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Archive for the ‘Toronto’ Category

Fishbar

24 Jul

Deep-fried smelt stuffed with olive tapenade - 40 are never enough

Fishbar, on Ossington, is open at last – the long-awaited new project from William Tavares (an original partner in Salt, a few doors north) and chef David Friedman (Vancouver-trained and most recently sous chef at Table 17). We took some friends there on Friday and had a very good time. It reminds me of Kitchen Galerie Poisson in Montreal (at 399 Rue Notre-Dame Ouest, to be precise), one of my favourite, merrily informal spots in that talented town,  only Fishbar lacks KGP’s kick-ass foie gras. What they do have in common is a cool but unpretentious décor of open brick walls and wooden tables, not to mention excellent oysters and a laid-back party atmosphere. Fishbar’s wooden benches are a bit hard on the bum and I’ve probably seen enough Edison light bulbs by now to last me a lifetime, but all such teeny issues evaporate once the food starts to arrive.

 The oysters come from Rodney’s and we tried three different kinds – some mild, sweet beauties from New Brunswick; briney, substantial, temptingly metallic Mystic Cocktails from Connecticut; and great big, full-flavoured Marina Top Drawer from B.C. They were accompanied by three sauces: a classic red cocktail, a decent ponzu and a tart, spicy “apple orchard” sauce like fruity mustard. Oysters are also served as pogos – in other words heavily breaded, stuck on the end of a stick and deep-fried to a mahogany colour. Moist, greaseless and delicious, they were even better when dipped into a loose tomatillo salsa that balanced the corn sweetness of the breading with a sharp, fresh tang.

 I love deep-fried smelt especially when they’re on the big side – but not so big that you have to clean them: then you can taste the funky, bitter flavour of their fishy innards. Friday’s smelt were bigger than that so Friedman did clean them but then had the brilliant idea of stuffing them with olive tapenade before fritting them in tempura batter. So I had my bittersweet fix anyway, crispy and piping hot.

 Thus we began to work our way through the menu of small plates, a piece of paper divided into “starters,” “cold,” “hot,” “sides” and “dessert.” Almost every dish showed the Ocean Wise symbol, reassuring us of the kitchen’s commitment to using sustainable, ocean-friendly seafood. Halibut ceviche is a case in point, the juices of the soft, tender fish seized but the flavours more to do with salt and coriander oil than citrus. There were lime wedges for a squeeze-your-own moment that perked the dish up considerably. Hair-thin sweet potato fries were too thin to offer much tuberous presence – more like a heap of frying.

Wild sockeye tartare with apple instead of onion

 Salmon tartare was a champion – the wild sockeye cut into large pieces and tossed with shiso, soy and chopped apple – a great idea and undeniable proof that a tartare doesn’t always need onion. The kitchen pairs it with ethereally thin fried wonton wrappers which are much too delicate and brittle to bear the weight of the fish. I guess we’re supposed to take a forkful of salmon and then a bite of crunchy crunch. As a system, it works admirably.

 Chef Friedman does hearty as well as refined – witness a mound of PEI mussels smothered in big chunks of juicy grilled tomato with lumps of chorizo lurking in the tomato sauce. Many slices of baguette were needed to make sure every drop of the sauce was accounted for.

 Battered Pacific cod from the Queen Charlottes lies at the heart of his fish and chips – surprisingly the weakest dish of the evening. The chips were fine – unpeeled, slender, crisp where they should be and tender inside – but the flavour of the fish was missing in action, smothered by the taste of the batter. A side dish of fresh bright green peas with flecks of bacon and the wicked sheen of bacon fat totally stole that particular scene.

PEI mussels with a robust sauce of tomato and chorizo

 Dessert restored smiles to faces. They make their own ice creams here and serve a trio of chocolate, honey and goat cheese ice creams, the latter undeniably cheesy and brilliantly framed by the more conventional treats. A giant, crusty chocolate brownie covered in cherry jam and vanilla ice cream ended up as a sort of blue-collar homage to Black Forest cake, swiftly eaten and enjoyed.

 Veteran sommelier Jamie Duran is in charge of the wines at Fishbar and has put together an attractive little list that includes a dry Muscat from Terre di Orazio in Basilicata ($44), a crisp, aromatic white that smells like a bunch of lilies, a lovely match for many things on the menu.

 Early signs are that Fishbar will be a hit for the team behind it – original, affordable and above all blessed with a chef who understands how to cook seafood and have a little fun while he’s doing it.

 Fishbar is open for dinner only, closed on Mondays. 217 Ossington Avenue (a few doors south of Dundas). 647 340 0227. www.fishbar.ca.

 
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Campagnolo

22 Jul

Zucchini carpaccio - fresher than a summer's day

 

I’ve been looking forward to going to Campagnolo ever since Joanne Kates gushed so enthusiastically about chef Craig Harding’s “dreamworld pasta” last March. I called often during the spring but there was never a table available, then I forgot about it for a couple of months. This week I called again and while the place was still fantastically busy I was finally able to get a reservation, but only if our group of four arrived promptly at 6:30. Not 7:00… 6:30. Ever obedient, we did as we were bidden, though the scorching sun was a little high in the sky for anyone to be thinking much about dinner. Perhaps the restaurant sensed that, because we had to wait 40 minutes for our repeatedly requested plate of bread and gougères and bowl of warm olives in orange-scented oil.

I don’t do outrage – I’m really too easy-going to get flustered by that sort of thing – but it was odd. Campagnolo has an open kitchen and we could see the four cooks standing and talking, could see our waiter explaining our needs. We could also see a basket of loaves of bread on the counter. It was obvious that they were baking new bread and cooking new gougères – which is just silly when you make customers come at 6:30. No one offered an explanation or thought to send out something else to take the edge off our hunger. Oh well. Hey ho.

At least we had plenty of time to study our surroundings. The corner spot was once a Coffee Time and you can still see the old lines in the shape of the space. There’s a new bar with a fancy light fixture above it that looks like a miniature Dale Chihuly zoomorphic glass sculpture. Big caramel-coloured plush curtains soften the angles of the walls and help control the sound of merry voices that bounces up and down between the tiled floor and low ceiling. Little brass candelabra and blue-and-white china water jugs add a quaint charm.

