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Best New Restaurants: Toronto Life’s much-anticipated April issue is on newsstands

Toronto Life is proud to announce that James Chatto’s annual list of the city’s 10 best new restaurants is now on newsstands (his five honourable mentions can be viewed here).

The restaurants are ranked as part of “Where to Eat Now,” our 12-page food feature that also notes the trends we love, the trends we hate and the ones with which we have a love-hate relationship.

Newsstand buyers should be pleased to know that the April issue also comes with our guide to dining out in the GTA, complete with 350 star-rated reviews of Toronto Life–recommended restaurants.

Bon appétit!

| 1 Comment » March 11, 2010 | 11:53 am | Toronto Life Staff

Best new restaurants 2010: James Chatto names five honourable mentions

(Image: Renée Suen)

Toronto Life’s annual ranking of the city’s 10 best new restaurants is in our April issue, on newsstands now. Despite the lacklustre economy, it’s been a banner year for eating out. Here, James Chatto picks five more new restaurants are worth lining up for.

| 13 Comments » March 10, 2010 | 4:12 pm | James Chatto

In Print

Toronto’s most extravagant Japanese dining experience

Masaki Hashimoto’s incredibly arcane kaiseki restaurant is unique in North America. As James Chatto writes, for $300 a head, before booze, tax and tip, it had better be.

Read the full story here >>

| Leave a Comment » February 23, 2010 | 9:11 am | Toronto Life Staff

In Print

Sasha Chapman on the return of the TV dinner

mcewan_grocery_ The chatter started months before Mark McEwan opened the doors to his gourmet groceteria last June. The choice of location, which was then a tired strip of Lawrence East, seemed quixotic at best. As boutique shops go, it was cavernously large: at 22,000 square feet, it was 33 per cent bigger than Pusateri’s, which until then had been the first and last word in high-end groceries in Toronto. And then there was the timing. Weren’t we in the middle of a recession? Surely shoppers were trading down, looking for bargains. Would they really pay $12.95 for chicken caesar salad? Or $6.25 for a squat 250-millilitre jar of salad dressing?

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| Leave a Comment » December 11, 2009 | 4:57 pm | Sasha Chapman

Aprons & Icons

David Lee and his chicken cartilage take home top honours at the Toronto edition of Gold Medal Plates

Crisp chicken skin and chicken cartilage: David Lee's winning dish at the Toronto edition of Gold Medal Plates

The bar was raised mighty high last night for the city’s haute cuisine scene with a head-to-head cook-off between some of Toronto’s most dazzling chefs. Mark McEwan (Bymark, One), Jason Bangerter (Auberge du Pommier), John Kwan (Lai Toh Heen) and seven other star cuisiniers battled it out at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre for the Toronto title of Gold Medal Plates—a national fundraiser for Canada’s Olympic and Paralympic Athletes. Held in seven cities across the country, Gold Medal Plates selects, by jury, each city’s top chefs, then asks them to create a medal-worthy meal. With plating assistance from Olympians (like dishy rower Adam Kreek), the meals are then judged by a panel of tough-to-please palates, which included food writer James Chatto (who is also GMP’s National Culinary Advisor) and last year’s Toronto winner, chef Patrick Lin.

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| Leave a Comment » November 20, 2009 | 5:06 pm | Matthew Hague

Deathwatch

Carman’s Dining Club steak house finally put out of its misery

Carman's Dining Club, 1959-2009 (Photo courtesy of Google)

Arthur Carman’s storied and troubled steak house on Alexander Street went into hibernation this summer, never to wake up. This makes the restaurant—credited with introducing Toronto to garlic bread—the latest Village establishment to disappear in recent months (the list also includes Crews and Tango, Bigliardi’s, Il Fornello and Zelda’s).

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| 34 Comments » November 19, 2009 | 11:51 am | Karon Liu

In Print

It’s official: gastropubs are the new tapas bars

The new locals: the Queen and Beaver (Photo by Jessica Darmanin)

“Food and pubs go together like frogs and lawn mowers,” wrote the unswervingly provocative British restaurant critic A. A. Gill. “Pubs don’t do food; they offer internal mops and vomit decoration.” He didn’t entirely mean it, of course: the same article ends with a declaration of passionate love for a dish he had encountered in a London pub—a thick potato soup with a large island of pressed foie gras melting in the middle. But as a general observation it seems sound enough, in Canada as well as in England. Anyone who has accidentally ordered a meal in one of our fake Irish or English chain pubs knows the fried snack food and industrial meat pies are as phony and mass-produced as the pissy commercial beer and the Sherlock Holmes decor.

• Read the rest of James Chatto’s column from the November issue of Toronto Life »

| Leave a Comment » November 5, 2009 | 10:20 am | James Chatto

Opening

Just Opened: Haisai: James Chatto talks to Michael Stadtländer about his new, somewhat straightforward (but still deeply idiosyncratic) restaurant

If you build it, they will come: Michael Stadtländer's new Singhampton restaurant, Haisai (Photo courtesy of Haisai)

Michael Stadtländer, chef, environmentalist, multimedia artist and all-around gastronomical guru, left the world of regular restaurants behind in 1993 when he bought Eigensinn Farm, a 100-acre Grey County property where he’d prepare feasts for a few lucky guests at a time. This September, he’s returned to the fold with Haisai, a 28-seat restaurant and bakery in the village of Singhampton. The new spot shares the same whimsical style; he built all the furniture by hand and spent two years decorating the fairy tale–like rooms (think pebble-encrusted walls, seashell wall sconces, light fixtures fashioned from sawn-off wine bottles and the odd pair of antlers).

Here, we talk to the chef about his latest career move.

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| 9 Comments » October 15, 2009 | 12:22 pm | James Chatto

Aprons & Icons

Cookbook fracas: Susur Lee, Marc Thuet and other Toronto foodies displeased as Canadians left out of 100 Emerging Culinary Stars

Shut out: Canadian chefs have been left out of COCO

Backcountry bias: COCO: 100 Emerging Culinary Stars Chosen by 10 of the World’s Greatest Chefs snubs Canuck chefs

The country’s top chefs and food writers are outraged that an upcoming book profiling the world’s 100 most promising chefs does not include any Canadians. The 448-page book titled COCO: 100 Emerging Culinary Stars Chosen by 10 of the World’s Greatest Chefs will also contain recipes by these young, non-Canadian chefs. When Toronto writer Shaun Smith learned that there is still one slot left in the book, he promptly started a letter-writing campaign to the COCO’s British publisher, Phaidon, making the case for squeezing in some CanCon.

The letter (full text below) explains how disappointed the signatories are with the list. It’s an impressive collection of names: 24 of Canada’s top chefs and food writers have thrown their support behind Smith’s campaign, including Susur Lee, Jamie Kennedy, Marc Thuet, Anthony Walsh, Guy Rubino, Anne Yarymowich, Lucy Waverman and Toronto Life’s own James Chatto.

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| 9 Comments » July 29, 2009 | 12:38 pm | Karon Liu

Restauran-TO

Carman’s steak house closes for the summer

Carman’s—the ivy-shrouded steak house in the gay village—is closing its doors for three months starting in June. The closure piqued our interest for two reasons: it was announced via radio, and it comes in the middle of the restaurant’s 50th anniversary year. We spoke with one staff member, who said the place has previously shuttered during the summer months and assured us that the scheduled closure isn’t recession-driven—it is meant to “give everyone a break.” Further phone inquiries were met with suspicion and more than one hang-up.

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| 7 Comments » May 29, 2009 | 9:57 am | Karon Liu