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Ever since the late aughts, when Pizzeria Libretto, The Black Hoof and Guu opened with strict no-reservations policies, lineups have become a normal part of eating out. In a new restaurant’s buzzy first weeks, waits can last three hours (see Electric Mud BBQ). Whether it’s the dead of winter or the dog days of summer, we loathe lining up.
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Trend We Hate: lineups
The Dish Power Rankings: muddied waters edition
Toronto Life’s roundup of the restaurants with the biggest buzz, the longest lineups and the toughest tables to snag.
After four weeks in the top spot, Edulis gets bumped for a red-hot new barbecue restaurant. Meanwhile, OddSeoul continues its steady rise.
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The Dish Power Rankings: brunches and bans
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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The Dish Power Rankings: feasting menus and Maple Leafs edition
Toronto Life’s weekly assessment of the restaurants with the biggest buzz, the longest lineups and the toughest tables to snag.
The biggest movement this week was lower down on the list, where over-the-top feasting meals at Catch and Dyne managed to knock off a few restaurants that weren’t quite buzzy enough (see last week’s rankings). Café Boulud took the biggest hit, slipping three places after Jared Bland took the New York superchef’s bistro to task for its lack of ambition in our February issue. Real Sports Bar and Grill makes its entry in the list thanks to the long-awaited return of the Leafs this Saturday.
The Dish Toronto Restaurant Power Rankings: game on
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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The Layover in Toronto: Anthony Bourdain’s favourite spots and best quips
Anthony Bourdain taking bone luge shots at The Black Hoof with Ezra Title; Bourdain with Scott Vivian at Porchetta and Co. (Images: Courtesy of Travel Channel)
For last night’s episode of The Layover, Anthony Bourdain and his merry crew squeezed as many of Toronto’s culinary delights as possible into their 30-odd hours in the city (we covered his trip back in July). And while he seemed genuinely impressed with some of what he saw, we’re not gonna lie: it was pretty much Bourdain by the numbers. Quirky store owner? Check! (Olivia Go of Tosho Knife Arts). Local punk band? Check! (Fucked Up). Over-the-top feats of on-air gluttony? Check! (Bone luge at The Black Hoof, expertly administered by Jen Agg). Still, there’s nothing a Torontonian likes better than to be acknowledged by an outsider—from New York, no less. In this respect, the show was a complete success, with Bourdain delivering his trademark razor-sharp backhanded compliments with relative abandon. Below, a roundup of where the Kitchen Confidential author stopped and, more importantly, what he said about it.
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Chef swap: Jesse Grasso replaces Brandon Olsen as chef at The Black Hoof
Grasso’s Twitter profile pic (Image: Twitter)
In a note posted on The Black Hoof’s blog, owner Jen Agg announced today that chef Brandon Olsen (who took over from Colin Tooke, who took over from founder Grant van Gameren) was leaving his post after a year and a half “to travel and take a little break.” (Olsen told the Dish’s Renée Suen that October 29 is his last service, after which he’ll be “driving across America for a while. Then heading back to TO.” In other words, Toronto is, thankfully, not losing the man who brought it Foie and Nutella.) His replacement: Jesse Grasso, who previously worked at La Quercia and “modern Chinese brasserie” Bao Bei in Vancouver. Agg writes that the young chef “knows his offal” (surely a requirement for the gig), and that he has the “requisite tattoos, beard and hipster glasses, but don’t judge him on that.” [The Black Hoof]
Street Style: 18 looks at the bartenders and servers of Dundas West
By Frances McInnis | Photography by Jenna Marie Wakani
The spate of new bars and restaurants on Dundas West has turned the area into a magnet for the young and stylish (although the odd Portuguese sports bar or garage still bravely sticks it out against the tide of gentrification). On a recent Friday afternoon, we stopped by to check out what the new tribe of bartenders, servers and restaurant managers wear for a long night of drink-slinging and order-taking. Alongside the ubiquitous skinny jeans, we found plenty to like: a Ryan Gosling-like hair flop, a pair of floral-print ankle boots, polka dots worn two ways. The staff at the Lakeview, which has an all-black dress code, still found subtle ways to express their personal style (a blue tanktop under a sheer blouse, a pair of deliberately mismatched ear spacers). Most of the other joints on the strip are steadfastly anti-uniform—though everyone we talked to agreed there’s one unbending requirement: comfortable shoes. Read the rest of this entry »
Grant van Gameren’s next move: Crown Cooks, a new restaurant on College
Grant van Gameren at the Black Hoof, the Dundas West charcuterie bar he co-founded (Image: Renée Suen from the Torontolife.com Flickr pool)