But no one is here for the décor. It’s Craig Harding’s food that has caused such a fluttering of fans amongst the critical community. And I do see why. It’s very good food – thoughtful, balanced, beautifully executed – rooted in Italian traditions but with a contemporary refinement.

A little dish of zucchini carpaccio, for example, was a simple but brilliant little hymn to summer – crunchy ribbons of fennel sliced so thinly they were almost translucent set over broader strips of raw zucchini, strewn with shaved parmiggiano reggiano and peppery baby nasturtium leaves, all refreshed by a deftly harmonious tomato vinaigrette.

Scrumptious marrowbone with oxtail and nectarine marmalade

Testina was a very different proposition but equally well achieved. Testina is head cheese but instead of slicing the jellied brawn as a terrine, Harding turns it into a patty, breaded and pan-fried, which warms up the various pieces of pigface and turns the matrix of jelly into rich juice. Flavours are released and the unusually large size of the bits of meat lets you experience their different textures. A good, tart gribiche sauce around the plate cut the fat when required while the frisée topknot looked pretty.

An even richer treat for carnivores used half a vertically sawn marrowbone as a vessel of pleasure. The marrow was still in the bone but hidden by morsels of tender braised oxtail and traces of nectarine marmalade adding a lovely fruity sweetness. A close look revealed chopped herbs and tiny gratings of lemon zest – a sly gremolata that was as scrumptious as it always is with oxtail. A spoon was provided to scoop out bonemarrow, oxtail and fruit together to be spread onto crunchy toasts. Though it sounds like a heavy dish for the hottest day in Canadian history, it wasn’t. Sumptuous, yes, but so nicely balanced it almost seemed dainty.

Having heard so much about Harding’s pasta, I had to try the agnolotti that headed up the list of main courses. Yes, they were superb. The pasta itself was perfectly textured, soft little pouches that held a fresh pea purée. Whole peas, pea leaves and shoots nestled in amongst them while awesomely tender lobster meat lolled about on top. A mild fennel purée and a sort of bisque-like sauce lurked in the bottom of the bowl, bringing all the flavours together.

If peas and lobster is a classic combination, so is chorizo and octopus. There is no nonsense about the relationship on Harding’s dish – you get a big juicy, spicily seasoned fresh chorizo sausage hot off the grill and a single tender octopus limb that has also been finished on the grill (just a moment too long, I felt, because the diminishing curl of the tentacle was over-charred). Between the two principals is a soft, deliciously tangy peperonata while a puck of firm polenta represents the world of starch.

Saddle of lamb, perfectly pink

A subtler textural game is played on another main course – perfectly seared scallops, moist and creamy at heart, share the plate with smoked steelhead trout the colour of a carola rose, not sliced but cut into juicy chunks. Little new potatoes, a lively caper aioli and some shavings of radish complete the moment.

Roast lamb saddle represents a more conventional aesthetic, the succulent meat paired with cannelini beans but then perked up with a dark cherry balsamic and some shaved parm regg. The cheese was great with the beans but I’m not sure it sat so happily with the lamb, but that’s because the flavour of the meat was so good, especially when enhanced by some shavings of black summer truffle, that I would have resented any extraneous interference.

Two desserts were offered. One was a flaky canoli filled with chocolate-flecked, amaretto-spiked ricotta and served with a spoonful of gentle orange marmalade. The other was a slab of “chocolate paté” with the gelatinous texture of pudding – yummy in a childish sort of way – topped with crumbled macaroon and some boozy figs that had ended their lives poached in red wine – a great match for the chocolate.

Campagnolo’s wine list is rather clever – about 50 wines in total with four sparklers and lots of interesting, aromatic whites. Reds are a more serious gathering – only two under $50, seven in three figures. I was glad to see some decent representation from Ontario but the big guns were mostly Italian – which suits an Italianate menu, to be sure.

Craig Harding is clearly the real deal and success has allowed him to build a large brigade in the kitchen and front-of-house. I hate the fascism of a reservation policy so obviously built around turning the tables but the temptation is irresistible, I guess, when you have less than 40 seats. Still, that sort of “screw the customer” attitude can bite you back in the long run. And there’s one other element missing from the evening – any sense of verbal connection between the kitchen and the table. I would have loved to have had a brief word with someone about any of the dishes – some little tidbit about where an ingredient came from, why the chef had done this or that, even a standard enquiry about whether we were enjoying the food. So many other, less interesting restaurants do this as a matter of course, but there seems to be an endemic lack of gastronomic communication between the staff and the customers. It comes across as arrogance and, no matter how good the cooking, that always leaves a bitter taste in one’s mouth.

Campagnolo is at 832 Dundas Street West (just at Euclid Avenue). 416 364 4785.

 
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La Société

18 Jul

 

Does the newly dandified Bloor-Yorkville area need a big, brassy French bistro? Apparently. La Société has been packed since it opened in June, taking over that upstairs location that used to be Dynasty on the Colonnade. There’s a patio outside the restaurant on the terrace and another down at street level where the fountain once plashed, all generating the sort of lively, bustling vibe rarely seen on stately Bloor Street.

Charles Khabouth is the guy behind La Société and that means Munge Leung are the designers. They’ve done a fine, eye-catching job on the enormous space, borrowing all the bistro clichés from padded brown leather banquettes with brass rails and a mosaic tiled floor (of curiously reflective tesserae) to a magnificent stained glass ceiling and a long zinc bar. Lots of mirrors and framed posters hang on the nicotine yellow walls and some magnificent displays of delphiniums bring a moment of nature into the oh-so-urban setting, effortlessly stealing the show. If the final stylistic statement ends up as a hotch-potch of art nouveau and art deco, well, the same thing happens in Paris, too.

The name is appropriate, for the place has already become a favourite rendezvous for the well-healed condo-dwellers of the area, somewhere to be seen but where they can also bring children and grandchildren. Tony Longo, the man in charge of the operation, knows most of them from Centro days and makes everyone feel welcome and important. His team of uniformed servers and bussers must number in the dozens but they know their onions. When I challenge our waiter’s description of our oysters as “kumos from California,” he sticks to his guns – and he’s right. These are sweet, creamy little guys from Baja – not as good as the pure-bred kumos from Puget Sound in Washington, but perfectly acceptable when you’ve been deprived of oysters for days.
La Société’s executive chef is James Olberg, a John Higgins protégé who was most recently exec at Queen’s Landing, so he’s comfortable with big numbers. It’s a long menu with just about every bistro standard in place and a few extra dishes thrown in as plats du jour. What it lacks are two or three unique signature offerings that might set the menu apart from the card at Biff’s or La Sélect – something unpredictable or even slightly challenging that this bistro could own. But I’m cavilling because the first few things we had, in our hunger, were very good.

