no 3. Mineral
1027 Yonge St.
If everything else wasn’t first-rate, I’d still head for this buttoneddown spot just to gawp at the hand-painted murals in gold, silver and midnight black, of bamboo, twisting vines and a tiger sneaking through a bamboo grove. Nowadays, nearly every new restaurant, coffee bar and vape kiosk has custom wall art, but here, combined with deep azure upholstery, an elegant oval bar and the fireshow in the open kitchen, they’re more than just a design statement—they’re at one with the overall mood of being transported to the trendiest restaurant in Manila, which just happens to be neighbour to a midtown Shoppers. The chef, Daniel Cancino, already proved himself a wizard of Filipino barbecue, pancit and adobo at Lamesa and Lasa. Here his cooking is even more focused and refined. His menu evolves with the seasons, but there are usually dumplings (perhaps stuffed with liver mousse), squid-ink pancit (perhaps with scallops and uni), fresh oysters or tuna ceviche, and a bowl of hand-cut egg noodles with a grab-bag of mushrooms in a just-rich-enough Thai basil– flecked truffled duxelle sauce. Brassicas, seafood and steaks all benefit from precise timing at an inferno of a charcoal grill. The dish you’d be a fool to overlook is the grilled pork, sugary from a bath in 7UP, five spice and ginger. Wrap pieces in lettuce and perilla leaves, plus a dab of calamansi aioli. You’ll wonder why all barbecue can’t be so incredible.
Five hundred dollars—per person. That gets you three to six bite-size appetizers, like, say, an expertly torched morsel of Spanish mackerel or yuzu-dusted monkfish liver, slow-cooked for three days in red wine and soy until it earns its sobriquet as the foie gras of the sea. Then comes the main event: a dozen pieces of sushi, maybe fluke, Japanese barracuda, needlefish or fatty tuna, all sourced at the Tokyo fish market and presented on seasoned rice at a precisely monitored, still-warm temp. Masaki Saito is one of the few sushi chefs in North America who has mastered the art of edomae—a near-mystical process of partially preserving raw fish and seafood through curing, cooking or salting, to heighten flavour and improve texture.
After a bowl of miso soup (so fragrant you’ll fall into a meditative trance) comes a no-less-decadent dessert of a matcha blancmange, its jiggly surface crowned with gold leaf.
Is it worth the price? Strictly by frequency of unreal bites per minute, yes. But I’d hazard as many people are drawn here to say they’ve sat in the city’s most exclusive restaurant (the eight-seat counter, reached up a flight of marble stairs, books well in advance) and met the man himself. Unlike his generally taciturn, media-shy peers, Saito arrived in this city in a tornado of hype about his talent (two Michelin stars in New York) and his persona (he’s a proudly unreconstructed playboy and
connoisseur of luxury brands). He poses for selfies with customers. His staff tremble at his every word.
The exotic seafood, Baccarat water tumblers and gold leaf may add to the impression that you’re toasting the end of the world in a room of James Bond villains. One night, I was seated beside a Polish-Canadian industrialist who ordered two bottles of Burgundy for himself, had just returned from a friend’s Caribbean island, recommended I try pig fetus in Buenos Aires (“you haven’t lived!”) and complained unprompted about Trudeau’s tax policies, which have driven him to move his companies to the U.S. For some, a $500-plus feast is just another Tuesday.