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J. P. Challet at his new Queen East bakery (Images: Signe Langford)
Queen Street East has been steadily attracting culinary entrepreneurs for the last decade or so, but with prime spaces available for rent and condos and townhouses going up at every turn, the pace has really picked up. French ex-pat J. P. Challet, a culinary craftsman of many trades, is the latest to try his hand with Le Matin, a new authentic French bakery that’s slated to open in December.
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Toronto’s Ici Bistro and Campagnolo are two of Canada’s 10 best new restaurants according to En Route, Air Canada’s in-flight magazine. Coming in at fifth and seventh place respectively, the big selling point for judge Sarah Musgrave seems to be their relaxed atmosphere in the big city. She writes that the tranquility at Ici is “contagious” and admires chef Jean-Pierre Challet’s avoidance of the whole angry Frenchman shtick. As for Campagnolo (whose name means “country bumpkin”), Musgrave calls the place “youthful, loose, sophisticated and at its best when relaxed—more like an Italian on vacation.” She also expressed relief that it’s not another “authenticity-obsessed trattoria.” We sense a pattern, especially since she ranked the cheerful and unpretentious Local Kitchen and Wine Bar over Buca last year. Frankly, we’re also a little surprised Campagnolo got the nod over the supremely buzzy Acadia. Oh, and the best new restaurant in Canada? St. John’s elegant and unfussy Raymonds. En Route’s website has the full list of winners.
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
With artisanal flours, custom-made ovens and full-time bakers, restaurants are turning the pre-dinner breadbasket into an indulgence in its own right
Two neighbourhood restaurants serve up light-handed renditions of our rib-sticking favourites
(Image: Vanessa Heins)
The comfort food revolution has brought us much to be thankful for, including cheaper, more casual restaurants, and the glories of deep-fried mac-and-cheese, but it hasn’t exactly delivered a surge of culinary innovation. Spurred on by a sputtering economy, the comfort trend spawned a wave of barbecue joints, gourmet burger shops, neighbourhood pubs and by-the-book bistros, and it introduced childhood-evoking staples like cookies and milk to scores of restaurant menus where the “licorice root, three ways” used to be. It offered certainty when everything else around us seemed ready to collapse, not only for diners but for restaurateurs, too.
Comfort eating, like love and psychotherapy, is driven by equal measures of longing (for simpler times) and industrial-grade denial (s’mores are less fattening when they’re made with single-estate chocolate from São Tomé), powerful motivators both. So most chefs have been happy to feed our cravings without letting their own high-minded notions get in the way. Read the rest of this entry »
(Image: Lorne Bridgman)
FOR A CINQ À SEPT Read the rest of this entry »
Devoted locavores should head to Beast after work Wednesday through Friday, when former Jamie Kennedy chefs Scott and Rachelle Vivian serve up nose-to-tail small plates—including pig’s head pappardelle for only $4. Lovely Quebec and Ontario beers for pairing are also just $4; a number of wines are $5 a glass. 96 Tecumseth St., 647-352-6000.
Jennifer Decorte and J.P. Challet at Ici Bistro (Image: Davida Aronovitch)
Ici Bistro is open for business. No, really.
Two years after they signed the lease on 538 Manning Avenue, J.P. Challet and Jennifer Decorte’s modern French bistro is finally serving dinner. The official grand opening isn’t until mid-November, but the place has its liquor licence and has been packed for the past week. All of its 24 seats are reserved for the next 14 days, too, thanks to the restaurant’s very long and public fight for survival. Guests have graffitied a wall with well wishes, and neighbours have even brought gifts. One local couple has booked three times in Ici’s first week of operation. “It’s the only restaurant we’ve ever worked at where everybody hugs each other,” says Decorte. “It’s like a family.”
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A farewell to Arms: J.P. Challet bids farewell to the Yorkville institution (Image: windsorarmshotel.com)
Master chef J.P. Challet is leaving the Windsor Arms Hotel’s Prime just five months into his tenure—and nine years after doing it the first time. His company Jean-Pierre and Co. unceremoniously pulled out of the steak house after a deal to take over the hotel’s food and beverage program fell through. Challet served his last supper for the Arms at a 2,000-person function at Exhibition Place last Sunday and is now looking to restart construction on his once-hyped Harbord Street project, Ici Bistro.