Butter-poached lobster risotto

A duck liver terrine arrived in a glass jar, sealed beneath a meniscus of tart cherry jelly. It was sinfully heavy and rich, as silky as butter with a beguiling hint of booze beneath the swirl of ducky flavours. A little dish of caramelized cherries provided extra sweetness and acidity and there were plenty of crisp toasted baguette slices upon which to spread the gorgeous stuff.

A generous risotto studded with crisp, fresh asparagus and peas was topped with a perfectly cooked, butter-poached lobster tail and claw. The moisture level was exactly as I like it (not wet but seeping) and the broth had a pleasant lightweight summer freshness to it. The carnaroli rice was a bit too soft – cooked just a tad longer than necessary so the grains had lost that secret heart of chalky firmness – but that’s how they cook risotto on the West coast and maybe chef learned to make it out there.

Mushroom velouté was just that – a great bowl of velvety, creamy mushroom purée with just enough truffle oil drizzled onto its surface. Beside it was a long toast topped with a quenelle of truffle-flecked crème fraîche and a single, whole black morel as an irresistible treat.

By now we were getting quite full but we were having too much fun to slow down. Even on a hot summer’s evening, I felt I had to judge the kitchen’s cassoulet. The braised lingot beans had a good texture and plenty of seasoning but the breadcrumbs that would normally be sprinkled on the surface to form a crust during the cassoulet’s long, slow time in the oven were dredged around the edge of the beans, unintegrated and meaningless. A confited duck leg was 85 percent of the way to perfection, its flavour excellent but a couple of its extremities dryish. There was a fat slab of pork belly and a big, juicy, dense, fine-grained sausage called a “Niagara sausage” on the menu. I wasn’t keen on it. It was very salty and over-seasoned. A cassoulet is supposed to be heavy going, of course, but the whole point of the dish is that its components should be cooked together so that their fats and juices commingle and collaborate and enrich. This one felt as if its separate parts had been cooked separately and then assembled.

The cassoulet

Our other main course was a Dover sole amandine – at $44 a rash extravagance – but it’s been ages since I had a real Dover sole and I miss them. It was the real thing, cooked in a pan, the two fillets served one on top of the other and dressed with melted butter, slivered almonds, parsley and lemon. With sole, it’s all about the texture (the flavour is so refined and shrimpy it’s almost bland) and this one was just right – half way between firm and delicate and so hard to describe I’m not even going to try. There was more of the almond-butter sauce served in a little jug but it wasn’t needed.

Vegetables are offered as side dishes. French beans were just right, very fresh and dressed with almonds. The frites, however, were oddly dry and dull – not the best frites in town by a long shot.

Is it enough to offer only six cheeses, charging $18 for three 25-gram tastes? I think so. Six cheeses is plenty if they’re well chosen and La Société has covered that base. We had profiteroles as our finale and found them exemplary, the pastry fresh and soft, the chocolate sauce dark and authentic and lo, yet again, almonds strewn over everything.

As for wines – it’s a good list with enough pricey treats for the condottieri, decent recognition for Niagara (nice to see Daniel Lenko’s Chardonnay) but $25 for a small flute of Champagne is a bit steep. And more choices by the glass is essential when the menu is so enormous.

La Société is not really a French bistro, of course. It’s in Toronto, owned and operated by people who aren’t French so the best it can be is a sort of superior pastiche. But it’s just what the neighbourhood wants and the patios will be packed for as long as the summer lasts.

Open seven days a week for lunch and dinner (brunch on Saturdays and Sundays).

La Société is at 131 Bloor Street West, just east of Avenue Road. 416 551 9929. www.lasociete.ca.

 
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Aria

22 May

 

Overhead at Aria

The area around the Air Canada Centre continues to flourish as an entertainment destination – what was once parking lots and wasteland now morphed into glamorous restaurants like Aria and E11even and the prince of all sports bars, Real Sports, inside the building itself. Last night we went to Aria, the beautiful restaurant at the foot of the new Telus tower. The team behind the tower are among the many loyal long-time fans of Noce, the 18-year-old, rather quaint Italian restaurant on Queen West, which led to their invitation to Noce’s owners, Elena Morelli and Guido Saldini, to create the new restaurant in their building. It opened two months ago and it’s a beauty, designed by architect Stephen Pile.

The space is on the corner so two sides of the room are floor-to-ceiling windows. “They’re 36 feet high,” explained the dapper Saldini, “so we get a great deal of light in here. And just hanging the fine-mesh steel curtain that covers the southern wall of windows was an incredible undertaking.” A third wall is a vertical, glassed-in wine cellar that houses the large inventory of wines, all of them excellent, all but a few beyond my wallet. The bar is backlit with pinkish red lights against which horizontal bottles of Gaja wine seem to swim like a school of black fish. Filling the air in this handsome lightbox is an extraordinary sculpture by Dennis Lin of ribbons of walnut wood (noce being Italian for walnut (geddit?)) swooping and writhing above and around glittering Moooi spheres of metal filigree studded with tiny lights like the balls of a giant plane tree bewitched by a fairy godmother. It all stops just on the honest side of Vegas kitsch – the antithesis of bland, and all the more welcome for that in our too-beige town.

I should say at once that this is an expensive dinner. The owners had no wish to be seen as the neighbourhood cheapy. It’s also very good – the best meal I’ve had so far this year. Chef Eron Novalaski, who came here from Noce, does posh northern Italian very well with some very fine textures to be found. Details are particularly well attended to. Grissini in the bread basket are crisp and peppery instead of generic; the butter and the dark green olive oil are of the finest. Water glasses are hand-blown Murano glass highlighted in crimson and the water that goes in is house-filtered and carbonated. The sense of quality is established before the first dish has been tasted.

Scallop crudo to start things off

I like the arrangement of the menu. There’s an opening section for nibbles such as salted anchovies served with bread and house-made butter or a nice little affettati of house-cured charcuterie, all of it first class especially ribbons of nicely seasoned lardo and silky Piottosino prosciutto from Italy. Wild mushroom soup is a true velouté, smooth and thick as paint with a deep mushroom flavour and a finish of golden oil flecked with minced black truffle.

