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Zagat’s 2012 survey picks Toronto’s best restos and settles that pesky average tipping question

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).

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Restauran-TO

December 7, 2011 | 11:25 am

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Culinary team behind the Trump Tower’s new Stock restaurant is suitably well-stocked

When Stock, the flagship restaurant in the Trump International Tower, opens its doors next year, it will be one of the highest in the city: both in metres above the ground (it’ll be on the 31st floor) and almost certainly in price—after all, the logo is a fork struck through a dollar sign. The Trump brand is known for sparing no expense and charging appropriately, and it’s hired a suitably pedigreed staff, featuring alums of some of Toronto’s top restaurants, to run the place.

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From the Print Edition

October 5, 2011 | 10:36 am

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New Reviews: Café Belong, Elle M’a Dit and Estiatorio Volos

Farmers’ market fine dining at the Brick Works, stylish Greek food downtown and a proper bistro on Baldwin

CAFÉ BELONG star
550 Bayview Ave., 416-901-8234

Chef Brad Long’s soaring new room, looking out on the Evergreen Brick Works, will doubtless appear in international travel magazines. The interior design, by John Tong of 3rd Uncle, is reminiscent of an enormous reclaimed farmhouse. The menu, executed by former JK Wine Bar chef de cuisine Dan DeMatteis, is built somewhat earnestly (“Food Is Fuel, Food Is Medicine, Food Is Love,” it announces in flowing script) around the ingredients that appear at the Brick Works’ weekly farmers’ market. There are some fantastic dishes, including a plate of cured meats with lovely smoked duck breast, trout with a slightly sweet cure, and smoked whitefish and fennel that’s been sweetened on the grill and topped with pickled ox-eye daisy buds. A hot pot of steamed mussels, good clams and a few oysters is properly done, if a bit humdrum. By contrast, the sweet and sticky pork with apples—cubes of melting, crisped-up pork belly—is deadly good. But the sum of a meal here is a little underwhelming—the food is well prepared, and the ingredients are as virtuous as a Slow Foodist’s newborn babe; it’s just not that different from the food at Ed Ho’s Globe chain, or Mildred’s Temple Kitchen, or Ruby Watchco. It’s fresh, it’s local, it’s familiar. A liquor licence should be coming any day now. In the meantime there’s house-made lemonade and sodas. Mains $15–$24.

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TV Diner

July 5, 2011 | 5:23 pm

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We chat with the winner of Top Chef Canada season one

We caught up with the winner of season one of Top Chef Canada last night shortly after the show aired to get their impressions on the season and find out what they’re doing with the loot (the grand prize was $100,000, along with a GE Monogram kitchen). And yes, we’re keeping things intentionally vague to stave off spoilers. Read our Q&A and find out who won, after the jump.

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From the Print Edition

May 12, 2011 | 8:30 am

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Bringing Sexy Back: Chris Nuttall-Smith takes on Aria and Toca

After three years of restaurant restraint, Aria and Toca, two unabashedly flashy new spots, are giving diners a reason to get dressed up again By Chris Nuttall-Smith

Opulence, I missed you. I missed high thread-count table linens and hand-blown water glasses and even edible gold leaf a little. I missed the dining rooms whose owners gave carte blanche to talented designers, insisting only on “something grand.” But mostly, I missed gasping when I walked into restaurants—having to stop to take a space in, to admire. Though restraint wasn’t all bad for dining culture these past few years, it wasn’t always easy on the eyes.

Two ambitious, expensive, flashy new dining rooms have opened downtown in recent months, one of them from a hotel chain that’s synonymous with conspicuous luxury, the other from a pair of neighbourhood restaurateurs who’ve come out shooting for the moon. Both are fine dining (more or less), and both are likely to make you gasp when you enter.

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From the Print Edition

April 20, 2011 | 9:11 am

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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
By Jason McBride | Photography by Sandy Nicholson

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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From the Print Edition

March 30, 2011 | 10:05 am

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Best New Restaurants 2011

Oysters from Frank's Kitchen

This year’s crop of restaurants, from a million-dollar dining room to a brazen burger joint, pushed Toronto’s culinary culture in creative, comforting and blessedly cheap directions. Here, the 10 new spots that are redefining the way we eat, drink and play in the city By Chris Nuttall-Smith | Photography by Ryan Szulc

See the list »

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From the Print Edition

March 30, 2011 | 10:05 am

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The Year in Dining: our chief critic dishes on the city’s big food trends

Crostino with egg from Brockton General; Cheese from Enoteca Sociale; Bitter greens got some love; Beau's craft beer from Zócalo; Porchetta and Co.'s sandwich

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Restauran-TO

February 10, 2011 | 10:19 am

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Muskoka’s Windermere House latest annexation in the ever-growing Oliver & Bonacini empire

After three new restaurant openings last year (O&B Canteen, Luma and O&B Café Grill), a $1 million facelift at Canoe and a host of new restaurants at Bay stores announced just last week, it seems as though nothing can hold Peter Oliver and Michael Bonacini back. Adding to their portfolio expansion, Oliver and Bonacini announced today that it will become the new food service provider at Muskoka’s historic Windermere House, one of the oldest hotels in Canada.

