A very fine line divides what is real from what isn’t, and things cross back and forth all the time. Standing here in the Village at Blue Mountain, for instance, at the foot of Collingwood’s ski hills, my feet are set right on the flickering cusp of actuality. Just as the sloping Niagara Escarpment in front of me isn’t really a mountain, and just as the snow up there didn’t fall from the sky but was blown from machines, this isn’t really a village. Like its elder siblings at Whistler and Mont Tremblant, it is an elaborate artifice, built by a development company to look like some perfect Canadian version of Chamonix or Gstaad. It’s a fair resemblance. At night, rosy-cheeked families and laughing bands of merrymakers flock to the cafés and bars that stand on every street corner. They go shopping in boutiques or head to the Village square, where a bona fide log fire blazes away in front of the bandstand. Those who have purchased a vacation property here will tell you that the real estate is certainly real enough, with a penthouse condo going for just under $600,000. But behind the smiley face bonhomie is the multi-billion-dollar presence of Intrawest, the Vancouver-based company that has been building the Village since 1999.

In our culture, we are taught to distrust artificial perfection. We know from science fiction B movies that any man-made utopia is always a front for something more sinister, which is why I was extra careful this morning as I walked Blue Mountain’s snow-softened lanes. But then something truly weird happened: in the space of a couple of hours, faux resolved itself into fine. Pinocchio turned from a puppet into a boy. And it all had to do with a restaurant.

Centro, on Yonge Street, was barely a year old when Armando Mano joined the staff back in 1988. He began as a food runner (always so friendly and polite, with a professional’s memory for faces and names) and worked his way up as a waiter and then manager, watching as the stars came and went: in the kitchen, Rafaello Ferrari, Michael Bonacini, Marc Thuet and David Lee; in the front of house, the original owner, Franco Prevedello, and his successor, Tony Longo. Mano had come from nothing, a kid from a Portuguese fishing village, speaking no English, raised by his aunt. It pained him to watch as Centro, once Toronto’s most powerful restaurant, slipped into mediocrity. It also pained Bill Holland, a loyal customer and CEO of CI Financial. Three years ago, he and another partner, Mike Wekerle, provided the wherewithal to make Mano and chef Bruce Woods Centro’s operating partners. A smart move: they’ve turned Centro around.

The same quartet are the new proprietors of Centro by the Hill, in the Village, right at the foot of the ski lifts. Until last Thanksgiving, this was the Original Motor­cycle Café, a bar with a clientele who weren’t too concerned about slopping beer onto the black cement floors. In two frantic months, Mano and Woods have transformed the two-storey place. The black and chrome biker decor has been replaced with floors of white tile (to withstand ski boots and snow) and red and yellow-ochre walls hung with old photographs of urban life (in wry contrast to the dazzling views of the ski slopes). Downstairs is casual; upstairs offers cloths on the tables and wine cabinets to catch the candlelight. But this is no arty boîte: the place seats 230.

The Centro name carries plenty of weight in the neighbourhood. Even before they opened, they were fully booked for New Year’s Eve, and every day brings familiar faces to the door—Toronto regulars checking the new place out. Meanwhile, the locals hired by Mano and Woods are eager to share names and numbers of local suppliers, farmers, cheese­makers and mushroom growers—even a winemaker. (You didn’t know there was a Collingwood winery? It’s called Georgian Hills, and it makes credible chardonnay and an intense, pleasantly spicy seyval blanc from its own vineyards.) Come the fall, says Mano, Centro by the Hill will have the wine list in the area; right now, they’re starting with a modest card of 105.

Woods’s menu, which will be executed here by chef Evan Dickinson, has been very carefully devised. The Centro name brings certain expectations of sophistication. “So many wealthy Torontonians have chalets up here,” points out Mano, “and we can’t disappoint them. At the same time, we’re trying hard to attract the locals. People around here know quality, but they don’t want to feel exploited in terms of price.” The team must also play to their location, with skiers stomping in, needing to be fed quickly, an après-ski crowd, a late-night clientele craving steak frites or grilled cheese sandwiches. The solution is one that Franco Prevedello would approve of: keep it simple and give people what they want. Here’s a finely minced steak tartare, slightly smoother than the classic version, tasting of beef and capers. Here are king crab leg cakes, dense and rich, topped with mango and roasted pepper salsa. Veal marsala with portobello mushrooms is exemplary, the tender meat thickly cut and juicy, slightly crusted with flour and served with asparagus and roasted potatoes. Spaghetti and soft veal meatballs in a smooth, tasty tomato sauce will be the crowd-pleaser, so down-to-earth even small children will love it.

Good, honest food: that’s what brought the Village to life, made me see it not as a theme park but as something approaching a real location, an actual human settlement. Theme parks specialize in inedible junk food—drop a restaurant of quality into that environment and it looks like some kind of freak. But add a second good place and suddenly everything changes. Suddenly, you have a town. In Whistler, where everything is on a much bigger scale, Araxi and Bearfoot Bistro are dazzling contenders on any list of B.C.’s top 20 restaurants. At Blue Mountain, we now have Centro as a companion to one of the neighbourhood’s culinary pioneers, three-year-old Oliver & Bonacini Café Grill.