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Before and after
Faithful west-side devotees of the Golden Turtle, Ossington’s beloved pho institution, were distraught last month when they discovered it papered up. After soldiering through a post–New Year’s recovery period without the usual salty-spicy fortification, they can now breathe easy: it’s back, it’s a little shinier and the prices are unchanged. We dropped by to check out the new art, chandeliers, windows and kitchen.
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A cook does some prep work at the bar before opening (Image: Renée Suen)
Yours Truly, a new restaurant and bar on the still-hot Ossington strip, opened with no great fanfare in mid-December, but now it’s causing quite a stir. Behind the place are ex-Vancouverites Matt Cherkas, Dan Hawkins and Aleem Jamal-Kabani, who found that Toronto put up a less fierce barrier to entry than their hometown did. Initially, they’d planned on opening a little watering hole to call their own with a few bar snacks, but everything changed after they found their new chef, Jeff Claudio. At only 28, Claudio has an impressive pedigree: he’s worked at Thomas Keller’s Per Se in New York, Rockpool in Sydney and the Toronto branch of Scarpetta, where he was chef de cuisine. He also staged at Noma (a.k.a. the best restaurant in the world) and two of Chicago’s best restaurants, Alinea and Charlie Trotter’s. Hence the buzz.
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Plagued by crime and patrolled by drug dealers, Christie Pits’s green spaces seemed doomed—until fed-up neighbours did something about it. Angela Burns, who’s lived in the area since the ’70s, founded the Christie-Ossington (now the Christie Pits) Residents’ Association in 2006. One of the group’s early campaigns was a cleanup of Irene Parkette, off Shaw Street. Burns convinced fellow residents that they would have to use the park or lose it to the dealers. They organized picnics, cleared trash, installed new playground equipment and convinced police to patrol the space during periods of high activity. Within a year, the park was littered with sandbox toys, and toddlers had taken over the playground.
Burns says there were hardly any kids around when her daughter, now 20, was growing up. But in the last five years, she’s seen a steady rise in stroller traffic. A community garden and summer movie nights are also animating Christie Pits Park. “You go to residents’ meetings and weed the parkette garden together,” she says, “and the next thing you know, you’re having a drink with neighbours on their patio.”
Outside the new Danforth location of Pizzeria Libretto (Image: Gizelle Lau)
Nearly two years in the making, the much-anticipated second location of Pizzeria Libretto has opened on the Danforth in what was once the Iliada Café, bringing a little Ossington buzz to the east side. Not wanting to create a cookie-cutter copy of the original location, chef Rocco Agostino has introduced a host of new dishes to the menu, but we have a feeling people will be more excited about another feature new to the chain: reservations.
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ADDRESS: 701 Dovercourt Rd., Unit 305
NEIGHBOURHOOD: Palmerston-Little Italy
AGENT: Daiva Dalinda, Royal LePage
PRICE: $749,500
THE PLACE: A recently converted, 105-year-old Methodist church at Ossington and Bloor.
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(Image: Christopher Stevenson)
Rooftop drink Cocktail class Ice Blood orange margarita Wine by the glass
My pocket knife
I’ve had my single-blade, foldaway Buck knife for more than 20 years. It’s probably been around the world with me 10 times. I rarely go a day without needing it for something.
My bush watch
It has a barometer and a compass, which is good because I get turned around in the bush all the time (animals rarely travel in a straight line). Without my watch, I’m screwed.
My first line of defence
Bear bangers are pocket-sized noise makers for scaring aggressive animals. I’ve had so many close calls—name the species, I’ve had my life threatened by one. But I don’t believe in carrying a gun. These are great get-out-of-jail-free cards.
My literary hero
Jack Reacher, the protagonist in Lee Child’s thrillers, is the toughest guy ever. He always gets the chick and he always saves the day. The world would have been blown up so many times if it weren’t for Jack Reacher!
Image: Bellwoods Brewery
When brewers Mike Clark and Luke Pestl decided to launch the upcoming Bellwoods Brewery on Ossington (at the former Meta Gallery site), they saw a perfect opportunity to combine their love for local food, craft beer and urban gardening: Bellwoods City Hops, a project that takes the concept of a local microbrew quite a bit further than we’ve seen in the past.
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CCTV, DJ Woody and Abel Boulineau
1. JANE’S WALK (FREE!)
Inspired by urban writer/activist Jane Jacobs, this festival of walking tours, led by Toronto-loving volunteers, is all about seeing the city with new eyes. With over 170 walks to choose from, we’ve narrowed our selection down to three: (Video) Eyes on the Street, U of T prof Andrew Clement’s exploration of the downtown core’s CCTV cameras; a gentrification-focused tour of Cherry Beach; and the cultural studies pick, A Hipster’s Guide to Ossington. May 7 and 8. Various locations, janeswalk.net.
2. KARDINAL OFFISHALL (FREE!) Read the rest of this entry »
Kardi’s made some headway south of the border, signing with Akon’s Konvict label and recording with chart toppers like Estelle and David Guetta, but he’s still a hometown boy. Proof? This free concert in Yonge-Dundas Square, part of Coke’s 125th anniversary celebrations. And last year’s “The Anthem” of course. May 7. Yonge-Dundas Square, icoke.ca.
(Image: Catherine Gerson)
With a name nodding to a notorious old-world culinary delicacy, Ortolan quietly opened its doors two weeks ago in the space formerly occupied by Kathy’s Kitchen in Bloordale Village. Taking a little bit of Ossington with them, chef-owners Damon Clements (Delux) and Daniel Usher (Pizzeria Libretto) have pooled their respective experiences in French and Italian cuisines to branch out on their own on the quickly changing strip between Dufferin and Lansdowne.
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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
Workers pull fresh noodles through the pasta machine
There’s a new spot on Ossington and, amazingly, it’s not a resto-bar. Open during the day and family run, More Than Pasta brings the rustic Italian and the artisanal trends together with homespun, health-conscious pasta for at-home chefs. Inspired by their aunt’s diabetic restrictions, sisters Gabriella and Margot Micallef pioneered a low-glycerine and low-carb alternative that actually tastes good.
After The Bay announced that they’d be welcoming “the first” Topshop in Canada yesterday, Jackie O’Brien was understandably irritated. The co-owner of Jonathan and Olivia was understanding of the need for franchising, but perturbed by The Bay’s dissociating her from Toronto’s Topshop introduction. Today, O’Brien indirectly responds to her critics in a press release, stating, “Topshop approached us over 18 months ago to test the Canadian market, as they considered us to be the leading independent retailer.”
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This is the most exciting news we’ve heard all week: Max Rimaldi, Daniel Clark and chef Rocco Agostino, the partners behind Pizzeria Libretto, are planning to open a second location of their wildly successful pizza joint on the Danforth. Less than a year after Enoteca Sociale, their second venture, opened to raves, the trio is close to finalizing a lease on an east-end space. We caught up with Agostino to find out the details on the new location, set to open as early as the end of this summer.
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 »
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