We first heard the rumour in the summer of 2006: Yannick Bigour­dan and David Lee, owners of the super-deluxe Splendido, were opening another place and their partner was none other than legen­dary restaurateur Franco Prevedello, the man who reinvented Toronto fine dining in the 1980s with his high-energy restaurants Biffi, Pronto and Centro. Prevedello had left the industry a decade ago—what had brought him back? Would he manage the room, or would Bigourdan? Would Splendido suffer? The location was spectacular—on the street level of the 15-storey federal court building at Queen and University, close to the opera house. Walking past, I peered in at the space—7,000 square feet of bare grey concrete, some massive support columns—then they covered the windows with paper and the long wait began.

Two years later, on a hot morning in early July, I’m back for a second look. The place has a name now—Nota Bene—and though paper still masks the windows, the inter­ior has been transformed. A bar stretches across the front of the restaurant, with seating for 35. Behind it and up five steps is the dining room: an elegant modern design with Brazilian cherrywood floors and chartreuse leather banquettes. Filling a quarter of the room are the 35 young men and women who will be the restaurant’s front-of-house team, chosen from more than 250 applicants.

Dapper in a striped shirt and silk tie, Bigour­dan is pumped, making little jokes as he explains what they are about to experi­ence this morning: learning the numbers of tables and seats, how to set up cutlery and plates, serving each other dishes from the kitchen where Lee and his brigade of 25 are already hard at work. “Yes, you can eat the food,” he says. “I expect you to ask a thousand questions! Today will be chaos—the only day that is allowed!”

Chaos by Bigourdan’s perfectionist standards seems more like well-ordered calm to me. Anyone hoping for the manufactured melodrama of restaurant openings on reality TV would find scant entertainment here. No raised voices; no klutzy mishaps. The servers are more like professional actors in rehearsal, familiarizing themselves with a set. They practise putting down the wooden charcuterie board for an invisible customer at a hard-to-reach corner of a banquette. They study the place setting laid down by the managers, then reproduce it. Bigourdan leans in, moves a knife half an inch to the right; the server nods. The staff at Splendido have had years to perfect their choreography; this team has a week.

Bigourdan is still smiling as he joins me at a distant table, and he laughs when I ask what it’s like to work with Prevedello. “That’s what everyone wants to know! He’s a madman! All the stories about him are probably true—the obsession with detail, the way he used to yell at his employees one moment, then put his arm around them the next,” he says. “But he’s mellowed. I’m not intimidated—I’m honoured.”