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At Daishō, the largest of the three Momofuku restaurants, the chicken is lightly fried in a savoury batter and served family style. You’re meant to wrap the pieces in scallion pancakes, but the meat is so succulent it can be enjoyed on its own. $125 for four people. 190 University Ave., momofuku.com.
Claudio Aprile closed Colborne Lane in February with little notice in order to focus on his growing stable of Origin restaurants. Last night, at Origin Liberty Village, Aprile enlisted six of the top chefs who’ve passed through Colborne’s kitchen—Matt Blondin (Momofuku Daishō), Steve Gonzalez (Top Chef Canada), David Haman (Woodlot), Ben Heaton (The Grove), Jonathan Poon (Chantecler) and Andrew Wilson (Colborne Lane’s final chef de Cuisine)—to join him for a tribute to the pioneering modernist restaurant. Each chef created one hors d’oeuvre and one course, revealing the ways they’ve diverged since their time at Colborne but also betraying debts to Aprile’s style—right down to his idiosyncratic way of describing dishes on the menu.
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One thousand three hundred and eight. That’s how many restaurants opened in 2012—more than triple the year before, and the year before that. Toronto is in the middle of a restaurant boom that’s changing the way we eat, drink, date, schmooze, celebrate and generally revel in the city. The shimmering Momofuku triplex has dignified business execs devouring pork ssäm with their hands, and couples happily—gratefully—shelling out $400 for 10-course tasting menus. Downtowners are piling into rowdy izakayas for after-work sake and Sapporo, while Brit pubs are, to the amazement of every Firkin-going anglophile, becoming destinations for refined dining. Canadiana is no longer just a term for moose-print sweaters and maple leaf mittens, but a bona fide big-city cuisine borne of chefs obsessed with heritage meat and wild plants, preferably foraged in the Don Valley. Yes, Toronto is so flush with new places to eat that keeping up with them has become a full-time job. This year, Toronto Life’s critics were busier than ever, stuffing our faces, snapping photos on the sly and analyzing every last aspect of the dining experience. After much debate, we winnowed down 1,308 establishments to the top 10. Here, our annual ranking of the most innovative, interesting and delicious new Toronto restaurants.
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Toronto Life’s weekly assessment of the restaurants with the biggest buzz, the longest lineups and the toughest tables to snag.
Edulis’s charming (and tiny) dining room propels the restaurant to the top this week on the strength of its Valentine’s bookings. Lower down, a couple new sold-out tasting menus debut, as does College Street’s next hot brunch destination.
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Toronto Life’s weekly assessment of the restaurants with the biggest buzz, the longest lineups and the toughest tables to snag.
The Hoof Raw Bar steals the top spot this week, now that Jen Agg has revived the mega-popular Hoof Café brunch (see last week’s rankings). Over in Parkdale, a new southern Italian restaurant is gaining ground and in The Junction, there’s a new contender for Toronto’s top taco.
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Toronto Life’s weekly assessment of the restaurants with the biggest buzz, the longest lineups and the toughest tables to snag.
Momofuku Shōtō loses the top spot this week to the perennially buzzy Grove (see last week’s rankings). The Black Hoof drops off the list, but is replaced by the Hoof Raw Bar, which is hosting the return of Toronto’s favourite brunch service circa 2010. Also noteworthy: a new restaurant opens in Parkdale, likely the last until the ban is lifted, and a new tasting menu from one of the city’s top Italian restaurants.
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Toronto is in the middle of a great restaurant boom. Over 150 restaurants opened in the last year alone, most of them hyped on Twitter, deconstructed on blogs (like ours) and ranked in countless year-end roundups. Tracking the ups and downs—the praise and the pans—has never been more entertaining. That’s why we’ve decided to launch our first-ever Power Rankings, a list of the restaurants with the biggest buzz, the longest lineups and toughest tables to snag. Below, the 20 restaurants that are dominating the foodie conversation in Toronto right now.
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Tacquitos de huitlacoche at Pachuco. The huitlacoche is on the right (Image: Signe Langford)
Huitlacoche (pronounced weet-la-KOH-chay), a corn fungus that’s popular in Mexican food, has two commonly used English names: the gross-sounding “corn smut” and “Mexican truffle,” which over-promises a little on its earthy if not quite transcendent taste. It’s been showing up with increasing frequency on Mexican menus for the last few years; more recently, we’ve noted an uptick in the use of huitlacoche at other types of restaurants too. Here’s where we’ve spotted it:
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Fried chicken dinner at Daishō (Image: Renée Suen)
One of three new David Chang restaurants, Daishō has a split personality. The glass-walled room, with its dazzling bird’s-eye view of the opera house, attracts date-night couples who order from an à la carte menu of modern Asian dishes like deliciously caramelized deep-fried Brussels sprouts tossed with puffed rice and mint, succulent ruby slices of secreto (a shoulder cut steak) doused in XO sauce, and a sweet-sour-salty salad of apple, kimchee and bacon. The main draw, however, is a separate menu for groups of four to 10, who gather at picnic-style tables for large-format meals, including a heaping plate of two chickens, jointed and fried Southern style, in an intensely savoury buttermilk breading.
