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It’s 4 p.m. on Friday, and you don’t have a dinner reservation. Still, there’s no need to fret (or waste your night waiting for a table). We just called some of the city’s hottest restaurants and found three that can squeeze in two for dinner tonight. Now it’s up to you to get dialing and snag a table before they’re all gone. Today: Yours Truly, Lee, and Bannock.
All stories relating to Yours Truly
Friday Night Bites: tables for two at Yours Truly, Lee and Bannock
Mother’s Day Guide: 10 ways to treat your mom to a memorable day out
(Image: Anice Jewellery)
Your mom loves you, so she’ll no doubt coo over a standard Mother’s Day bouquet. However, you can really show the depth of your filial devotion by giving a gift that involves spending time together. Below, ten decadent experiences around the city that will make her feel pampered—and will make you look good.
Trend We Love/Hate: ever-longer tasting menus
Engaged in a never-ending game of friendly one-upmanship, the city’s chefs started launching ever-more elaborate tasting menus this year. Don’t get us wrong: we love the creativity on display. But when a tasting menu lasts four hours and costs $200, dinner feels like a hostage situation that ends when we pay our own ransom. Below, Toronto’s longer tasting menus, ordered by the number of courses.
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Slurp Noodlefest moves to 99 Sudbury for its second—and final—edition
(Image: Igor Yu)
After a sold-out run at The Great Hall in March, Slurp Noodlefest is returning for a sequel on April 2o at 99 Sudbury. This time, ramen powerhouses Momofuku and Kinton will be serving their novel noodle dishes alongside the likes of Nota Bene, Yours Truly and, oddly, Pizzeria Libretto. Double Trouble Brewery and Chateau Des Charmes are joining Slurp vets Tromba Tequila and Dillon’s Distillery to provide libations. Once again, dishes will run $5–$10, and there’s a $10 entry fee. Ramen fanatics should move fast—the first Slurp sold out, and organizer Suresh Doss has pledged that after this, he’ll be “putting this ramen thing to rest.” Find out more »
Five top restaurants for full-on, blow-your-budget indulgence and awe
Buca’s glam warehouse space, just off King West (Image: Emma McIntyre)
1. Buca
The moody King West restaurant hums with gorgeous people devouring equally gorgeous food—like pig’s-blood fig tarts and delicate ricotta-filled zucchini flowers—prepared by chef Rob Gentile. The $75 pizza with white truffles is reason alone to celebrate. 604 King St. W., 416-865-1600. Read the rest of this entry »
Jeff Claudio is leaving Yours Truly at the end of March
(Image: Yours Truly)
Yours Truly’s 29-year-old head chef, who came to Toronto by way of some of the world’s most celebrated kitchens, is exiting the Ossington strip restaurant and the city. Replacing Claudio is Lachlan Culjak, who has worked in the kitchens of Toronto institutions Splendido, Nota Bene and Scarpetta and trained at Noma, a world-renowned Danish restaurant that receives close to 100,000 reservation requests a month. The new chef says he’ll continue Claudio’s lauded 20-course tasting menus, which propelled Yours Truly to the top of our list of the city’s best new restaurants last year. Claudio plans to travel around the United States indefinitely before moving to London, England, where he hopes to start his own restaurant.
The Dish Power Rankings: Top Chefs and Bieber power
Toronto Life’s weekly assessment of the restaurants with the biggest buzz, the longest lineups and the toughest tables to snag.
On Monday, the contestants for season three of Top Chef Canada were announced, catapulting their respective restaurants onto this week’s power rankings. Meanwhile, the mighty power of the Biebs bumps up the hype for an Annex diner, and the depth of Toronto’s appetite for brunch tacos is revealed.
The Dish Power Rankings: buzzing diners and taco insurgents
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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Glas is launching a vegetarian tasting menu
Local beets with black olives, pea shoots and horseradish foam (Image: Courtesy Glas)
Leslieville’s Glas Wine Bar is getting in on the tasting menu trend that’s been sweeping Toronto restaurants. Yours Truly led the charge with their Carte Blanche menu last year, followed by Keriwa (which later reversed course), Actinolite, Buca, Farmhouse Tavern and Chantecler, whose menu launches this weekend (stay tuned for more on that).
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Review: A-OK Foods, Yours Truly’s spin-off ramen and snack bar
Sichuan Tsukemen (Image: Renée Suen)
Jeff Claudio, the chef at the Ossington strip’s Yours Truly, recently devoted his kitchen to a studiously ambitious tasting menu. Fans of his cheaper bar snacks must get their fix at this spin-off location above a Queen West convenience store. The room resembles a South Asian street food stall as reimagined by Björk, with concrete block server stations, cedar shingle panelling and jade-green picnic tables for communal dining.
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Year in Review: 2012’s biggest food trends, from the shadow return of fusion to the reign of ramen
Taste moves in waves: one year tall food is on every menu in town, and the next year, it’s a half-forgotten embarrassment. Sometimes, though, those embarrassments come back in a new guise. This year saw the quiet return of certain tendencies that we thought were long-buried, like fusion cuisine and wine bars, as well as the full-blown emergence of others that were bubbling away just below the surface, like tacos and, of course, ramen. Below, a roundup of what was hot in 2012.
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The Momofuku Effect: How David Chang took over the city’s menus long before Momofuku even opened its Toronto doors
(Photographs courtesy Momofuku)
The New York mastermind behind Momofuku is one of the most copied chefs of the last decade. His brand of fusion—Asian street food elevated to fine dining—has been inspiring Toronto chefs for years. In fact, if you’ve eaten at the restaurants below, chances are you’ve already tasted Chang’s influence. Here, eight Momofuku signatures and their Toronto counterparts.
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The Dish Holiday Gift Guide: 12 last-minute finds for food lovers
Buying gifts for foodies gives you an excuse to actually purchase some of the fancy ingredients and beautiful tools you’ve spent the rest of the year lusting after. And even though you have to give them away, there’s a good chance the recipient will invite you for a taste of the finished results. Below, we’ve rounded together 12 perfect last-minute presents—from a killer bottle of bourbon to a killer night out—for the fellow food fanatics on your list.
The Month That Was: the Toronto restaurants and bars that opened and closed in November
Santouka Ramen was one of the many ramen shops to open this month (Image: Karolyne Ellacott)
Opening
- Skin and Bones—Daniel Clarke and Harry Wareham, both formerly of Enoteca Sociale and Pizzeria Libretto, have opened the doors to Leslieville’s newest wine bar with chef-nomad Matthew Sullivan (Boxed, Maléna) in the kitchen. Read our Introducing post »
- A-OK Foods—Yes, it’s another spot serving ramen, but this Queen West snack bar is owned by the trio behind Yours Truly and serves house-made ramen noodles. Read our Introducing post »
- Rose and Sons—The first of Anthony Rose’s promised trio of restaurants opened with little fanfare and no liquor licence last week on Dupont. Rose is still tinkering with the menu, offering only brunch and lunch, but he’s launching a full dinner service on December 6. Read our Dish post »
