Burdock gets to root of good food in Bloordale
Burdock (out of 4) VERY GOOD
Address: 1184 Bloor St. W. (near Brock Ave.), 416-546-4033, burdockto.com Chef: Jeremy Dennis
Hours: Sunday to Wednesday, 5 p.m. to midnight; Thursday to Saturday, 5 p.m. to 2 a.m. Reservations: At communal table only Wheelchair access: No Price: Dinner for two with beer, tax and tip: $80 Jeremy Dennis can make even potato peelings taste good.
The Burdock chef fries long strips of russet skins to add crunch to a $30 hangar steak cooked the right shade of red. The salted bits are much better than they sound, one of a few surprises on a plate that also includes a tart-sweet glaze of blueberry and heart nuts.
Not without flaws, Dennis’s ambitious food is as surprising as the restaurant in which it is served. Burdock is also a microbrewery (read Star beer writer Josh Rubin’s review below) and a music hall for folk and roots-pop acts.
Musician Jason Stein and beer en- thusiast Matthew Park opened Burdock last April to combine their interests, naming the Bloordale spot in part after the roots once used in brewing. Dennis (ex-Chantecler) was hired for his passion about local, from-scratch cooking.
“It’s new food for a new kind of space,” says Dennis, 30.
With Portuguese tiles left over from the previous churrasqueira, the room is dark and lively and loud with conversation. (The music hall is soundproofed.) Service is brisk and knowledgeable, in line with other brew pubs.
The short, rotating menu is meant for sharing. Hush puppies ($9) are corn heaven. An open-faced Reuben sandwich ($12) is many good things getting along.
There are loads of heirloom ingredients and labour-intensive preparations. Of the vegetarian options, I can’t recommend the messy spaghetti squash with mushroom sauce ($17). Far better are the wide buckwheat flour ribbons called pizzoccheri ($19) that Dennis tumbles with savoy cabbage, potatoes, ricotta and crunchy onions. Bing cherries preserved in wine vinegar counter the richness. It’s better than the version at Stelvio. Sweetbreads, a.k.a. pancreas or thymus glands, have a tough membrane that must be removed. If not, they are chewy in a bad way, as they are one night ($12).
Another night, the problem is corrected and we delight in the cumincayenne breading with matching Moroccan preserved lemon sauce to cool the burn.
There’s also some work to be done with the pork belly ($21). Not with the balance of chili and vinegar, collard greens and borlotti beans on the plate. But the creamy pork is capped by crackling hard enough to chip a molar. “It’s the hardest thing in the world to master,” Dennis later apologizes.
All may be forgiven with the black forest cake ($14), Burdock’s only dessert. Think of it as chocolate fudge intensified by cocoa nibs. Pickled cherries, tangy kefir (love getting probiotics with my cake) and a whisper of chili save it from being cloying.
The one element that doesn’t surprise me is the gorgeous sourdough bread ($5). Dennis used to bake at Woodlot, a paragon of yeast in Toronto. He fires off similar multigrain loaves daily at Burdock, dark and crusty with a moist elastic interior.
Very a-peeling. apataki@thestar.ca, Twitter @amypataki