Superb little-known pasta bar a bargain, any day of the week
Café Bar Pasta
(out of 4) VERY GOOD Address: 1588 Dundas St. W. (at Brock Ave.), 416-5344794, café-bar-pasta.com Chef: Jay Scaife Hours: Café, Tuesday to Saturday, 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Dinner, Monday to Thursday, 6 to 10:30 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 6 to 11:30 p.m. Reservations: Yes Wheelchair access: Yes Price: Dinner for two with wine, tax and tip: $60 One of the city’s best dining bargains is to be found Thursdays on Dundas West, when $20 at Café Bar Pasta gets you a glass of good wine and a deep bowl of pasta.
The restaurant calls the weekly event Thursday Crush, and indeed on those nights the dining room is filled with customers twirling up excellent bucatini alla gricia and the more playful “green eggs ’n’ ham,” an otherwise textbook carbonara given the Dr. Seuss treatment with a swirl of puréed garden peas.
AThursday Crush dinner is both better and cheaper than its equivalent at the Old Spaghetti Factory. Master sommelier John Szabo chooses the wines, premium Ontario vintages dispensed from taps. The pasta is made in-house from whole eggs and imported Le 5 Stagioni “00” flour for optimal texture. It makes a $20 tab a considerable bargain.
So it’s strange that on other nights of the week, when the prices aren’t much higher, we practically have Café Bar Pasta to ourselves.
Or maybe not so strange. Café Bar Pasta has been flying under the radar since it opened 16 months ago. It isn’t helped by an undistinguished name that reflects its dual personality — daytime espresso bar, nighttime restaurant. Its business cards neglect to spell out the address or phone number. There’s been little press.
“We had a bad opening. We can’t get a break,” admits owner Tom Bielecki of the lack of buzz.
Actor Ryan Gosling was a regular while staying in Toronto last year, says the restaurant’s publicist. More appealing to me is the online menu, an intriguing blend of Italian classics with the occasional Japanese ingredient. Chef Jay Scaife, 40, worked with fusion master Michael Pataran at Taboo.
Scaife easily passes the first-bite test. With just five ingredients in the bucatini ($18), there’s nowhere for a chef to hide. Here, the hollow noodles are laced with nubbins of cured pig guanciale, lightly glossed with green Abruzzese olive oil and dusted with pecorino romano. The cracked black pepper quietly builds with each mouthful.
To its credit, Café Bar Pasta looks and tastes like nothing else in the gentrifying Brockton Village neighbourhood.
Bielecki’s wife, designer Christine Vieira, whitewashed the brick and installed unique light fixtures like the cutlery chandelier over the communal table up front. A magazine rack holds the latest issue of Mad.
In the back, red acrylic shapes swirl like postmodern spaghetti on the walls; the artist, Jose Ortega, runs Lula Lounge across the street.
Fresh flowers dress up each table, as do printed cloth napkins knotted like a French fisherman’s scarf. Pampering is the goal, from the comfortable Windsor chairs to the scented candles in the bathroom. If the ’50s music gets in the way of conversation, ask the waiters to turn it down. They will.
Bielecki works the room like a politician, chatting up each table and touring firsttime guests through the kitchen with its 12-seat chef’s table.
The server cuts through all that dreary wine talk.
“I’ve got a blend that tastes like a sauvignon blanc,” he says, recommending a Norman Hardie Calcaire ($10 for five ounces) to match the kale caesar ($11).
The salad is better than your average superfood penance, crumbs of cooked duck egg yolks being one of Scaife’s modernist touches. Another is relocating the traditional bacon and anchovy to a side bit of bruschetta.
Grilled European sea bass is, at $28, the most expensive menu item. Showered in fennel, artichokes, tomatoes and loads of lemon, it tastes like spring on the Amalfi coast.
Classic saltimbocca is updated as creamy sweetbreads ($12) rolled in crisp prosciutto with sage. Scaife does a version of corn dogs ($14) using puréed lobster under a batter seeded with tiny Japanese masago rice crackers. This haute junk food works better than the cold octopus salad paired with warm beef marrow bones ($15) oozing oil.
Grilled ravioli ($21) are more successful. The plate is dotted with colourful vegetable purées and splashed with truffle foam. Really, it tastes like a deconstructed beef stew with carrots, peas, mushrooms and dumplings. This and one of Kristopher Lavoie’s featherlight pumpkin chiffon pies make a comforting yet polished meal.
Don’t go just on Thursdays. Café Bar Pasta deserves to be busier every day of the week. apataki@thestar.ca, Twitter @amypataki