The vast area north of St. Clair is well represented in Winterlicious this year. Here, our 14 picks.
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Winterlicious 2012: Toronto Life’s picks north of St. Clair
GALLERY: All the chefs and dishes from last night’s Gold Medal Plates gala
Langdon Hall’s Jonathan Gushue with his gold medal–winning dish
Toronto’s annual Gold Medal Plates gala took place last night at Metro Toronto Convention Center. Celebrated in nine cities across Canada, the event brings together some of the best chefs and wineries with the city’s well-to-do to raise funds for Canada’s Olympic and Paralympic athletes. Last night, Langdon Hall’s Jonathan Gushue took gold while Buca’s Rob Gentile got the silver and Michael Steh of Reds finished with bronze. Gushue will go on to compete in the Canadian Culinary Championships in Kelowna, B.C. next February. For those who didn’t manage to score one of the $400 tickets, we’ve got you covered.
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See how chefs (from Frank’s Kitchen and Woodlot) feed each other at a fundraiser for one of their own
Chef Robbie Hojilla, the man of the hour, pictured with his family. (Image: Renée Suen)
Over the last couple of months, we’ve reported on events where cooks and restaurateurs have donated their time and resources to give to others. Last Monday at Frank’s Kitchen, we dropped in on a fundraiser thrown for one of their own: Woodlot cook Robbie Hojilla. Just 25 years old, Hojilla has been diagnosed with heart failure and is currently not able to work. Given that the restaurant business lacks the sort of financial fallbacks of other jobs (like health benefits or sick leave), chef Frank Parhizgar and his wife, Shawn Cooper, the owners of Frank’s Kitchen, decided to help the talented young chef with an industry-wide fundraiser. Donating space, food and alcohol, the couple joined up with the staff of Frank’s and Woodlot to offer a multi-course dinner complete with wine pairings.
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Brassaii gears up for summer with a revamped patio, a new menu—and a new chef
Brassaii’s dining room was renovated last year (Image: Karon Liu)
The makeover of King West has been going on for over a decade now, and members of the old guard (relatively speaking) are trying to reinvent themselves to keep up with some of the new kids on the block. Brassaii, one of the first resto-lounges to call King West home, is doing just that, with a newly renovated patio and accompanying menu—executed by a new chef.
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Roger Mooking sells stake in Nyood to focus on family, new album and cookbook
Toronto chef and R&B singer Roger Mooking is streamlining his life—again. In 2010 he sold his first-born restaurant, Kultura Social Dining, to nightclub impresario and actor Frank Nyilas, and a few weeks back he parted with his beloved Nyood, selling his share to yet another Clubland fixture, Mary Filigno (BLVD Room, Blurr).
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Introducing: Fishbar, the new Ossington seafood restaurant from the people behind Salt
Fishbar’s dining room is adorned with Edison lights and salvaged and reclaimed furniture (Image: Gizelle Lau)
After keeping eager would-be patrons waiting for almost six months, Fishbar, the new restaurant from William Tavares (co-owner of Salt Wine Bar just a few doors away), will officially open tomorrow. We snuck in during Fishbar’s soft opening to see what it was all about and meet the staff Tavares has assembled for the front and back of the house.
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The sipper club: meet the city’s competitive cabal of top sommeliers
Will Predhomme belongs to a competitive cabal of top sommeliers who sniff, sip and spit their way through hundreds of bottles a week. They do this to help you decide what to drink with your dinner, while making you think it was your idea all along
One hundred and fifty-one people have reservations at Canoe tonight. Among these are many Bay Streeters, a couple celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary, dozens of people on dates, including the bar manager from Crush, and a young woman who plans to propose to her boyfriend over dinner. The two private dining rooms are fully booked.
Canoe, part of the ever-expanding Oliver and Bonacini empire, is routinely considered one of the finest restaurants in the city. Last summer, in a rigorous competition held by the Canadian Association of Professional Sommeliers, known as CAPS, Canoe’s head sommelier, Will Predhomme, was proclaimed Ontario’s best. Predhomme has devoted a third of his life—he’s 29—to wine scholarship. He now knows more about wine than almost anyone in Toronto.
Just after 5 p.m., the bar area begins to fill up with commuters sipping cocktails as they wait for the traffic on the clogged Gardiner, 54 floors below, to dissipate. One of the restaurant’s first guests, a retired trial lawyer, arrives. As a young female host escorts him to his large corner table, he puts an arm around her shoulder. “I don’t like to pay bills,” he says. “I want a fucking account. Last time I was here, I offered those ladies”—referring to the hosts who greeted him at his last visit—“$300 and told them to set up an account for me. And I still don’t have one.” He and his three dining companions, Canoe regulars, have brought in several bottles of their own wine, including a cabernet franc from the ex-lawyer’s private vineyard in Tuscany. When Predhomme arrives at the table to discuss the wine, the ex-lawyer, captivatingly bratty in a way that only the rich and sort-of-powerful can be, repeats his complaint. “Look, I spend about $50,000 a year at Bymark, and I’d do the same here if I had a fucking account.” Predhomme is unmoved, but gracious. “If you give me your contact information,” he says, “I’ll make sure that it gets to the right people.”
“You’ll get me an account?”
“I’ll look into it.”
