My four-hour $900 dinner
Reviewer Amy Pataki blew her budget at Don Alfonso 1890, Toronto’s outpost of a Michelin two-star restaurant
Don Alfonso 1890
★★★★ (out of 4) Address: 19 Toronto St. (near Adelaide St. E.), 416-214-5888, donalfonsotoronto.com Chef: Saverio Macri Hours: Tuesday to Sunday, 5 to 11 p.m. Reservations: Yes Wheelchair access: Yes Price: Dinner for two with wine, tax and tip: $475 This dinner cost $900. Ridiculous, right? It was at Don Alfonso 1890, the downtown Toronto outpost of a Michelin two-star restaurant from Italy.
The cost covered two different $150 tasting menus, totalling 16 courses. This alone runs $475 with a mid-range glass of wine, tax and tip. Even a regular bottle of sparkling water there costs $8.50. But I went all-in for research: $220 in wine pairings, $36 in cheese and a $50 up-sell of white Umbrian truffle risotto.
The meal was one of the best I’ve had: Four hours of pleasure brought about by thoughtful service and original food, topped by a guided tour of the pristine kitchen. Like great sex, I woke up smiling about it the next day.
Two Michelin stars means “excellent cooking, worth a detour.” Canada doesn’t have a Michelin Guide, but Don Alfonso brings those high standards to Toronto. Two dozen white-toqued chefs, 40 wait staff and four sommeliers work here. In the open kitchen, one chef makes a canapé look like a pine cone by painstakingly inserting pumpkin seeds into a mound of Jerusalem artichoke purée.
It is formal but not stuffy. What used to be Rosewater Supper Club has been remade into a serene space with thronelike booths. Special stools keep women’s purses from touching the floor. Place settings are bespoke. Warm bread is served with tongs from a silver tray.
Nick Di Donato of Liberty Entertainment Group brought Don Alfonso to Toronto after a years-long search for a Michelin partner. The Iaccarino family, owners of Don Alfonso in the Sorrento peninsula since 1890, drive the direction of the menu — reassuring for those of us disappointed by Liberty’s pricey BlueBlood Steakhouse in Casa Loma. Don Alfonso also has satellites in New Zealand and Macau.
The tall room holds 68 guests, some of whom wear sweatshirts, others sequined dresses. Staff don’t blink an eye. Ask them to charge your phone and they will. Take your picture? Of course. Show you to the washroom? With a bow. Each server looks after one table, a care ratio on par with a hospital intensive care unit.
Money is no object, says executive chef Saverio Macri (ex-Cibo). He says Di Donato removed 70 seats from the dining room to accommodate a larger kitchen and the Italian co-owners fly in monthly to check in.
“We’re focused on quality, not worrying about labour or ingredient cost,” says Macri, 37.
That comes through in the restaurant’s two tasting menus. The vegetarian Contemporary menu ($150) is as incandescent as Tilda Swinton onscreen. The Classic menu ($150) has the star power of Daniel Day-Lewis. Both draw the eye and feed the soul.
The meal is a progression of thrills. Eel gelato turns the sushi bar staple into a smoky, barely sweetened revelation.
There are joyful textures, like the crisp vegetable wafers underneath a morsel of wobbly mushroom flan.
And brilliant combinations: Cinnamon with seared duck breast. Grapefruit with lightly smoked yellowtail. Cel- ery root to undercut the provolone richness of ravioli.
Big flavours leap out from the small portions. (Believe me, this is what you want in an eight-course meal.) Naples’s humble aglio e olio pasta is here elegantly rendered with silky tuna sauce, crunchy bread crumbs and lightly brined Spanish mackerel. The vegetarian menu builds toward spiffy ItalianJapanese tempura while the classic menu offers buttery Manitoba bison tenderloin wrapped in Swiss chard, mozzarella, guanciale, chicken pâté, and bread. The sauces are perfect.
Dessert is a master class in delicacy. Cherry-and-chocolate filled sfogliatella is as fragile as a bird’s nest.
Thin and crunchy cat’s tongue biscuits cradle a trio of espresso preparations: zabaglione, sponge cake, and pastry cream.
Yes, Don Alfonso is luxurious. Black truffles appear twice in a soft-yolked egg surrounded by burrata foam, once on top and again underneath. Wines of every colour flow in the brilliant sommelier-guided pairings. The add-on cheese course includes three-year-old Parmesan and homemade pistachio crisps.
Don Alfonso isn’t perfect. The smoked tofu soup blended with potato unfortunately resembles wallpaper paste. A service slip occurs when the meat eater gets the vegetarian’s plate and vice versa; no one notices when we switch the plates ourselves. But Don Alfonso knows how to make an impression, especially at the end when dry ice smokes dramatically from a plate of petit fours. (The chocolate and salted caramel lollipops take Skor bars to a higher plane.) Then comes the tour of the wine cellar and kitchen. Those celebrating a special occasion leave with a copy of the menu and a branded wine stopper. Is the extravagance worth it? To lovers of fine-dining, yes, it is — the same way fans can justify paying $600 for a VIP ticket to Cher’s upcoming Toronto concert or $3,000 for courtside seats at the Raptors. You can pay $300 for a rose gold facial at the Four Seasons Hotel spa, $500 for premium tickets to Come From Away and $700 to sleep at the Ritz-Carlton hotel. All that for just one night.
I have spent large sums of my own money, no expense account, eating in Michelin-starred restaurants in Europe and the U.S. The sheer excellence of a top-tier meal seems worth it, even though Don Alfonso used up my Star dining budget for the rest of the year.
Toronto now has two restaurants worth a detour: The $300-a-person tasting menus at the exquisite Kaiseki YuZen Hashimoto in Don Mills and dinner at Don Alfonso. Both offer unique and privileged thrills.
“We were a little nervous about opening. It’s a very expensive meal, but I think Toronto will catch on to it,” chef Macri says.