitious? Perhaps there’s too much plaid and reclaimed wood in our dining rooms. Or maybe the 800+ judges just aren’t familiar enough with this country’s food? Or perhaps—to get all conspiracy-theory on this—the top end Canadian restaurants don’t serve enough S. Pellegrino (yes, some Canadian chefs offer this as a reason for this country’s absence on the annual list). See the full list, after the jump »
Friday Night Bites: tables for two at Chantecler, The Queen and Beaver and Maléna
Read the rest of this entry »It’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: Chantecler, The Queen and Beaver and Maléna.
The Black Hoof is Canada’s fourth best restaurant—according to Vacay.ca’s inaugural poll
Vij’s was named best restaurant in Canada (Image: Mack Male)
Shrewdly piggy-backing on the S. Pellegrino list of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants (which comes out on Monday), new-ish travel site Vacay.ca conducted its own poll to determine the top 50 restaurants in Canada, the results of which were released today. At the top of the list is Vij’s, the much-lauded Vancouver haute-Indian restaurant, followed by Cambridge’s Langdon Hall and Montreal’s Joe Beef. The top Toronto restaurant is The Black Hoof, which took fourth place, followed by Canoe (5), Sushi Kaji (11), Splendido (14), Guu (18), Ruby Watcho (19), Scaramouche (28), Buca (31), Acadia (37), Biff’s (39), Origin (44), Wine Bar (45) and Pic Nic Wine Bar (48). The rankings were determined by the ballots of 15 judges (regular Dish contributors Renée Suen and Gizelle Lau among them), who ranked the 10 best Canadian places they’d dined at in the past 30 months. See the whole list [Vacay.ca] »
Friday Night Bites: tables for two at Splendido, One and Cava
Read the rest of this entry »It’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: Splendido, One and Cava.
La Carnita to quit its wandering ways and open a permanent shop on College Street
Could lineups like this be a thing of the past come June? (Image: Zack Simone from the Torontolife.com Flickr pool)
La Carnita, the wildly popular roving taco stand, has finally found a spot to settle down, according to a post by Corey Mintz on Toronto.com. After selling thousands of tacos out of places like the Evergreen Brickworks and OneMethod’s offices at King and Spadina, owner Andrew Richmond will be bringing his Voltron fish taco indoors to a more permanent spot at 501 College Street (formerly home to Briscola and Cinq 01). Though the original idea was to stick around the King West area, La Carnita should be open for business near Little Italy’s revelers by June (Richmond has already posted a construction photo on Twitter). His rabid fans can only hope this will mean more reasonable lineups. Read the entire story [Toronto.com] »
Friday Night Bites: tables for two at Ici Bistro, The Saint and The Grove
Read the rest of this entry »It’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: Ici Bistro, The Saint and The Grove.
Two Vancouver ramen shops coming to Toronto this spring
A couple weeks back, we told you about Kingyo Izakaya, a Vancouver cult favourite that had plans to expand to Toronto later this year. Now we bring news of two more Japanese restaurants making the trip east. First, there’s Raijin, a new ramen shop from Daiji Matsubara, the owner of Kintaro and Motomachi Shokudo in Vancouver. Raijin, currently in construction in the former Cr3asians space on Gerrard just east of Yonge, should be open in just a few weeks, permits willing (in other words: it could be a little longer). The other new ramen shop is Kinton, which owner Nobuaki Urata (who was the manager at Kintaro for seven years) tells us should be open on Baldwin sometime in May. Many devoted ramen heads have been singularly unimpressed with Toronto’s current offerings (although the new offerings at Guu have attracted early fans), but with the arrival of these two new shops, along with Japanese chain Santouka, things are about to get interesting.
