Last night we ate the menu at Bar Salumi, the new Parkdale watering hole created by the team from Local Kitchen and Winebar – chef Fabio Bondi and front-of-house star Michael Sangregorio. It’s only four doors away from Local, and Sangregorio has been wearing out his shoes dashing from one to the other (another good argument for having an identical twin). Bar Salumi has edible décor – innumerable jars of house-made tomato sauce on wine-box shelves, prosciutti hanging from the ceiling (Berkshire hams ageing nicely beneath Bondi’s lard-and-vinegar cure), strings of hot peppers behind the bar, a wild boar’s head stuffed and mounted on the wall. The lighting is as fashionably mellow as the music and the high-top tables and bar stools are a fine place to sit for an hour or two over one of the different Negroni variations on offer. I’m not sure nine wines is an adequate selection for a place that sets out to be a bar but they’re decent wines and reasonably priced.
The menu is equally piccolo – just eight items, all small and relatively unadorned. You can’t call them tapas because they generally avoid saltiness and intensity of flavour but they are carefully made and show the same delicious simplicity Bondi brings to the slightly larger card at Local. The selection of house-made salumi is the obvious place to begin. I had expected cook Eli Greenberg, alone behind the food bar, to use the gorgeous red Volano meat slicer (“the Ferrari of meat slicers,” says Sangregorio) but that, it seems, is reserved for the prosciutto (they are using an excellent, sweet, subtle product from Parma until the house hams are ready). He used a smaller, less complicated machine for the other meats, loading a wooden platter with tissue-thin slices of lean culatello with the texture of a silk handkerchief; soft, fatty wild boar salami; a coarse-grained Tuscan-style sausage flavoured with oregano; and a very good bresaola that was poised at the crucial textural point between necessary dryness and a lingering suggestion of moist tenderness. I would have liked some pickles or mustards or breads with the selection but that isn’t the route Bar Salumi is taking. Perhaps they don’t want to cannibalize their own business from Local.
A couple of crostini were the stars of the evening. One comes topped with thinly sliced boiled potato and juicy slices of octopus braised in white wine and bay with a couple of wine corks added to help tenderize the beast. I had never heard of doing this and can’t really figure out any plausible science behind the practice but the octopus was certainly tender. A sprinkle of orange zest perks up the timid flavour.
Orange zest also forms part of the marinade for a divine sardine fillet that lies across another crunchy crostini. Cured for two hours with salt, capers, lemoncello, orange juice, vinegar and olive oil, the fish has a sleek, smooth texture and a surprisingly subtle taste that sneaks up slowly on the palate.
The rest of the menu brings three kinds of olives with crunchy nudini knots and a morsel of ricotta salata. Or one can munch on sliced roma tomato and a soft pillow of burrata stuffed with ricotta and cream. Or play hunt the bocconcino that hides inside a juicy pickled red cherry pepper which has masses of flavour and a good prickly capsicum heat.
We ate everything and were still hungry so we walked up the street, sat down at the bar at Local Kitchen and shared a dish of pasta made with the simple, perfect, basil-scented tomato sauce that adorns Bar Salumi. Susur Lee happened to be there, having dinner with friends, and he shared some news about Lee Lounge, the imminent next incarnation of Susur/Madeline’s. He has opened up the wall between that space and Lee next door, which will expand the ever-popular Lee’s capacity but still allow room for a lounge and bar with its own intriguing menu. I can’t wait to see it.
Bar Salumi. 1704 Queen Street West (just east of Roncesvalles). 416 588-0100.