Then comes an area devoted to crudi. When we failed to order any of those dishes the kitchen turned one into an amuse bouche – gorgeous slivers of sweetly gummy raw Hokkaido scallop topped with crispy chickpeas and bathed in a rosemary vinaigrette.

The dish that earned my first “wow” rating of 2011 was Aria’s version of vitello tonato, one of my favourite things to eat in the world. The veal was impeccable – pan-seared tenderloin sliced very thinly; the sauce a purée of tuna, capers, anchovy (you can taste all three) bound with egg yolk. It’s the quality of the eggs that give the sauce its unexpectedly yellow colour. Tiny potato chips the size of dimes add subtle crunch while a garnish of miniature fronds and microgreens bring fleeting bittersweet chlorophyl flavours. Deftly done.

Marvellous vitello tonnato

Specials abound, expertly related by the friendly, smart server. Fresh soft-shelled crab from B.C. is a much bigger creature than we are accustomed to in high-street sushi bars. Here, the juicy body and limbs are lightly and crisply battered then set over mashed avocado and quartered cherry tomatoes – not the most imaginative of accompaniments but pleasant enough.

The one disappointment of the evening was a pasta – chitarrine al pomodoro e basilico. Basil was no more than a distant backnote in the thick, ketchuppy tomato sauce while the chitarrine seemed heavy and stodgy. But a whole grilled branzino was flawless, the snow-white flesh moist, fluffy and flavourful beneath the crisped skin. It came with a side dish of boiled potatoes simply dressed with parsley. Nothing else was needed.

Roasted and deboned quail, a dish that requires nice timing if it isn’t going to dry out. Another box ticked – the slightly crisp skin was a tad too salty but the quail itself was juicy and sapid, its sometimes elusive flavour chirping loud and clear. The meat was set over creamy polenta enriched with bone marrow and thick chunks of wild mushroom moistened with a dark foie jus. I ordered a glass of 2008 Insoglio del Cinghiale from Tenuta Il Biserno to go with it. Yes, it’s a bit too big and dark and brooding for quail (it would have been better with the tomahawk steak, there being no wild boar on the menu) but it’s rare to find this Tuscan beauty offered by the glass and I couldn’t resist.

Steve Song is Aria’s pastry chef. I have followed his work for years, first falling for his enormous talents when he was creating amazing dessert using Lindt chocolate at Oro, a decade ago. There was chocolate on his two offerings last night – one a rich dark chocolate opera cake with gold leaf decorating the glossy icing and Bailey’s crème anglais lapping at its base; the other a “duomo” of hazelnut dacquoise, dusted with chocolate and sitting on finely sliced poached pear and a solid base of hazelnut meringue. Pure self-indulgence.

Any minute now, Aria will spill out into the open piazza with tables and umbrellas to add even more to the downtown summer scene. Funny that so much of the city’s glamour seems to be percolating down to this part of the city. Funny how many of the new restaurants of the last two years have an Italian schema! Hands up who remembers the ’80s.

Aria is inside the Telus building at 25 York Street, just south of the railway tracks and hard by the ACC. 416 363 2742.

 
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Liberty Belle Bistro

11 May

Old-school onion soup. Every table has a different salt and pepper shaker.

My wife knows from renovation. She could write a book about it. And she tells me that the reno conducted by chef-owner Aidan Pascoe and his father that has given the world Liberty Belle is first class. It’s a cute little bistro on the edge of Liberty Village – 24 seats plus six stools at the handsome wooden bar, and an outside patio for warm evenings – with a décor full of gathered details. Carved wood may have come from a church pew; the swing doors into the kitchen are stained glass; a poster of can-can girls cheers up the narrow vestibule and becomes the company’s graphic. Specials are written up on a blackboard, which is just as well because we can’t hear the hard-working server thanks to a table of three young women behind us – the noisiest people I have ever heard in a restaurant, braying and screeching and shouting each other down. Thank God they are already having dessert as we sit down.

Pascoe’s menu is consciously retro French bistro, offered without any obvious irony. Enough time has passed since the mass extinction of French bistros in the 1990s that onion soup, moules frites and steak tartare are no longer clichés though they are still familiar enough that any chef attempting them must show why, either with some new twist or by doing them very well. The onion soup is exemplary – masses of finely sliced, browned onions cooked down until they almost dissolve in their own sweet broth all hidden beneath a thick floe of crusty bread and bubbling browned cheese. It’s cave-aged Quebec gruyère, rich and delectable, and the portion would be enough for a normal person’s dinner.

Steak tartare was less successful, the meat ground instead of chopped and mixed up with a rather overwhelming amount of gherkin and capers. It didn’t feel as if there were any egg yolk to bind things together so the texture was crumbly – a tartare lite – without any sense of sticky rawness. Brioche toast points were fine and the lone pickled green chili on the plate made me long for more.

Carolina stone bass - pretty as a picture

A plate of forthright hush puppies was another huge portion, the dense balls of cornmeal flecked with the merest suggestion of bacon and scallion. Their surface was pleasingly crisp and there was a decently creamy horseradish sauce for dipping but the side salad stole the show, a lightly dressed mound of very fresh rocket and radicchio.

A special of house-made fettucine returned to the richness and large flavours of the onion soup, the pasta smothered in a thick, sapid crumble of spicy merguez sausage, king oyster mushrooms sliced into sturdy ribbons and kalamata olives adding even more pungency and salt.

Carolina stone bass was a gorgeous piece of fish, moist and tasty. Pascoe paired it with pan-fried fingerlings tossed with red pepper and soft white onion and some pretty purple kale leaves. His sauce of grapefruit beurre blanc wasn’t the best idea, however, the mild bitterness of the grapefuit ganging up with the mild bitterness of the kale to nudge the dish off kilter.

Desserts are much lauded at Liberty Belle, the work of Sarah Fortunato. Plates of her petits fours sit temptingly on the bar beneath glass cloches. We ordered a lovely opera cake made with almonds and a vanilla and lavender mousse, topped with white chocolate and blackberries – lots going on but why not – it was the cakey equivalent of those can-can girls. Vanilla panna cotta was just a heartbeat too loose in texture and too sweet, not as good as the compote of forced pink rhubarb that dressed it.

