By Nikki Gill
The Annex Hotel has more than gorgeous rooms and an attractive lobby café and bar to offer Torontonians and travellers: The Commons is officially open, and just like the hotel, this restaurant-meets-bar is carving out a space that’s all its own. When partners Trevor Speis, Justin Fong and Andrew Peek got together to launch the … Continued
By Erin Neilly
Although the phrase “eating your feelings” conjures rom-com images of jilted lovers crying into tubs of Ben & Jerry’s, for television personality John Catucci, it evokes a much more enduring concept of food’s relationship to our emotions, communities and personal identities. Catucci’s childhood home is five blocks away from us as we sit at his … Continued
By Erin Neilly
My first real job was cooking at Three Small Rooms, then the acknowledged best resto in Toronto. I thought it was pretty cool, as jobs went: Until I went to visit my grandmother, whose first words were: “We sent you to Wellesley for this?” People who grew up in Forest Hill (or anywhere else fancy) … Continued
By Nikki Gill
Laissez Faire, a new venture from the team behind the popular King and Portland pub, Locals Only, has ambitions of offering a new standard of dining to the regular Financial District fare of super-casual happy hour pubs and bars, and tony white tablecloth dining rooms. Their approach: Meeting both of these evening stops in the … Continued
By Erin Neilly
The site of the former Electric Mud barbecue joint has been resurrected as Superfly (5 Brock Ave.), a snazzy new snack bar inspired by 1970s New York, led by alum of the Drake Hotel. Expect cocktails, sharing plates too pretty to eat, groovy tunes and an all-year-round patio to keep the party going into winter. One … Continued
Toronto hasn’t traditionally been seen as much of a global high-end dining destination, but one little seven-seater restaurant is going to change all that. Chef Masaki Saito has won international acclaim for his two-Michelin-starred Sushi Ginza Onodera in New York. Now, he has moved to Toronto to open a sushi restaurant specializing in his signature … Continued
Fet Zun has replaced Bar Begonia in the Annex. This isn’t the first time that co-owners Anthony Rose and Robert Wilder have remade a restaurant. Earlier last year, they turned Rose & Sons from a diner serving up nostalgic food to a full blown delicatessen, and in the past few years, the duo has been … Continued
By Erin Neilly
If there’s one thing bees and many city dwellers have in common, it’s a love of gardens. That’s good news for both because it means there’s hope for reversing the decline of bee populations worldwide. Cities like Toronto are important refuges for pollinators and could ultimately hold the key to their survival. Canada is home … Continued
Here you have it, the top 50 restaurants of 2019, ranked by some of the most celebrated chefs in the city. Sixty of them, in fact. Chefs like Patrick Kriss, Nuit Regular, Grant Van Gameren and Anna Chen all told us what their favourite spots are and why they love them, and we drew up … Continued
In this new restaurant renaissance, chefs are no longer simply the people in the back of the kitchen, turning out dishes — now, they are name brands and entrepreneurs. They’re business owners, Instagram influencers, celebrities. Among the most well-known chefs of the Toronto dining scene, only some of them still work their kitchens. The others … Continued
A restaurant that serves matzo ball soup — for 12 bucks! — is getting right out on the edge. Not in the way you’d imagine. OK, it’s not pork belly (God forbid) with kimchee and palm sugar blah blah blah. It’s simple and old school and traditional. But you’d best be careful when you take … Continued
