Greg Couillard is busy in the kitchen of his new restaurant, Spice Room–Manyata, pickling scotch bonnet chilies with garlic and dark rum. He looks bright-eyed and slimmed down since he last cooked in Toronto (18 months ago, at Habitat, on Queen Street West), his dapper chef’s whites offset by earrings and a grey woollen hat. The excitement of another opening bubbles into his conversation, sparked by a new enthusiasm for the vibrantly spiced cuisines of Africa—more flavours he can synthesize at the stove, stirring them up with ideas from Sumatra, India, Indochina. It reminds me of other dazzlingly eclectic Couillard menus—at Stelle and Oceans in the late ’80s, and through the ’90s at China Blues and Sarkis. But those were all downtown restaurants, in location and in their bohemian inspiration. Manyata stands at the spiritual antipodes, in the heart of Hazelton Lanes.

“I know,” exclaims Couillard. “But what can I say? A lot of my Queen Street friends were horrified I was coming up to the land of Gucci and poochy and all that bullshit, where the dogs are dressed better than I’ve ever been in my life. But York­ville’s changing. The money’s much more cosmopolitan than it used to be.”

So is the kid who left Winnipeg for Toronto back in 1971 and spent the next 12 years figuring out he wanted to be a chef. When the chef-as-celebrity phenomenon burst forth in the 1980s, his flamboyant, instinctive cooking and hard-party habit enthralled the media. Post-recession, the same drugs and restlessness just seemed irresponsible.

Couillard’s fans, however, stayed loyal—even in recent years, when their hero spent months at a time out of town. Now they must find their way to Hazel­ton’s atrium courtyard. As Manyata, it seats 150 people, though Couillard’s personal domain is the 40-seat, haute-cuisine inner sanctum called Greg Couillard’s Spice Room. Cooking out of the same kitchen for the rest of the customers is Kenyan chef David Ng’ang’a. Two years ago, Ng’ang’a was working at Irie on Queen West, and Couillard appeared as guest chef, setting up a jerk pit on the back patio. When Couillard moved next door to Habitat, Ng’ang’a went with him. “We just clicked,” says Couillard. “David’s half Masai, half Kukuyu. He started telling me about his cuisine. So fascinating, so exotic! We’ve been planning a joint venture ever since.”

Not without interruption. After his Habitat contract ran out, and complaining of “palate fatigue,” Couillard flew south to winter for five months on a remote beach in Costa Rica, reading the journals of Marco Polo and swapping recipes for stewed iguana with the local matriarch. Last summer, he helped out at a friend’s restaurant in Bridgenorth, Ontario—“cooking coconut curries in a fish ’n’ chips town”—while rumour had him opening a Queen West branch of Gabby’s. The latter was almost a done deal; then the Hazel­ton Lanes space became available. “The courtyard is David’s baby; Spice Room is mine. I’ll be cooking every dish, just like I did at Stelle, drawing on almost two years of research, plus months spent as a kitchen bitch at Gandhi Roti on Queen West. And David and I are part-owners here, so this is a sticking-around deal.”