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Five things we learned about O&B from Corey Mintz’s behind-the-scenes feature
With the recent announcement that Toronto’s ever-growing food service company Oliver and Bonacini Restaurants is set to make The Bay the city’s newest foodie destination with a string of in-store eateries, not long after adding food service at Muskoka’s Windermere House to its porfolio, one thing is clear: the O&B empire is officially taking over. In his recent Toronto Star feature on the corporation, Corey Mintz shadows the two men behind the company, Peter Oliver and Michael Bonacini, to find out what it takes to build an empire. (Mintz also published a “deleted scenes” post on his own blog.) Here are five things we learned.
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The Best of Winterlicious 2011: Toronto Life’s 62 favourite restaurants
(Image: Renée Suen, from the torontolife.com Flickr pool)
January is upon us, and for many hungry Torontonians, that means one thing: Winterlicious. The menus are less predictable than previous years—crème brûlée’s out, lentils du Puy are in—so even the ’Licious haters might have a reason to take advantage of the festival this year. We’ve already named the 12 menus that we think are the best bets, but that doesn’t begin to cover it. Here, find Toronto Life’s 62 favourite Winterlicious restaurants, complete with menus, reviews and reservation numbers.
Winterlicious runs from January 28 to February 10. Reservations are accepted from January 13 onward (January 11 for American Express users).
12 best bets for Winterlicious 2011: our chief critic goes through the menus so you don’t have to
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.
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Real Simple: Chris Nuttall-Smith takes on Enoteca Sociale and La Bettola di Terroni
Enoteca Sociale doesn’t look like much, and the cooking isn’t fancy. But this humble Dundas West spot is a revelation
(Image: Lorne Bridgman)
We’re at the bar, waiting, when the anchovies arrive: five little slivers glinting like late sun off a rippled cove. They’re fresh, quick-cured with salt and lemon, laid out over buffalo mozzarella rounds and tomato that’s drizzled with deep green oil. The dish looks almost too simple to be restaurant food. The fish taste bright and bracing, perfectly balanced against the sweet tomato and delicate cheese. Our server made the anchovies, she tells us, blushing. She’s also a prep cook. Came in at nine this morning to do a vat of them herself.
Later, on a patio that feels like a piazza, we eat artichokes fried light and crisp like you get them in Rome, then unforgettable sweetbreads, and a vortex of perfect bucatini all’amatriciana, tossed with guanciale and slicked with just enough fiery tomato sauce to make it pink. I get my fork in twice before my tablemates finish it off.
Toronto has plenty of good Italian restaurants, and if you’re willing to pay a fortune for dinner, a couple that are great—Noce, Via Allegro on a good night. But Enoteca Sociale, which opened this summer in a humble room on Dundas West, is unlike any other Italian spot in the city. The Roman-inspired cooking is utterly simple—few of the dishes have more than four or five visible ingredients—and generally brilliant. It’s free of ego, built around fresh, seasonal, impeccable produce, rooted in solid technique. The place is ambitious but surprisingly cheap, a great Italian restaurant that costs less than most of the merely good ones. I find myself counting down the days between visits. Even amid a bona fide Italian boom, it’s hard to find cooking this accomplished at three times the price. Read the rest of this entry »
Just Opened: Marben trades in the onyx for oh-so-popular reclaimed wood
Carl Heinrich with a companion in the newly redesigned Marben (All images: Karon Liu)
Splendido did it, then Centro, then Brassaii, and now Marben. Sure, they’ve all been renovated, but more specifically, they’ve all received make-unders.
Back in March, Marben auctioned off bits and pieces of its former self, including the famous glowing onyx bar, in order to make way for understated pieces, vintage fixtures and reclaimed wood. General manager Sarah Evans says the Wellington West restaurant’s overhaul was meant to lighten up the place and make it known for its food rather than its scene (Brassaii cited similar urges). Still, with the restaurant open until 2 a.m. every day and Bavette—a separate downstairs party space—set to open at the end of the month, Marben isn’t retiring from the revelry. “The city needs a rowdy restaurant,” says Evans.
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Summit Scene: dispatch from inside the G20′s kitchens by local restaurateur John Lee
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Flak jackets, photo badges and the K-9 unit are a rare sight at catering functions (more often a staple of the ensuing after-party), but they were in full force at Experience Canada, part of the G20 pavilion for the foreign press (think fake lake). I was there as a member of Nick Liu’s culinary team from the Niagara Street Café, invited to assist in presenting an Asian-inspired dish featuring local ingredients for international journalists. On the menu: General Tao sweetbreads on a bed of Asian slaw with jellyfish topped with cilantro, red pepper and sesame seeds.
Just opened: Malena, by the restaurateurs who brought L’Unità to Yorkville
(Image: Karon Liu)
Yorkville’s own little Little Italy—that block of Avenue Road where Sotto Sotto and L’Unità have stood these past few years—just got an added taste of the home country. Malena opened last week, setting itself apart from its neighbours with a focus on seafood from the Ionian Sea. “We believe that the more restaurants the better. The more people it brings in the better,” says co-owner David Minicucci, who is also a co-owner of L’Unità. “They might come here one night, see Sotto Sotto next door and decide to go there next time. We’re all friends here.”
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With a $500,000 renovation and new chef, Centro wants to be “taken seriously”
Centro's main dining room (Image: Karon Liu)
“Centro has always been good, but people have never come here for a gastronomical experience,” says owner Armando Mano as he sits in the newly renovated uptown restaurant. “They haven’t been taking us seriously for the past eight years since Marc Thuet left. We want to change that.” The revamp started in December, but the real work began two weeks ago, when demolition crews stepped in and left nothing untouched. There’s still sawdust on the sheet-covered floors, and the wall fixtures aren’t in yet, but Mano says things are on track regardless of what happens.
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