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Sound and fury: many are irked by the loud revellers in West Queen West (Image: 416style)
There was the moratorium on new restaurants on Ossington, the end of community pizza nights at Christie Pits and the brouhaha over Ici Bistro because teenage gangs were attracted to J.P. Challet’s croissants. Now the Star is reporting that West Queen West is a hotbed of hooligans because places like The Drake are serving more booze than food (somehow, this is news). Customers leaving these establishments are noisy and have a penchant for “public urination and vomiting,” says the paper. It’s an old neighbourhood issue that has flared up again, with local councillors Adam Giambrone and Gord Perks wondering if the city should cap the number of bars on Queen West. There’s just one problem: technically, Toronto has no bars.
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Bespoke bread from Marc Thuet (Photo by Renée Suen)
It’s no secret that 2009 was rough for restaurants—“It’s a year a lot of restaurateurs are happy to see go,” says C5’s Ted Corrado—but with the new year almost a month old, optimism is back on the table. We talked to some of the city’s top chefs about five culinary trends for the coming year.
1. Less Is More Read the rest of this entry »
Small, chef-run restaurants that are down-to-earth in both atmosphere and culinary style. Chef Jamie Kennedy, who’s focusing on the Gilead Bistro, a decidedly more casual restaurant than the Wine Bar he sold last fall, anticipates more “chef-driven” spots like J.P. Challet’s Ici Bistro and Grant van Gameren’s Black Hoof. Claudio Aprile, who’s working on his second restaurant, Origin, agrees: “I’m hoping that we see a lot more restaurants that are open kitchen, 30 seats, three line cooks.”
We hear that George Friedmann of the Windsor Arms has asked local legend J.P. Challet and his team to take over the Yorkville hotel’s food and beverage service, including a reinvention and possible renaming of its main restaurant Prime. No dates have been confirmed for the takeover, and questions remain about the future of Challet’s most recent project, Ici Bistro (but it appears that recent plumbing problems might keep the Harbord Street hot-spot-that-never-was closed for the time being). Check back next week for full details.
[Update: The full story on Challet's move to the Windsor Arms is available here.]
Once-sleepy Harbord Street leaped into the spotlight last year when it became the setting of Toronto’s latest NIMBY vs. business debate. Citing residents’ rights, crime and the strip’s uncertain future, deputy mayor Joe Pantalone tried to keep a new restaurant—Ici Bistro, helmed by famed chef J.P. Challet—from getting a liquor licence. His intervention may have had the opposite effect he was looking for: Torontonians turned their focus to the south Annex and realized that Harbord isn’t as stuffy (or dodgy) as the councillor would have them believe. With its gradually expanding array of shops, galleries and cafés, Harbord is fast becoming a destination for diners seeking an alternative to Ossington and Queen West. We take a look at 25 seminal spots, old and new, along a street in transition.
(Sam James photo, Jessica Darmanin; Harbord Bakery thumbnail, Danielle Scott)
After winning over Annex residents and fighting a protracted battle with various bureaucracies, chef J.P. Challet and his partners are being granted a liquor licence for their latest restaurant, Ici Bistro. The news came down late yesterday and can be taken as a victory for cooler minds. The licence itself has a few provisos—15, to be precise—that include a ban on video arcades and loud music. But perhaps the key condition of the licence is that it cannot be handed down to any new business on that property without another hearing with the Alcohol and Gaming Commission. This should be good news to deputy mayor Joe Pantalone, who opposed boozing at the bistro out of fear that a yet-unheard-of sleaze spot might one day move in, peddle hooch to local teens and tear the community asunder.
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Joe Pantalone: city councillor, benevolent shepherd (Photo: joepantalone.org)
Being a city councillor is a tough job—just ask deputy mayor Joe Pantalone. Fresh from killing Ossington’s buzz, he now finds himself on an increasingly lonely crusade to deny a liquor license to J.P. Challet’s new Harbord Street bistro, Ici. Ostensibly, Pantalone wants to ensure a bad precedent isn’t set and that the license doesn’t stay with the venue if the restaurant closes, causing the whole street to descend into a crime-ridden hell (you know, again).
While 285 people signed a petition in support of the alcohol bid and have voiced their support to Pantalone’s office, the councillor isn’t swayed.
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