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Sloppy, drippy, salty, meaty, fruity, earthy and cheesy: Chris Nuttall-Smith takes on M:brgr’s $100 burger

The $100 brgr and its associated finery (Image: Colin Griffin, M:brgr)

I ate two Kobe beef patties for lunch yesterday, plus a couple slices of bacon, a wedge of foie gras, an ounce of gloopy brie, a slick of fig jam, a stack of really fabulous grilled pear slices, four asparagus spears, piave del vecchio cheese, garlic-roasted ham (effing delish), porcini mushrooms (I’m thinking they weren’t porcini, but that’s what the menu said), three white bread buns, an olive, and a side each of black truffle slices and honey truffle aïoli. All this cost me $100, plus tax and tip, and the burger—yes, it was a burger—was so tall that it took several tries and a near-miss nasal-labial injury to get an honest bite of the thing into my mouth.

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Opening

January 11, 2011 | 5:10 pm

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Introducing: M:brgr, home of the $100 burger

Ask Jeff Ditcher what it’s like setting up an upscale burger bar at the tail end of Toronto’s burger craze, and he’s not too worried. The traveller, wine collector and founder of M:brgr opened his second location at King and Spadina on Sunday (the original location is in Montreal), despite the presence of Craft Burger and Grindhouse in the immediate vicinity. His rationale? Toronto’s burger demand is only going to get bigger. And besides, he says he’s got an edge on the competition, with waited tables, an extensive wine list, a resident mixologist and an awe-inspiring list of toppings ranging from the odd to the gourmet. Oh, and he’s got the only joint in town with a $100 burger on the menu.

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The Dish

Opening

June 17, 2010 | 4:22 pm

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Salt Wine Bar finally set to open on Ossington

Salt Wine Bar is the green-trimmed storefront just south of The Saint, pictured last summer (Image: Google)

The Saint is the only mystery resto left on Ossington. The much-anticipated Salt Wine Bar, which has been tantalizingly papered up since last summer, should be opening within the next few weeks. Owners say it will be a simple, competitively priced bar-eatery-store that will focus on cuisine from the Iberian peninsula, so expect Spanish and Portuguese products and dishes. Chef Dave Kemp, previously of the utterly un-Iberian Prego Della Piazza in Yorkville, will head the communal tapas-style menu. True to the bar’s name, cheeses and charcuterie—up to seven different types of prosciutto, including some house-cured meats—will be staples.

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Food Porn

June 14, 2010 | 1:02 pm

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A photographic tour of one of Toronto’s best brunch menus

A mere six months after opening, the brunch at the Hoof Café has become the city’s most coveted (witness the lineups snaking out the door). Co-owner Grant van Gameren and chef Geoff Hopgood combine the Hoof’s snout-to-tail philosophy with breakfast standards, creating a menu that is both playful and indulgent. Beautiful and inventive cocktails by co-owner and house mixologist Jen Agg round out meals that are satisfying to the eye as they are to the palate.

Here, our side show tour of the west end’s hottest brunch menu »

The Dish

De-licious

June 9, 2010 | 3:28 pm

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Summerlicious 2010: the restaurants have been announced, so let’s pick them apart

The view from Toula: be a tourist in your own city (Image: Ian Muttoo)

First things first: there’s not much change under the Summerlicious sun. All of the old favourites are here (including Canoe and Bymark, which always sell out first). Seven Numbers, which by Winter/Summerlicious rules is allowed only one location, has swapped out its Danforth location for its Eglinton one. Winterlicious participant Conviction is out for the summer edition as the second season of Conviction Kitchen films in Vancouver. The new owners of Crush Wine Bar are apparently not feeling the ’licious love—nor is Moroco. And while The Citizen’s digs are alive and kicking under new ownership, its vaunted replacement, Ruby Watchco, is opting out.

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The Dish

Weekly Lunch Pick

June 7, 2010 | 9:14 am

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Where to eat lunch this week: Hemispheres

The restaurant at this downtown hotel goes all out for its weekly $27 prix fixe

Steak, poutine and slaw at Hemispheres

The place: The Metropolitan Hotel’s lobby-level restaurant offers classic hotel glitz and glamour. Surrounded by beech wall panels and large murals, diners may peer into the open kitchen for some culinary theatre or meditate on the white orchids that decorate every table.

The crowd: The kitchen acts quickly to cater to the strict schedules of busy lawyers, judges and city hall officials, including one ex–mayoral candidate. We’re told that plates generally take no longer than 15 minutes to arrive at tables, “unless it’s chicken.”

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Weekly Lunch Pick

May 3, 2010 | 8:33 am

4 Comments

Where to eat lunch this week: Auberge du Pommier

The $18 midday menu at this legendary French fixture is the best lunch north of Bloor

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From the Print Edition

April 30, 2010 | 9:24 am

5 Comments

Four of Toronto’s best food splurges

Despite the ascendancy of comfort food, some occasions still require more than a tricked-out sandwich. These four posh dishes are worth the splurge.

The chitarroni all'astaco from Mistura (Photo by Daniel Shipp)

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The Dish

Restauran-TO

February 11, 2010 | 2:10 pm

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Is Cinq 01 the new Amber?

Cinq 01: Take the boy out of Yorkville, but not Yorkville out of the boy (Photo by Karon Liu)

After finding success among the socialites with Yorkville’s Amber, nightclub king Toufik Sarwa opened Cinq 01 to create a more grown-up venture—a place where the emphasis is on the food rather than the guest list. But no such luck. Since the spot opened last fall, it has been increasingly packed with the well heeled, making this the first time since the ’90s that the glitterati are partying on College Street (and this time, they’re not slumming it).