So this is what Grant van Gameren has been up to. Ever since the The Black Hoof chef and co-founder left that influential Dundas West charcuterie bar to take the reins at Enoteca Sociale, his many fans have been waiting for news of his next move. Now, The Grid is reporting that van Gameren will be opening up a new College Street restaurant called Crown Cooks in the former home of Grappa, a short 10-minute stroll from the Hoof. The new 70-ish-seat spot will be influenced by his recent culinary grand tour of Europe (apparently a certain Barcelona absinthe bar inspired some of the design), and will serve tapas-style sharing plates of offal, veggies and Crown Salumi, his new cured meat line. It’ll also feature a late-night menu prepped daily by the chefs, but put together by the bartenders (the working day of a cook already being quite long enough, thank you). Unlike the Hoof, Crown Cooks will be accepting reservations. Apparently van Gameren’s learned a thing or two from Enoteca. [The Grid]
VIDEO: Vice’s Munchies series takes a look at The Black Hoof
Munchies is a Vice web TV show in which the producers basically hang out with a bunch of hipster restaurateurs and chefs as they carouse, drunkenly or otherwise, around their city (highlights include a day at the beach with the Momofuku Milk Bar staff and Eddie Huang’s foul-mouthed tutorial on the right way to eat soup dumplings). Vice recently dropped by The Black Hoof to chat with Jen Agg and pals for the show’s first foray into Canada (and more Canadian episodes are apparently on the way). Highlights include Grand Electric co-founder Ian McGrenaghan’s shirtless stomach, a discussion of whether the restaurant biz is a “chauvinistic douchebag industry” (hint: it is), several shots of Pappy van Winkle bourbon and a cocktail from Cold Tea that gave Agg a “headache” in unmentionable body parts.
Bon Appétit lauds Toronto’s new “era of culinary adventure”
(Image: Renée Suen from the Torontolife.com Flickr pool)
Earlier this week, Bon Appétit published a short online guide penned by sometime Toronto Life contributor Ben Leszcz that’s devoted to the various new and ambitious restaurants that have opened in Toronto in the past couple of years, in the wake of The Black Hoof. Leszcz’s picks: Hopgood’s Foodliner, Grand Electric, Ortolan, Campagnolo, Bellwoods Brewery and, naturally, the Hoof itself. Leszcz, who moved to London a couple of years back, argues that the Hoof shook up the culinary scene, forcing Torontonians to “get used to the fact that the city’s ‘It’ restaurant used a crappy electric oven and played Arcade Fire at full blast.” The rest—long lineups for tacos in a room with blaring hip hop, say—is history. Read the entire story [Bon Appétite] »
New Reviews: Hoof Raw Bar, Lamesa Filipino Kitchen and Edulis
A raw seafood bar, a serious locavore bistro and Filipino fusion downtown
Hoof Raw Bar 
½
926 Dundas St. W., 647-346-9356
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Jen Agg, the owner of the legendary hearts-and-tongues hot spot The Black Hoof, has opened up a seafood restaurant next door on Dundas West. She brings to her new place the same meticulousness that made her original restaurant such a success. The small room is gracefully ramshackle, like a polished-up Cape Breton seafood joint, which perfectly matches chef Jonathan Pong’s short all-seafood menu. The substantial cured fish board, arranged from delicate to powerhouse, includes standouts like buttery, fragrant albacore gravlax and chorizo spice scallops. Skip the overpriced raw oysters ($34 per dozen) in favour of the baked versions, which maintain their delectable brininess despite the toasty crunch of panko flakes and layer of rich, smooth foie gras. A wildly exuberant dessert closes the meal: deconstructed sponge cake set off by stewed rhubarb, freeze-dried caramel, salt flakes and rosewater jelly. The drinks are aimed squarely at fish lovers: spicy tomato cocktails and a dozen or so wines by the glass that come with more origin stories than Batman. Sharing plates $8–$22.
These are the top 10 most-Yelped restaurants in Toronto
The Stockyards ranked number two in the list of Toronto’s most-Yelped restaurants (Image: Evan Goldenberg)
Since 2004, Yelp, that great leveller of food criticism, has been empowering ordinary diners and frustrating professional critics and restaurateurs in equal measure. Earlier this week, they announced the results of a little data mining, which revealed that Vancouver was the city with the most Yelp check-ins (Toronto ranked second) and that Guu, on Church Street, was the most photographed spot in Toronto (Vancouverites, those outdoorsy types, preferred to shoot their oh-so-lovely Stanley Park). They also revealed that Ossington’s Pizzeria Libretto, with its ever-long lineups, is the most Yelped (i.e. most-reviewed) spot in town (it currently has 207 reviews and a four-star rating). We thought we’d ask what the next nine most Yelped places were, and the good people there were happy to oblige. Below, the full list of restaurants and bars, with more than a few surprises:
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