Opera cake with attendant macaron and a comma of coulis

The tiny wine list (only eight bottles) will have to grow. We drank Prospect Winery’s Ogopogo’s Lair 2009 Pinot Grigio, a lovely B.C. offering and usefully versatile, but I think people are going to want more choice. And the bill was disarmingly reasonable, cutely presented inside a musical box. I rather thought it was going to play Sousa’s march, Liberty Bell, that Monty Python used as their opening music but instead it was the theme from Love Story.

Liberty Belle Bistro is at 133 Jefferson Avenue (a few doors south of King Street West). 647 352-3553. www.libertybellebistro.com.

 
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You say Sorrel, I say Sorrel

01 May

Doing it old school - creme brulee with creme anglais and raspberry coulis

 If you’re going to call a restaurant after a herb, you really ought to find out how the name of the herb is pronounced. The emphasis falls on the first syllable of “sorrel” – always has done. But the staff at this new Yorkville bistro insist on calling it sorelle. There’s a difference – not quite as dramatic as the difference between a Daniel and a Danielle – but a difference all the same. For the customer, it’s a matter of confidence. You want a restaurant to know about the food it serves (sorrel is all over the menu) and the first step to understanding a plant is knowing its name, as Adam was taught in Eden. Sorrel has many names – cuckoo sorrow, cuckoo’s meat, sour sabs, green sauce and sourgrass amongst them – though none are quite as pretty to say as “sorrel.” Perhaps you think all this pedantry frightfully old-fashioned… But that’s why it’s so appropriate where this resto is concerned, for dining here is like taking a step back in time to the mid-1980s, with all the good things that entails – and all the not-so-good.

Yorkville has always had a vein of “classic” restauration (Remy’s and Le Trou Normand spring to mind). But it’s odd to find a new restaurant consciously emulating such venerable standards. The premises are half below street level in one of those long thin mezzanines. There’s a bay window at the front where daylight enters and people sitting at those tables can look out and up at the shins of other customers sitting on the street-level patio (kilted Scotsmen take note). The décor is unusual – rough pinkish stone floor tiles, walls of stacked silvery-white limestone hung with kitschy-naïve paintings of Paris that look like illustrations from a children’s book. Lovely big glossy wooden tables offer plenty of room for candles, wine and ice-cold bottles of Evian. The music is more than usually offensive – electric piano riffing on three chords against a high-hat syncopation like the backing track to a mid-career Kenny Gee album. It didn’t seem to bother the regulars sitting around the big wooden bar in the shadows at the back of the restaurant – friends of the house perhaps, or of owner-chef Faro Chiniforoush, who as chef and general manager (an ambitious double-duty) presided over the long, slow demise of Prego della Piazza.

fried chicken livers

The menu fits neatly into that late 20th-century category once known as Mediterranean – neither French nor Italian but alluding to both. We started with a wild mushroom soup that reminded me of the version Freddie Lo Cicero used to make but without the depth of flavour and creamy panache. This one was almost puréed so that the mushrooms had become tiny soft slippery granules of mushroom held in suspension in a ‘shroomy stock. It was not over-salted or over-seasoned but I couldn’t help wishing the mushrooms themselves had had more flavour to begin with. A dribble of greenish oil on top added further slick to the texture. “What is the oil?” we asked the smoothly efficient server. “Either basil or avocado,” she answered. (Again a small difference but a telling one, like that which separates a king and a lawyer.)

I started with chicken livers – a huge portion of whole livers, breaded and deep-fried. They sat on a mound of soft arugula above thinly sliced Granny Smith apple and slivers of crunchy raw fennel. A balsamic glaze was presumably intended to form a bridge between the rich weight of the offal and the crisp zing of the apple and fennel but the connection was tenuous.

Panzanella? Whatever... I'm a mussel fan

After that, we shared a “panzanella salad with chilled mussels.” Every panzanella salad I have ever eaten involves bread, tomatoes and onion. I can completely understand why there was no tomato in this one – the early Californian tomatoes we’re getting at the moment are nothing to write home about. But why no onion? Never mind. Instead there were chunks of chewy bread, peppers, cucumber, arugula, fennel and fresh herbs – rather a successful combination, in fact, with a tangy vinaigrette sopped up by the bread. A huge number of large, warm, very tender mussels smothered the vegetables. My initial outrage at the panzanella misnomer (inspired and exacerbated by the sorrel pronunciation fiasco) began to dissipate. And it shrank a little more when the server brought our side order of grilled artichokes. I was expecting the same crispy grilled carciofi Prego used to serve at lunchtime in Michael Carlevale’s day but these were soft, briney and a little bit tart, as if they were bottled, not fresh. It was hard to tell, but grilling had given them a delicious edge, enhanced by basil oil (the waitress was sure this time) and we enjoyed them.

It was a rule in the 1980s and ’90s that main courses had to be simpler than appetizers. So it goes at Sorrel. Fish of the day was spigola (Mediterranean sea bass), offered whole or taken off the bone. We chose the latter and it was plated as two substantial fillets served with excellent rapini and a Meyer lemon-olive oil dressing that might have been present or might have been somewhere else entirely. Our other main course was duck confit, though the leg was so big I would have believed it came off a swan. It was very very good, the flesh meltingly juicy beneath a crisp, delicate skin, with enough salt to bring the taste of the duck to rampant life – a treat in a meal which had so far been rather lacklustre in the flavour stakes. The duck lay across sorrel leaves and snow pea greens, wilted by the heat, and a landslide of heavy, delicious mashed potato that proved an excellent starch for mopping up the mustard pan-sauce.

The mighty duck

Cheese was offered – Ruth Klahsen’s fine Monforte production, nicely presented. Then we shared a dessert – a too-sweet, pudding-textured crème brûlée decorated in the old way with berries and a zig zag of crème anglais and red berry coulis. Yes – coulis! One of the forgotten words… It was as if the last 20 years of restaurants had disappeared.

Sorrel is at 84 Yorkville Avenue (at Bellair Street). 416 926 1010. www.sorrelrestaurant.ca.

