Restaurants › Continental
Splendido
- 88 Harbord St. (at Spadina) • View on map »
- 416-929-7788
- http://www.splendido.ca/
In a mid-range-happy city, the Harbord strip’s elegant eastern anchor remains a rare special-occasion restaurant. Entrée prices push $40, and the cocktail list tops out at $18, and for the most part, the refined and local-focused cooking justifies the tab. A fall squash soup, for instance, tastes slow-roasted and meltingly rich, with maple foam, plus a skiff of cayenne and toasted nutmeg for back-of-throat warmth. A composed autumn salad, set off with candied walnuts and a delicious gob of broccoli purée, looks like a Riopelle canvas. The suckling pig comes with clove-enriched house boudin noir, tender-firm du Puy lentils and the smoothest, most concentrated sunchoke purée ever made. The pan-roasted pickerel, however, arrives dry and brutalized from overcooking. A special $24 dessert for two tastes like a bad joke: the Northern Spy apple cobbler, served in a small cast-iron pot, is barely warm and disconcertingly herbal; and the house-made ice cream on top looks and tastes exactly like President’s Choice. The English Countryside, with gin, rosemary-lemon syrup, cucumber, tonic and soda, should be required drinking. Charming, professional service. Mains $29–$44.
88 Harbord St. (at Spadina) | This location is wheelchair accessible
Latest posts from Toronto Life's style news feed.
- POLL: White carpet style, Rachel McAdams edition (58 minutes ago)
- Introducing: CB2, a middle finger to all surrounding furniture shops on Queen West (also, it used to be the Big Bop) (1 day ago)
- The Find: smelly jeans (seriously, they smell, and you’ll like it) (2 days ago)
- Coco Rocha doesn’t advocate airbrushing (okay, she does, but only sometimes) (2 days ago)
- Watch Hannah Sider and Gabriel Graham channel Air’s “Kelly Watch the Stars” in an Amanda Lew Kee fashion film (4 days ago)
Follow Toronto Life on Twitter, Facebook and via RSS