Niagara eatery, Victoria’s Courtney Room on enRoute’s best new restaurants list

TORONTO — Canada’s best new restaurant sits on the second floor of a barn in Niagara wine country, according to Air Canada’s enRoute magazine.

This year’s Top 10 list crowns The Restaurant at Pearl Morissette, just west of St. Catharines, Ont., for a prix-fixe menu featuring ingredients largely grown on or foraged from the surrounding land.

Victoria’s new restaurant The Courtney Room, an extension of the Magnolia Hotel & Spa, made the highly coveted benchmark, coming in at No. 10.

“We are so proud of the team that created The Courtney Room from a shared vision for a warm and welcoming space offering exceptional cuisine,” Bill Lewis, general manager of the Magnolia Hotel & Spa, said in a statement.

The Restaurant at Pearl Morissette is followed by two Montreal eateries — the Italian wine bar Vin Mon Lapin, which the Joe Beef team opened this spring, and the wood-fired pizzeria Elena.

The Pearl Morissette triumph follows rave reviews for an ever-changing multi-course menu inspired by seasonal French cooking.

Chef Daniel Hadida said he and partner Eric Robertson take pride in serving fresh, high-quality ingredients from small-scale organic farms.

There’s much to be excited about in Canada’s culinary scene, Hadida said on Wednesday before an awards ceremony announced the winner.

“Because Canada is a fairly young country and has not had a really, really deeply entrenched food culture it really gives us the opportunity to … take influence from other cultures.” —