 
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A Fowl Affair

21 Apr

Much delicious fun was had on Monday evening at Globe Bistro on the Danforth. Owner Ed Ho closed the place in order to allow his chef Kevin McKenna (ably assisted by Dan Sanders), together with six other talented toques, to stage the third dinner in a series collectively known as the Group of Seven. The first had taken place at Beast and had played against the reputation of the place by forcing each of the seven chefs to prepare a vegetarian dish. The second event was staged at Parts & Labour, where sustainable seafood was the theme. Monday’s plan was that every chef should do something with fowl. Lots were drawn to determine the order (leaving McKenna scratching his head about what to create for dessert) and the seven, released from the self-imposed tyranny of their menus, began to imagine the possibilities…

It’s always a pleasure to revisit Globe Bistro, one of the most elegant bistros around. There was a fair representation of the industry in the crowd, together with friends of the restaurant and fans of the chefs. Wines were generously provided by Fielding Estates of Niagara and Rosehall Run of Prince Edward County. Rosehall’s co-owner and winemaker, Dan Sullivan was most entertaining as he described the early days of the County and the lonely life of a pioneer vigneron: “If it’s one person doing it, it’s a nut in the woods; if it’s two, it’s a destination!” Then we began to eat.

First, Mark Cutrara

First up was Mark Cutrara of Cowbell who christened his dish “Cock ’n’ Balls.” There at the bottom of a wee bowl of clear partridge stock lay a whole, exeptionally tender cockscomb, two small, firm, sweetish, flavourful balls of partridge meat, two small dice of tongue and a little brunoise of carrot. It was delicately textured and beautifully balanced in terms of flavour and rather well matched with Rosehall 2008 Cuvée County Chardonnay, a lush, ripe, barrel-fermented beauty with vivid fruit and a final flourish of County minerality.

Second, Scott Vivian

Chef number two was Scott Vivian of Beast who introduced his dish as “a take on southern fried chicken livers.” He had taken whole chicken livers, battered and deep fried them and they were amazingly delicious, soft and offally in a crisp batter shell. A creamy ranch dressing cut the liverishness a little as did a couple of tartly pickled wild leeks, picked last week, and some small spikes of pickled fennel root. Soft beets were the third sweet-sour element but in case the livers should be overwhelmed by such a coalition, Vivian sent in a thick tranche of bacon. Heaven. With this we drank  Fielding 2010 Estate Riesling, aromatic, slightly off dry but with a ringing acidity that easily stood up to the pickles.

Third, Guy Rawlings

Guy Rawlings, who recently left Brockton General, was the third artist of the evening. He chose to work with the gizzards of drakes which he confited until they were unexpectedly tender, the texture most like that of a perfectly cooked lamb’s kidney. The presentation was typically rawlings with other interesting components all hither and yon on the plate, distanced – until you put them in your mouth. Thin dime-sized slices of salted carrot waved at garlic-mustard greens foraged that morning in the Don Valley. An emulsion of duck egg yolk, olive oil and garlic mustard streaked the plate and everything was strewn with a fine powder of pork “overcured” with smoked cinnamon and smoked black pepper. Rosehall’s 2007 Cabernet Franc picked out the subtle gizzard flavour like a sniper on the roof.

Fourth, Rob Gentile

The fourth chef to strut his stuff was Rob Gentile of Buca who described his dish as “zampone di pollo.” Zampone is usually a pig’s trotter stuffed with its skin but Gentile chose to work with a chicken leg. I’ve been trying to think how he did what he did. First he made a farce out of the rest of the chicken, adding a little lardo, then he must have peeled back the skin on the chicken leg, removed bone and flesh and stuffed the skin with the farce like a sausage. The result was deep-fried and set upon a bed of Italian lentils (perfectly cooked) sauced with a green purée of nettles, marjoram, mint, thyme, parsley and basil. For good measure, the clawed chicken foot was also included on the plate. Some people attempted to eat it, but I found it defied my ingenuity. The Fielding 2008 Cabernet-Syrah was most impressive.

Fifth, Bertrand Alepee

On to course five and chef Bertrand Alépée, late of Amuse Bouche, now freelancing as the mood takes him and thoroughly enjoying his liberty. His “squab en surprise” was essentially a pigeon Wellington, the tender squab breasts moistened with foie gras mousse and wrapped in buttery puff pastry (oh, such pastry – just in case anyone had forgotten that Bertrand began his career in the sweet kitchen). A truffled celeriac purée was as aromatic and sweetly earthy as you can imagine while some local seedlings I didn’t recognize added a herbal, chlorophylous element. And chef included the late squab’s inedible claw, raised in defiance, some blades of grass clenched in its tiny talons. A juniper-infused jus completed the spectrum of flavours, most of them neatly echoed in Rosehall’s succulent 2008 Pinot Noir.

Sixth, Matty Matheson

The penultimate treat came from Matty Matheson of Parts & Labour who offered a treatise on the goose. Around a mound of soft, sweet, tangy choucroute he set his proteins. First a mighty hunk of rare smoked goose breast – surprisingly sweet and delectably peppery. Then a sausage made from the bird’s heart, liver, kidney and skin, the flavours unexpectedly subtle. Some meat pulled from a confit of the goose thighs and some more from its braised neck. Around this hearty assemblage he spooned a foamy sabayon of goose fat and dijon mustard. Fielding’s Rockpile Pinot Gris was just the wine for this dish – Alsatian in its opulent texture, fragrantly fruity and with a streak of sweetness.

Quail for dessert, thanks to Kevin McKenna and Dan Sanders

And then it was time for dessert… Chef Kevin McKenna, who had so generously welcomed his colleagues into Globe’s slender kitchen, sent out his “fowl dessert,” which he called a kind of Baked Alaska made principally of quail. Here was a quail egg ice cream flavoured with bacon and topped with crumbled bacon playing the part of pecans. McKenna set it on a slice of almond genoise that he brushed with maple syrup and a hint of bacon-infused whisky. Beside the ice cream he set a puck of tangy sea buckthorn jelly. To the left, as the quail flies, he put a piped meringue made out of the whites of god-knows-how-many quail eggs. Beyond that was a creamy quail egg and a ribbon of something that tasted like the most profoundly flavoured caramel made from over-reduced quail stock, caramel, spices and chocolate. So extraordinary, and Fielding’s 2007 Late Harvest Gewurztraminer took care of any missing fruity matters.