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Read All About It

December 10, 2009 | 8:46 am

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Mustard ad made entirely of meat, debunking rumours of a Jennifer Aniston-Jamie Oliver partnership, the caloric overload of eggnog

Military beefcake Lord Kitchener shills for Colman's

• A Colman’s Mustard’s advertisement featuring Lord Kitchener’s face recreated with meat is making veggie boosters like Paul McCartney lose their kale-burger lunches. The ad is a recreation of an iconic British WWI poster and is composed of sausage fingers, beef, chicken and sliced ham. The creepiest part might be that the yellow-tinged eyes are real, likely plucked from a pig. [Guardian]

• Meet Canada’s culinary David, Mathieu Cloutier, who upset Goliaths like Iron Chef America winner Rob Feenie and Nota Bene’s David Lee to win this year’s national Gold Medal Plates championships. Hitherto unknown, the chef started Montreal’s 30-seat Kitchen Galerie two years ago with partners Jean-Philippe St-Denis and Axel Mevel, hoping at least to break even by serving six clients a night. The dining room has been packed ever since. This past July, Cloutier and St-Denis opened a second spot, larger and more stylish, called Chez Edgar. The chef’s winning dish was an inventive and quirky foie gras steamed in a dishwasher, then served cold with muscat wine jelly and long peppers. [Globe and Mail]

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The Dish

Read All About It

December 1, 2009 | 9:38 am

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The world’s best whisky, Circa on brink of bankruptcy, the first lab-grown pork

(Photo by Danielle Scott)

• Since before Circa even opened in 2007, club watchers wondered endlessly if Peter Gatien’s enormous party palace could possibly draw in enough of a crowd to survive. Gatien left the club last March, followed by a number of original staffers, and the mega-club has been inching ever closer to bankruptcy since. Now it looks like it may go over the brink, as Circa has just sent out letters to its estimated 100 creditors. The fact that no self-respecting 416er over the age of 24 would be caught dead there is partially to blame for the club’s demise, though Circa will try to continue operations after restructuring its debt load. [BlogTO]

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Restauran-TO

November 4, 2009 | 11:00 am

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Temperance be damned: eight of Toronto’s largest restaurant dishes

(Photo by Jon Sufrin)

When it comes to flouting moderation at the dinner table, Toronto may not be Texas, but it definitely has its share of big food. Vegetarians have a few outsize items to choose from—Urban Herbivore’s mega-muffins, the three-inch falafel balls at Tov-Li—but it is meat eaters who have most of the opportunities to attack large portions with primal zeal. We hit the street to find the establishments able to satisfy that deep-seated lust. From upmarket foie gras to a diner’s mile-high burgers, here are eight of Toronto’s biggest restaurant dishes, each begging to be conquered.

: (Photo courtesy of Amazon. Provided as an example of size only)

: (Photo by Jon Sufrin)

: (Photo by tranchis)

: (Photo courtesy of Dutch Dreams)

: (Photo courtest of Lone Star Texas Grill)

: (Photo by Jon Sufrin)

The Dish

Aprons & Icons

September 18, 2009 | 12:44 pm

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In its 20th year, Feast of Fields is better than ever—and we have the pictures to prove it

Langdon Hall’s contribution: “Elvis” ice cream, composed of peanut butter, banana and candied bacon (Photo by Kate Allen)

No, Jamie Kennedy, we couldn’t possibly eat another. Those heirloom tomato, arugula and crispy pancetta BLTs were fantastic, but we’re completely stuffed. We already had two fire-toasted brioches with peach puree from the Auberge du Pommier tent. Yeah, the lavender-infused chantilly kind and the kind with foie gras. We’re trying to save room for the peanut butter, banana and candied bacon ice cream hand-churned by the guys from Langdon Hall over there. You’re right, all the micro-brewery beer probably isn’t helping the whole situation.

We’re at Feast of Fields, the annual fundraiser for sustainable agriculture where every big-name, pro-local chef in the GTA shows up and churns out food made with organic, all-Ontario ingredients.

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Rumours & Rumblings

September 9, 2009 | 1:03 pm

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Corey Mintz’s review of Café du Lac sparks Twitter drama

People have always gone a little batty over poutine (Photo by Rob Ireton)

It’s was a tad more intriguing than the typical Twitter fight when several fake Corey Mintz accounts were created this week allegedly by a chef at Café du Lac who didn’t like Mintz’s review (he pooh-pooh’d the soggy fries in his foie gras-topped poutine) in the Star last week.

The aliases popped up and added all the people that follow the real Mintz, prompting the Twitterati to alert him of the impersonators ironically spewing out Tweets about all the fake Mintz accounts out there.

“Unpleasant. But the price we pay for free public discourse. Thanks everyone,” Mintz first Tweeted.

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Restauran-TO

August 21, 2009 | 10:12 am

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Riding the gravy train: Smoke’s Poutinerie plans new locations and a poutine truck

Smolkin shows off his triple pork poutine: bacon, pulled pork and sausage atop fries (Photo by Karon Liu)

Fries, curds and gravy—three simple ingredients that, when combined, create a dish as Canadian as hockey. Toronto’s love affair with poutine started years ago with haute incarnations from Jamie Kennedy and in restaurants like Bymark (it’s hard to go wrong when both lobster and fries are involved). When Café du Lac opened in 2008, we swooned for its foie gras–topped version. It was perhaps inevitable, then, that poutine-focused restaurants would soon follow, and the first was thanks to Ryan Smolkin, an ex-advertising exec with no hospitality experience.

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