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From the Print Edition

October 20, 2010 | 9:44 am

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Empire state of mind: Chris Nuttall-Smith takes on Scott Conant’s Scarpetta

Celeb chef Scott Conant opened his third outpost of Scarpetta this summer. Too bad it looks, feels and tastes like a branch plant By Chris Nuttall-Smith

(Image: Lorne Bridgman)

This city’s corps of celebrity chefs has lost some of its swagger in recent years. Lynn Crawford has retreated into what tastes like semi-retirement; Jamie Kennedy’s mismanagement cost him, and the city, his best restaurant (anybody been to Wine Bar lately?); Marc Thuet can’t seem to find a winning formula for his once-vaunted King Street space; and though I’m eager to be proven wrong on this point, Susur Lee is too busy chasing fortunes abroad to give it his best back home.

Scott Conant, on the other hand, is young and hungry, and his Scarpetta, in the new Thompson Hotel, is the first unapologetically expensive and formal room to open here since George, on Queen East, way back in 2004. Conant is also the first U.S. celebrity chef to build a satellite in Toronto. So sure, the city’s gluttonous class got excited: new blood, naked ambition, world-class cooking and all that. One chef even said privately that he hoped Scarpetta’s arrival would force the coasting locals to step up their game.

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Aprons & Icons

September 24, 2010 | 12:27 pm

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RIP: Arthur Carman (1925-2010), the legendary restaurateur of Alexander Street

Carman's Dining Club at 26 Alexander Street (Image: Google)

Arthur Carman, the renowned proprietor of Carman’s Dining Club, near Maple Leaf Gardens, passed away at his home Tuesday. He was 84.

Born Athanasios Karamanos in Greece, Carman and his storied namesake steak house once represented the epitome of fine dining in Toronto. Carman’s opened in 1959, with clientele that included Al Green, Nat King Cole, Lorne Greene and Sammy Davis Jr. Diners still reminisce about the smell of garlic in the air and the nostalgic decor that stood out in a neighbourhood that evolved from quiet residences in the Leafs’ backyard to a thriving gay village dotted with high-rises. The restaurant closed last year just as it celebrated its 50th year in operation.

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From the Print Edition

August 30, 2010 | 2:21 pm

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Full Throttle: Chris Nuttall-Smith takes on Parts and Labour

The Parkdale it spot is a raucous hybrid of fine dining and indie cheek. It’s loud, stylish and double-dares you to eat fried pig face By Chris Nuttall-Smith

(Image: Ryan Szulc)

They started jacking the stereo around 8 p.m., just as we were eating the chopped raw lamb with herbed, salted lard. By the time the horse tenderloin arrived, it felt as if a maniacal toddler had been handed control of the dial. Groups of young, aggressively stylish women tottered in, past the velvet rope, past the bouncer with the neck tattoo and under the decorative, gold-leafed satellite dish that its designer (one of the restaurant’s owners) described as a “Hegelian dialectic between high and low.” The music, thumping from the five JBL speakers arrayed above the bar, kept rising, as if in salutation. We had to press our ribs into the edge of our long, too-wide communal table and shout to hear each other when we bothered trying to talk at all.

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Restauran-TO

July 29, 2010 | 1:46 pm

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Prime Steakhouse unveils its new chef’s new menu

Prime, that famed steakhouse at the Windsor Arms Hotel, has become a revolving door for chefs, of late. After executive Stephen Ricci left earlier this year, alumnus J.P. Challet (he helmed the kitchen during Prime’s 1999 relaunch) returned to liven up the joint. Just five months into his tenure, Challet abruptly announced his resignation. “I don’t believe in the steak house. I don’t believe in fine dining anymore,” he told us in June. The restaurant has managed to pick up the pieces with a new head chef—Richard Andino of Flow—and brand new menus. There are also plans for an all-new restaurant at the hotel.

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Opening

March 22, 2010 | 12:47 pm

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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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