Isn’t it so saucy, so fun to order tongue and cheek at Torito, Toronto’s hippest new tapas joint? So much fun, it seems, that this has already become the young restaurant’s signature item. But chef Carlos Hernandez didn’t create it just to tickle sensibilities; it’s about flavour. “I’ll take this before beef tenderloin a thousand times,” he says. Hernandez, neither flip nor pretentious, cooks the two often cast-off meats simply but slowly until, as well as being informal and inexpensive ($9), they become yielding and luscious. It’s a small portion, and not particularly Spanish, he says, but more generally European or Latin American—“Only in North America do people want dry chicken breasts.” Sure enough, some diners cannot shake unhappy memories of cold tongue sandwiches—or perhaps just the thought of beef tongue on their own tongues—but most come back to Hernandez’s dish with delight.

Torito, 276 Augusta Ave., 647-436-5874.