Starting Thursday, a kiosk on the 300 level of the Air Canada Centre (ACC) will offer Chef Jamie Kennedy’s locally-sourced, gourmet French fries. The fries, made from local Ontario yellow-flesh potatoes, will be sprinkled with two different kinds of sea salt and thyme.
Salt opened last month, trying to skirt the moratorium on new establishments by using a combination of the location’s existing grocery licence and a catering licence. But, it didn’t last long. The restaurant is now closed, perhaps temporarily, perhaps until the end of the City of Toronto’s one-year moratorium on new restaurants and bars on the hot dining strip south of Dundas Street West.
JOANNE KATES, CANADA’S TOP FOOD CRITIC, ON LIVING LA DOLCE VITA RIGHT HERE IN T.O.
THIS TOWN IS overrun with burger joints. And you don’t need to be a vegetarian to feel the strain. Restaurateurs who decide to open up yet another place for patties best have a dedicated, original spin on the theme. Retro Burger approaches the trend with a 1980s angle, and in this way, they succeed.
After nearly five years at Vertical, one of the business district’s busiest restaurants, Chef Tawfik Shehata has parted ways with management. He tells us he’s already fielded calls from some of Toronto’s top restaurateurs, including one who owns several of the city’s best regarded eateries.
Celebrity Chef Mark McEwan has created a beautiful modern Italian space with Fabbrica, complete with huge, leather-appointed booth seating and rooms done in dark and light woods with gun metal blue appointments. The pizza isn’t as thin as Queen Margherita or Libretto and, at first, it makes you wonder because it doesn’t defy gravity the way pizza aficionados in Toronto are used to.
Forest Hill sushi hotspot EDO played host Wednesday to Iron Chef Kimio Nonaga of Tokyo, who demonstrated his mastery of Japanese cuisine by whittling a 120-pound yellow fin tuna into bite-sized slabs of mouth-watering sashimi. Even cooler? He did it with a long samurai-style sword.
The menu is blessedly brief and new each day, beginning in the loveliest of ways. Each diner receives two amuse bouches in ceramic spoons. Tonight the treats are salmon salad with capers and sirloin with whipped blue cheese. And… we are off!
Enoteca Sociale, while being undeniably Italian, offers anything and everything but pizza. It’s described as ‘food that nonna makes’, but this is one hip granny.
While he’s yet to bring his show to T.O., celebrity chef, author and television star Anthony Bourdain is in town promoting his new book, Medium Raw. We caught up with Beast’s Scott Vivian, tasked with catering a VIP event for Bourdain, and asked him to list the top five Toronto restaurants he’d take the 54-year-old if given the chance.
As if you needed an excuse to have a sip of the frosty brew, Toronto’s first ever Beer Week kicks off today with events across the city. Check out our top five picks from TBW’s event list.
New York City’s popular Bistrot Bagatelle brought its operation to Toronto’s Roosevelt Room for two brunch parties this past weekend. In New York, regulars to the Bagatelle Brunch include Kanye West, Sienna Miller, Tyra Banks, John Legend and more, but nary a famous face (as far as we could tell) showed up for the Toronto iteration on Saturday.
