{"id":530,"date":"2010-10-11T23:12:22","date_gmt":"2010-10-12T04:12:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jameschatto.com\/?p=530"},"modified":"2012-05-01T10:19:56","modified_gmt":"2012-05-01T15:19:56","slug":"carisma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jameschatto.com\/?p=530","title":{"rendered":"Carisma"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Carisma's octopus salad - shaved so fine on cucumber ribbons<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There\u2019s a risk involved, in this digital age, when you deliberately misspell a familiar word as the name of your new restaurant. \u201cDid you mean Charisma<\/em><\/strong>?\u201d asks Google. No, actually, I didn\u2019t. You are a search engine not the world\u2019s grammatical conscience. Now do as you\u2019re told\u2026 Carisma it is \u2013 the latest project of Michael and Margie Pagliaro, who created Il Mulino on Eglinton West, and before that, Barolo\u2026 For me, they epitomize the concept of accoglienza<\/em>, the warm, welcoming hospitality that Italians may have invented and still do so well. I last saw them about a year ago, quite unexpectedly, when my wife and I were having dinner at Haisai and they were there too. Michael had been unwell and they had sold Il Mulino to Oscar Valverde (another master of accoglienza<\/em>). They were retired now.<\/p>\n

Yeah right. They stayed retired less than a year \u2013 long enough for Michael to bounce back and to recruit their daughter, Monica, 24 years old and until now working at the Bank of Montreal, into the front-of-house fold. Most interestingly, they moved back downtown \u2013 to King Street East. On Eglinton, there were no local rivals. Down here, they are surrounded by the distinct but powerful Italian houses of Biagio, Terroni and Romagna Mia. How they will fare remains to be seen, but there is no diminution in the quality of service from Il Mulino\u2019s glory days \u2013 especially if you are an old friend from Forest Hill. And Alan Hilario is in the kitchen here as he was at Il Mulino: indeed, the menu looks uncannily similar to the simple, high-end, traditional pan-Italian card that proved such a success up there.<\/p>\n

The room is different. Il Mulino was white; Carisma is black (walls, ceiling and furniture) with a huge, round, marble-topped bar in the centre, where single male condottieri come for an early, after-work dinner. It\u2019s cool and comfortable and already packed, though it\u2019s far too soon to assess the food with any degree of long-term accuracy. Not all the dishes are firing on all cylinders yet but you can still find some precocious treats.<\/p>\n

Pan-seared scallops are crusted on the surface, rare inside, paired up with wilted baby spinach and little snippets of oyster mushroom that echo the texture of the scallops and share in the flattering glory of a saffron, lemon and white wine sauce.<\/p>\n

Chanterelles, peas and a chardonnay sauce lift a lobster risotto out of the earth\u2019s gravitational pull even when the delicious lobster tail is itself a tad clenched. Nerves, perhaps \u2013 or a moment too long in the pan.<\/p>\n

More of those super chanterelles (so fresh they are almost crunchy) find their way into the tangled embrace of a dish of very fresh tagliolini tossed with slivers of duck confit and zoomed with thyme and white truffle oil.<\/p>\n

A fillet of beef on the bone is crusty on the surface, red and oozy on the inside\u2026 It\u2019s lovely to see this cut \u2013 keeping the mignon and the bone together adds needed flavour to the tender muscle \u2013 but the vegetables (asparagus, peppers, green beans) seem a touch old school.<\/p>\n

Not that there\u2019s anything wrong with old school. Old school service is what sets Carisma apart in this cynical and insincere age \u2013 and people love it.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Carisma. 73 King Street East. 416 864-7373. www.carismarestaurant.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s a risk involved, in this digital age, when you deliberately misspell a familiar word as the name of your new restaurant. \u201cDid you mean Charisma?\u201d asks Google. No, actually, I didn\u2019t. You are a search engine not the world\u2019s grammatical conscience. Now do as you\u2019re told\u2026 Carisma it is \u2013 the latest project of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1,19,95],"tags":[157,158,160,159,153],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=530"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2096,"href":"http:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530\/revisions\/2096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}