It was all terrific fun and a fine opportunity to see seven of the city’s hot young talents showing what they can do. The next uprising of this Group of Seven takes place on June 6 at Cowbell where the theme of the evening will be BEEF. I imagine a quick call to Cowbell (416 849 1095) will secure a seat. I’m not sure how much it will cost but Monday’s feast was a bargain $99 plus $29 for the wine pairings.

 
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TOCA by Tom Brodi at the Ritz-Carlton, Toronto

18 Apr

Dungeness crab meat with fennel crisp in a marrowbone

Where is it written that a five-star hotel must have a five-star restaurant? Actually, that is standard doctrine in most European manuals, but it doesn’t seem to apply these days in North America. Or maybe it’s just that our definition of a five-star restaurant differs from theirs. A third possibility is that the Ritz-Carlton company has a savvy read on what Toronto likes these days and decided to go for something tasty, local and middle-of-the-road in creating TOCA by Tom Brodi in their new Toronto hotel. The property looks great in a bright, shiny, modern way, hung with original Canadian art and with inlaid maple leaves in the lobby’s marble floor. In the distance, as one walks in, steps lead down to DEQ with its luxe sitting-room atmosphere, open fireplace, bar and patio. It also has its own menu of retro treats such as fondue or Pingue prosciutto sliced right there in the room on a vintage charcuterie slicer, the kind of machine with the silent, silky gears of a Rolls Royce.

For TOCA, however, one turns to the left, either into the chic bar where renowned bartender Moses McGintee holds mixological court beside a Mont Blanc of ice decorated with alluring seafood, or up the broad flight of stairs to the restaurant proper. No one could ever criticize a Ritz-Carlton for cutting corners where staffing is concerned. The room is bustling with hostesses, waiters, busboys, managers and sommeliers, many of them familiar faces from the city’s A-list restaurants. The rhythms of service aren’t quite smooth enough yet, but I dare say that will come. The room itself is certainly handsome. Part of it appears to float out over the bar below and for people hoping to have a conversation with their dinner the music seems obtrusively loud. The main dining area is farther back, separated by the glassed-in cheese cave where $250,000 worth of Cheese Boutique forms age in refrigerated splendour. Tables are polished wood (no linen here); lighting is flattering and many diners are offered a deliberately open view into the kitchen through the broad corridor of the pastry station.

The hotel has made a conscious effort to showcase Canadiana on the wine list, with ingredient sourcing and in their choice of chef. Tom Brodi was at Canoe for 11 years as Anthony Walsh’s right-hand man and he brings his local connections and knack for creating high-end takes on traditional dishes with him. He’s also of Hungarian heritage and uses it here the way Walsh uses his Quebec roots at Canoe. For example, lángos, a sort of puffed-up flatbread of fluffy fried potato-dough becomes a delicious base for double-smoked New Brunswick salmon, crème fraîche, seedlings and crispy garlic chips. Sommelier Lorie O’Sullivan likes to pair it with a very hoppy, unfiltered German Pilsner from downtown’s Duggan’s brewery – a most dramatic choice as the fish oil seems to boost the bitter hopping even further.

Other starters are more elegantly presented. Here’s a fabulous, rich, home-made-tasting duck and onion broth poured from a jug into a bowl containing duck confit meat, soft onion and croutons topped with an Ontario gruyère foam. Or here’s a marrowbone split lengthways to act as a vessel for a mixture of tender tasty dungeness crab meat with fennel and tiny medallions of the bone marrow. Brodi finishes it under the broiler with a sprinkling of gratinéed cheese then tops it with fennel foam and a tissue-thin stencil of a fennel root crisp. Crab and fennel is always a delectable combination – this dish takes them to lobster thermidor country.

West coast halibut with carrot foam

Mains play music for many masters. There are massive slabs of protein for those who need red meat or baked rock hen for poultry fanciers. Vegetarians have a treat in store with a dish of truffled ricotta ravioli smothered in wild mushrooms, fresh baby rocket and Jerusalem artichiokes in three different guises – as very soft roasted chunks, as little crisps scattered o’er, and as a foam (Brodi has an unapologetic affection for foams). A buttery mushroom sauce lies at the bottom but it’s the truffle oil in the ricotta that remains as the dish’s dominant aftertaste, its pungency masking the more subtle individual flavours of the mushrooms. This time, O’Sullivan’s match, a 2008 Fontodi Chianti Classico is spot on – one of the only wines we taste all night that isn’t from Niagara.

A fine, juicy fillet of West coast halibut arrives with a topknot of carrot foam like one of Kate Middleton’s hats. Wilted lettuce, petits pois and fingerlings lie beneath but anyone who orders this thinking it’s a lightweight option has been deceived. Diced smoked Berkshire bacon and an unctuous beurre blanc take it deep into the land of the rich and famous.

It’s been a while since I last saw “stew” on a menu but Brodi offers a good one, as down-home as anything in the city with exceptionally tender pieces of St. Canut piglet braised in a rich tomato-paprika gravy with fragrant little turnips, potatoes and baby white onions. Admirably light quark spätzle share the plate while dollops of sour cream and a separate cast-iron ramekin of sweet-tangy braised red cabbage adds the Magyar grace notes. Henry of Pelham Baco Noir Reserve is a suitably forthright, rustic match.

Piglet stew tastes home-made

After that, cheese is obviously on the cards, but the choice of three is made for you, which seems a bit of a let-down after staring all evening at so many options. And while cellar temperature is ideal for long ageing of cheeses it’s a bit too chilly for service. Desserts are very well executed. I loved the Grand Marnier soufflé with its separate jugs of vanilla crème anglais to pour in and a little serving of creamy vanilla ice cream. Deep dark sticky toffee pudding tastes more like black treacle (much more interesting than pale caramel) and finds its identical twin in a dark, viscous, raisiny 2001 Sangervasio Recinaio Vin Santo. This is a lively, interesting restaurant and the decision to set it up as an independent kitchen within the hotel is a smart one. It’s going to do very well at lunchtime as Bay Street suits find their way across University Avenue, and the steak program will challenge The Shore Club when that glam protein house opens next door later this year. TOCA’s breakfast takes me right back to hotel power breakfasts of the ’80s. And dinner? As the new clutch of luxury hotels develops the deep downtown they will start to generate their own business, I suppose. They may even bring Toronto back to the idea of dining in a hotel. The rest of the world does so with alacrity. It’s time we put aside our foolish prejudice and joined the party.

