The best places I ate this year
This was a year of dining well in unexpected places.
How extraordinary to find outstanding new-style British cooking on an unremarkable stretch of Kingston Rd., at the four-star Beech Tree. First-time restaurateur Robert Maxwell proved you needn’t go downtown for high-value, low-fuss food. Chef Jamie Newman’s molten chocolate cake is not to be missed.
Another unusual dining location was the empty hotel basement where I first sampled Roberto Fracchioni’s playful tasting menus at Monk Kitchen. A second meal inside the kitchen watching the cooks work was even better. Fracchioni and sous chef Mark Richardson have since left for Flor De Sal, a new fine-dining restaurant at 501 Davenport Rd. where the open kitchen provides “lots of opportunity to mingle,” he says.
(His replacement at Monk Kitchen wasn’t available at press time.)
Some pleasant surprises included ordering soba noodles in sign language (Signs) and finding healthy organic lunches at the Eaton Centre food court (Richtree Natural Market)
Also unexpected were the healthy organic lunches I discovered in the Eaton Centre food court run by Richtree Natural Market (I still pop in for the quinoa chicken soup). Movie theatres surprised me by letting viewers order chilled chardonnay from their VIP seats at the Cineplex Odeon Queensway. And while finding decent salmon with soba noodles on Yonge St. isn’t unusual, ordering it in sign language is: Kudos to Signs for creating a level dining field for hearing and deaf alike.
But strange places didn’t necessarily make for good meals. That chicken-black bean salad lunch at Frank’s on Kipling, an outgrowth of Kipling Tire, needed serious realignment. And a midnight meal at Steak Queen in Rexdale, which I was assigned to review after then-mayor Rob Ford was filmed ranting in the 24-hour diner, left a bad taste in my mouth. (I wasn’t the only restaurant critic contributing to Ford coverage in 2014. British writer Giles Coren of the Times ate a hotdog with the mayor.) This was the year to taste new cuisines. We tried contemporary German food at Das Gasthaus on the Danforth and the previously unheralded delights of Azerbaijani cooking at Kavkazin North York.
We tried the complex curry pastes and richly layered flavours of Malaysian restaurant Soos on Ossington Ave. and Indonesian restaurant Little Sister in midtown, both the sole examples of their cuisines within Toronto. I would happily eat at both for a week straight, especially the rendang short ribs and satay.
Given World Cup fever in 2014, Brazilian restaurants caught our attention this year. But none held it more deservedly than Matain Parkdale, a darling new spot for cassava poutine and caipirinhas.
This year also saw the return of Belgian cooking to Toronto with Roger Wils’ Brussels Bistro in the Beaches, an incarnation of the beloved Café Brussels.
This was the year in which the quiet excellence of four-star Yasu Sushi Bar drowned out the buzz of THR & Co. and DaiLo. But for sheer noisy fun, Mexican restaurant Fonda Lola on Queen St. W. was the place to go. This year also saw the rise of Dundas St. W. as the place to dine in Toronto. I wrote about more new restaurants on the trendy stretch between Bathurst St. and Lansdowne Ave. than any other section of Toronto in 2014: Hudson Kitchen, Bivy, Patois, Branca, Café Bar Pasta and Essen.
For 2015, my resolution is to dine beyond Dundas West. Tell me where to find good restaurants east of the Don River and north of Bloor.
Have palate, will travel. apataki@thestar.ca, Twitter @amypataki