I never ate here before it was Malbec. I used to drive past all the time on my way to Shay Gourmet, Andy Shay’s lovely but long-gone emporium of delicious foods a few doors along Merton Street, and I think this was known as Steve’s Place, a surf ‘n’ turf steakhouse with a loyal clientele. I doubt the décor has changed very much. It’s a cosy room, a few steps up from the street, with an old-style steak house décor. The arched windows have stained glass transoms. There’s a red carpet and a dark wooden dado, white linen on the tables, wooden armchairs and pseudo-Tiffany lamps hanging from the low ceiling. But the new owners, Francisco Bogado and his wife Rocio, have introduced a flavour of Argentina with posters of tango dancers and cds of accordions playing tango music. Quietly but persistently, they are building a corps of customers who are intrigued by the idea of a bona fide Argentinean restaurant in North Toronto.
Francisco is our host – very smooth and accomplished but the welcome is sincere; Rocio is in the kitchen with another chef, Eduardo Marino. Some reviewers have seen the word canaloni on the menu and assumed this is an Italian place. It’s true there is a strong Italian thread in Argentinean gastronomy, but this is very much the food of the south, very like I remember it from Mendoza and Buenos Aires but with rather more attention paid to vegetables.
Details are carefully attended to. Very fresh baguette spends no time between oven and table, soft and warm beneath its crunchy crust with good butter to spread. The temptation to spoil our appetites is strong but I try to control myself, knowing what lies in store… First, however, the soup of the day, a smooth, very pure, albeit buttery asparagus purée that lets the taste of the asparagus stand alone in splendour. And a trio of empanadas – bigger than the ones you buy from the street vendors in mendoza but also lighter, the thin pastry almost tasting fried. Inside one is a filling of moist wilted spinach with onion; another holds soft, salty chopped ham and melting cheese – something like Edam; beef, chicken or tuna are also available. Bogado brings chimichurri sauce for dipping and shares the recipe – finely minced parlsey stirred with crushed garlic, paprika, salt and pepper then drowned in canola oil and white vinegar and left in the fridge for at least a month to mature. It’s as delicious as the description suggests.
Check out the online menu for main courses – there are many suggestions from salmon to pasta but I strongly recommend the parrillada, the dish for which Argentina is most famous, the gaucho-inspired grill of many meats and offal, here prepared for two people for $44.95. It all arrives heaped high together on a sizzling metal plate that Bogado sets over a spirit lamp. Here is flank steak, juicy and tender and crusted from the grill. Sweetbreads are sliced, rolled in flour and salt and pan-fried I think – they’re thoroughly cooked through but delicious. Sausages made of offal forced into the curled intestines (like the Greek Easter delicacy hgardoubes) are properly rustic, tasting of salty, bittersweet offal with a chewy texture that will thrill die-hard carnivores. Beef short rib is much more of a crowd-pleaser, juicy with melting fat and packed with flavour. Blood sausage is true to the South American style – softer than British black pudding and less perfumed with spice, relying on pepper to season the flour-thickened gore. The grill has crisped the edges of coarse-grained chorizo sausages, spiked with smoked paprika. Pieces of plump chicken breast, cooked through but still moist beneath a well-seasoned skin, seem decidedly unadventuorus in such company. Order the parrillada and you get two side dishes. We choose sautéed rapini, nicely textured and heady with garlic, and a dish of thickly sliced eggplant marinated in olive oil and vinegar, disarmingly rich.
Argentinean gourmands have a sweet tooth. They sharpen it with the sort of desserts Malbec serves – white chocolate crème caramel that is heavy and stiff enough to make me think it must have been prepared with gelatin, drizzled with dulce de leche and topped with whipped cream and berries. Something that sounds a tiny bit lighter (but isn’t) features layers of dried figs and sliced saffron-poached pear on strudel dough beneath a topping of thick mascarpone mousse. Chef sauces it with dulce de leche and strawberries soaked in some kind of insidious booze.
What would one drink here? Malbec, to be sure, and perhaps a fresh white Torrontes to begin with. Both can be found on the 15-bottle, mostly Argentinean wine list.
There are one or two other Argentinean restaurants in the GTA, but this is my favourite. Just remember to skip lunch before you come.
Malbec is open daily for lunch and dinner at 234 Merton Street (at Mount Pleasant). 416 489 1488. www.malbecrestaurant.com.