TOCA (it stands for TOronto CAnada) by Tom Brodi is inside the Ritz-Carlton hotel, 181 Wellington Street (at Simcoe Street). 416 572 8070.  www.tocarestaurant.com.

 
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Brunch with Jamie Kennedy

04 Apr

Setting up for Brunch

I don’t know about brunch. It’s neither one thing nor the other. It takes up the heart of a day and callously obliterates the need for afternoon tea. Then again, a really first-class brunch party is pretty splendid. We threw such an event on Sunday in Jamie Kennedy’s event space at the Gardiner Museum, as part of the VISA Infinite Dining Series. The sun shone; the Kevin Cody Trio played mellow jazz; three California wine houses from the Central Coast provided a broad array of rare and delectable wines, some of which could be guaranteed to please a late-morning palate while others seemed like much more unlikely candidates. And Chef Kennedy did us more than proud. All in all, I would say this was the best brunch I’ve ever eaten.

From the outset, I was reminded of the words of English journalist Guy Beringer, writing in 1895 in a magazine called Hunter’s Weekly: “Brunch is cheerful, sociable and inciting. It is talk-compelling. It puts you in a good temper, it makes you satisfied with yourself and your fellow beings, it sweeps away the worries and cobwebs of the week.” That was the first ever use of the word “brunch” and it’s interesting how the concept caught on – and how the mood of it hasn’t really changed very much in the intervening 115 years. From the beginning, brunch was as much a party as a meal, which is one good reason why bubbly is the drink most associated with it. We served a good one – Bogle Vineyards Clarksburg Brut Blanc de Blancs 2009 – crisp, biscuitty, with a citrus edge. It worked beautifully with the little hors d’oeuvres Kennedy created before our very eyes – blinis made with Red Fife wheat flour fried at the station in the dining room and topped with a dab of crème fraîche, a teaspoonful of a salad made from finely shaved radishes and onions, a slice of lightly smoked local pickerel and a garnish of whitefish roe from Georgian Bay – gorgeous apricot-coloured caviar that is one of Ontario’s finest home-grown treats.

The blini, smoked fish and caviar station

Then we sat down and I began to eat my weight in Chef’s freshly baked Viennoiserie of croissants, scones and brioche with crème fraîche and blueberry jam while our wine guests introduced themselves – Jody Bogle, charming proprietor of Bogle Vineyards; Walter Whyte, Sales Director of Peachy Canyon Winery (his wry wit had the room in stitches); and Scott Montgomery now regional manager for the Americas of Delicato Family Vineyards.

Kennedy’s next gambit was a fabulous oyster stew made with plump, demurely flavoured Caraquet oysters from New Brunswick simmered with sliced fingerling potatoes and onion in a broth made with Delicato’s Fog Head Highlands Chardonnay and cream, all seasoned with chives, black pepper and nutmeg. It was beautifully judged, luxe but not too rich, the nutmeg lifting the hint of minerality in the oysters’ flavour. We tasted two wines with it – the Chardonnay, which was full-bodied, ripe and oaky, and Bogle’s 2009 Chenin Blanc, lighter, aromatic and crisply acidic. Somehow the soup enhanced the fruit in the Chenin, making it an even more inspired choice. The crowd was unanimous in their appreciation of Kennedy’s skills as a sommelier but wondered about the next course – a bright spring salad that Chef had decided to pair with Bogle Vineyards 2009 Pinot Noir and Peach Canyon 2009 Viognier.

We showed have known better. Kennedy was batting 1000 that morning. The salad was basically made up of anything Jamie could find at this dormant time of year – some leafy lettuces from local hydroponic greenhouses, some crisp radishes and juicy, bittersweet endives from Cookstown Greens. He tossed the leaves in a creamy vinaigrette, scattered brioche croutons over them, and finished with a strewing of finely chopped, crisply fried, unabashedly salted shallots. If bacon ever needs an understudy in the garnish department, those shallots would win the role. They lifted the salad into the same league of flavour intensity as the wines. The Viognier (the only white Peachy Canyon produces) turned out to be massive – off-dry, very alcoholic, with plenty of acidity and a nose of ripe star fruit and yellow plum. The Pinot Noir seemed delicate by comparison, smoky, earthy, a blend of Russian River and Clarksburg fruit with an elegant structure under its merry cherry greeting.

The next dish brought in two inevitable bruncheon ingredients – eggs and cheese. In this case, Kennedy had made a quiche-like tart featuring Monforte Taleggio cheese and little flecks of smoked bacon from his bacon guy, Fred Martinez in Sebringville. He surprised us all by adding another component to the course – a perfect chicken galantine stuffed with chopped leeks. But it was the sauce on the plate that picked up the gauntlet thrown down by the wines – a rich, smooth, fiery red sauce made from last summer’s red peppers and tomatoes. It came out with its dukes up ready to fight Peachy Canyon’s suave Westside 2007 Zinfandel and Delicato’s complex 2008 181 Merlot but ended up hugging them both. None of us could decide which wine worked better so honours were shared.

Debbie Levy from the Dairy Farmers of Canada borrowed the mic to introduce the next course – a little plate loaded with creamy, unctuous Bella Casa Burrata, drizzled with honey, and a fine nippy 8-year-old cheddar from Maple Dale. Kennedy had chosen to serve Peachy Canyon’s inky, extracted, 2007 Petite Sirah, a wine full of deep dark thoughts about the soul of blackcurrants and blueberries. Maybe it was the salted crackers and toasted hazelnuts but the wine worked magnificently with the creamy burrata – a total surprise for many.

After that it only remained to finish off the finale, a strudel made with the last of the autumn apples from 2010 and the first baby-pink forced rhubarb of 2011 paired with maple ice cream.

There are still some Dinner Series events left, though you have to be a VISA Infinite card holder to qualify for tickets. I’m looking forward to emceeing dinner at Fabbrica with Mark McEwan on April 26 and a more casual Chef Experience with Langdon Hall’s Jonathan Gushue at The Market Kitchen at St. Lawrence Market on June 15. More details at www.visainfinite.ca.

 
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Malbec

03 Mar

Malbec's mighty parrillada, the carnivore's delight

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.

White chocolate flan with dulce de leche

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.

 
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