Restaurants › Seafood
Joso’s
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- 202 Davenport Rd. (at Avenue Rd.) • View on map »
- 416-925-1903
Legions of food snobs will laugh at you for considering this hyper-expensive seafood grill at Av and Dav. The mammary-kitsch decor—there are more two- and three-dimensional representations of enormous breasts here than in most issues of Juggs magazine—will never sit well with the humourless set. The important thing to note, however, is that the kitchen is incredibly good at cooking fish. The formula is simple: unimpeachably fresh Mediterranean seafood, grilled over coal and finished with lemon, parsley, olive oil and a bit of salt. In season, fresh sardines are sweet, mild and charred a little from the grill; whole orata is light and decadent. Sided with a hillock of Swiss chard that’s braised with cubed potatoes, and a dish of lemony basmati, the orata is also an all-too-rare restaurant meal that you can eat without regretting it afterward. (That said, with those sides, $9 and $6, respectively, the dish adds up to an incredible $60 on the bill.) Items from the regular menu are far more reasonable. While the fish soup is a rare miss (it tastes a lot like Campbell’s vegetable), the seafood pasta is easily one of the city’s best: perfectly al dente spaghettini tossed with cubes of tender octopus and shrimp, plus lemon, oil, parsley and capers; at $26, it’s worth it. The wine list is adequate, while desserts are a blast from the Tiegs and Fawcett era. The orange gelato, however, served in a frozen, hollowed orange, is incredibly good. Mains $25–$45.
- Closed Sunday
- Outdoor dining
- Vegetarian
202 Davenport Rd. (at Avenue Rd.)
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