Hemant Bhagwani, left, chef Dinesh Singh Butola, middle, and Derek Valleau at Amaya.Bite-Size Critiques
Gina Mallet, National Post Published: Saturday, January 05, 2008
Time to chew over all things gastronomic from last year.
RESTAURANT OF THE YEAR
Amaya, chef Dinesh Singh Butola; owner Derek Valleau
DISH OF THE YEAR
Shane Waite's brilliant fusion at Cru, sardines in tempura matched with lobster boudin blanc -- "an intricate fugue of flavours"
CLASSIC TORONTO
Suzanne Baby at Gallery Grill is "decorously terrific." Reliable big bang restos The Fifth (J.P. Challet), the French narrative; Splendido (David Lee), eclectic Mediterranean
GOT LEGS, WILL TRAVEL
Lorenzo Loseto (George), fashionista with depths; Michael Steh (Reds), don't eat meat without him
EAT YOUR FRESH VEGGIES
TatiBistro
KEEP AN EYE ON
Ted Pegg of Noon makes superlative baveuse omelettes. Andrea Nicholson, 35 Elm, with clever spins such as olive oil poached celeriac. Kreg Graham, Tundra sous-chef who won Calphalon's Rising Chef Challenge this year with simple unctuous flavours
BEST NEW PATIO
The sidewalk cafe at One
REGRETTABLE TREND
Increasing number of restaurants owned/run by corporations like Sir, or chefs (Mark McEwan, Jamie Kennedy, Oliver Bonacini) turned corporation. If a meal is a narrative, the chef drives it and I want to hear that voice (not a corporate marketing plan) loud and clear.
THREE OWNER-CHEFS OF THREE-STAR OWNER-CHEF RESTOS
Scot Woods/ Simon Bower's Lucien; the Bermanns' Boba; Danielle Schrage/ Alireza Fashrashrafi's Pomegranate; Patrick McMurray's Starfish; Jean-Jacques Texier's Batifole; Veronique Perez's Crepes a Go Go; Anton Potvin's Niagara Street Cafe
BLACK-TIE BROWN BAG
Petit Fours is the ooh la la underground brown bagger with crunchy focaccia and little verrines.
HOLES IN THE FOODSCAPE
In 1988, Susur Lee opened Lotus and introduced the fried taro root to a delighted Toronto. Lee would go on to become internationally acclaimed as a Pacific Rim chef. Today, the Rubino brothers' Rain, more East-West fusion, is a significant influence on young chefs.
Otherwise, the promises of the multicultural food explosion, fuelled by immigrants from all over the world, have not been fulfilled. At first the new flavours were confined to small cheap restaurants and mostly they still are. There's been little movement with such exceptions as three high-end Japanese places -- Kaiseki-Sakura, Sushi Kaji, Hashimoto (none of which I've reviewed yet) -- and Amaya where the cooking is quite different from the cliches of the neighbourhood buffet. Why did it take so long? It's not as if Toronto isn't full of curry maniacs like me.
And on the subject of me, it is now a human right to have one's own "culturally appropriate" food, so where's my steak and kidney and oyster pie? I'm happy to see a trad Sunday roast beef and Yorkshire pudding dinner at Prime, the steak house in the Windsor Arms Hotel.
Surely the excitement of a multicultural city is that everyone has a chance to have a go at someone else's food, not just fiddle around with fusion. We don't have anything like Montreal's Raza, a Canadian take on South American food, Rick Bayless's addictive everyday Mexican at Chicago's Frontera Grill nor his classical Topolobampo, nor do we have a Thai restaurant comparable to David Thompson's Nahm in London, which doesn't taste sugary at all. We do have serious Italian takes from Andrew Milne-Allan at Zucca and Alida Solomon at Tutti Matti. I'd like someone to take on Spanish cuisine; we don't have a true Ferran Adria acolyte, and where's the successor to the shuttered Barmalay? Barmalay was hokey with its melancholy balalaikas and so was New York's faux imperial Russian Tea Room -- but they were both fun. Fun is too often missing since the celeb's yoohoo cafe, the Courtyard Cafe, was closed more than a decade ago. Significantly, the extreme makeover of the CC looks like a Valley of the Kings tomb.
MOST FUN
Gordon Mackie's roasted pig nights at Far Niente; Harbour Sixty's OTT steak amid Texas Gothic decor
THE FRAGGY CLUSTERF--K
Noise is the overwhelming complaint of the eating classes. Drop 200 on a dinner and you don't get a chance to bore your friends 'cos they can't hear you.
One of the '60s dire legacies is eardrum smashing music 7/24. Now a generation gap is widening between the young and deaf and the old and going deaf.
When I went to Alain Ducasse's three-star restaurant in the Plaza Athenee in Paris, the only sound was slowly moving jaws. The room was carpeted, heavily draped tables set well apart, stuffed chairs. But designers rule here. Today's fashion is industrial, bare floors, stripped walls, curtainless windows, coverless table tops, noisy bars too near diners.
SOLUTIONS
Use multiple tablecloths, padded table legs and padded walls, heavy drapes, and heavy carpets, stuffed chairs --and shoot the DJ.
HOUSEKEEPING
The star system is thus revised. Three stars is Don't Miss; two stars, I'll Go Back Again; one star, OK.
I shall call the first course hors d'oeuvre, the second, entree, followed by cheese and dessert courses.
TREND FOR '08
Eating Out. It's taken awhile for house-happy Torontonians to embrace resto culture Now the city's filling up with 500-square-foot condos. Great. The reason Tokyo has so many good restos is that people live in such small spaces that they have to eat out.
(Click here to read the article online.)
(Click here to read the article online.)