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David Chang’s new complex on University Avenue—three restaurants and a bar—puts a Toronto spin on a New York phenomenon
In the foodie era, standing in line for a table is a rite of passage. We wait for caviar-topped tacos one week, bacon doughnuts the next, and the longer the wait, goes our logic, the more rewarding the eats. At places like Grand Electric and Guu, the 20-somethings pose as if they’re about to enter a nightclub. This past September, a three-storey temple called Momofuku opened next door to the new Shangri-La Hotel, on University Avenue. The Momofuku lineup is something altogether different, in both its composition and its devotion: no other Toronto restaurant appeals to the same collision of suited bankers, hipsters in their beards and plaids, extended Asian families and, one night, a smirking Ken Finkleman. As the line inches closer, people take out their iPhones and snap pictures of the restaurant’s neon peach logo above the door.
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Clearly, Momofuku Toronto was September’s biggest opening in Toronto (Image: Renée Suen)
(Images: Renée Suen)
A full 18 months after it was first announced—18 months of salivating over the thought of pork buns and ramen and worrying about sounding over-eager for pork buns and ramen—the Toronto outpost of David Chang’s Momofuku group is now open. Or, rather, the Toronto outposts. The three-storey Momofuku complex, which is adjacent to (but not part of) the new Shangri-La Hotel, actually houses four different “concepts”: Noodle Bar, home of the pork buns and ramen; Nikai, a second-storey bar and lounge; Daishō, which serves “large-format” meals; and Shōtō, whose 22 seats are reserved for tasting menus.
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(Image: Renée Suen)
Up on the third floor of the Momofuku complex is Daishō, an 80-seat space devoted to large family-style meals. Ample natural light spills into the airy space by day, while at night the room is softly illuminated by retro-modern Excel chandeliers from Rich Brilliant and Willing. Completely encased in glass, the room’s vaulted ceiling is dominated by a grand finned structure made of oak, which not only brings warmth to the minimalistic space but serves as an elegant beacon along University Avenue. Around the room’s periphery are a number of four-tops surrounded by black Maruni Hiroshima chairs, while the heart of the room is made up of communal seating (there’s also a central bar and, in the southeast corner, a Chinese-style round table that seats 10).
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(Image: Gizelle Lau)
We always enjoy taking a gander at The Price Hike, where Bloomberg News food critic Ryan Sutton applies his Excel-ninja skills to restaurant menus to figure out the real price of a night out. The most recent spots in his crosshairs are Momofuku Shoto, David Chang’s new tasting-menu restaurant, which opened over the weekend just above Momofuku Noodle Bar, and Momofuku Daisho, which serves large sharing platters and opens tomorrow on the same floor as Shoto. Cutting to the chase: a meal at either of these Toronto spots costs somewhere between a little and a lot more than it does at their New York counterparts (Momofuku Ko and Ssam Bar, respectively). In fact, the price of a meal for two at Shoto, with wine pairings, tax and 20 per cent tip, comes in at… $612. Better start saving those pennies. Read the entire story [The Price Hike] »
No, Toronto’s Momofuku outposts are still not open (and it looks like the projected August opening date may not happen either), but here’s a little roundup of what we’ve heard of late. According to Momofuku PR, David Chang’s set of spots (now four in total, not the previously reported two or three) will be spread out over three floors adjacent to the Financial District’s Shangri-La Hotel, and will include Daishō (“pair of swords”) and Shōtō (“short sword”) on the top floor, Nikai (appropriately translating to “second floor”) a level below, which is probably the second-floor bar Chang referred to in an interview with Adweek, and the lunch- and late night–friendly Noodle Bar situated on the ground floor. While we already reported that Acadia’s Matt Blondin had signed on as the executive sous-chef at Daishō, we’re told that bartender Benjamin Deacon, also of Acadia, will be following him. An article on Vacay.ca also points out that former Auberge du Pommier maître d’ Joel Centeno will be the host at Daishō, which could be an indication of the level of service they’re aiming for (or not!). Meanwhile, job postings for various front- and back-of-house positions have been appearing on Craigslist for weeks.
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