Outlook grey for Kensington restaurant
Sloppy food, smarmy service doesn’t fit with attractive room
GREY GARDENS
(out of 4) POOR Address: 199 Augusta Ave. (at Bellevue Square), 647-351-1552, greygardens.ca Chef: Mitch Bates Hours: Wednesday to Sunday, 5 p.m. to 1 a.m. Reservations: Yes Wheelchair access: Step at entrance Price: Dinner for two with wine, tax and tip: $200
Many worship at the altar of Jen Agg. I do not. The Black Hoof’s Agg, 41, is a successful and outspoken restaurateur with six properties in two cities. She’s made her own brand of casual, cool dining. Her tweets on sexism, booze and restaurant life, often in all-caps for emphasis, have a wide following. She promises more of the same verve with her May 17 memoir, I Hear She’s a Real Bitch.
But her newest Toronto restaurant, Grey Gardens in Kensington Market, has sloppy food, smarmy service and the chutzpah to charge $14 for a fried egg. Two evenings in the raucous dining room fail to convert me.
Talking to Agg on the phone, she confirms that she makes restaurants for herself, sweats the details (spending hours on playlists, for one) and strives for a “humane” workplace free from violence and misogyny.
“I’m really, really proud of what we’re doing at Grey Gardens,” she says.
Yet I have to ask Agg, who not long ago organized a conference to “(smash) the patriarchy one plate at a time,” why there’s only one female chef at Gardens.
“We hire the best cooks available to us. Sometimes you want to create parity but there aren’t that many female cooks,” Agg says.
This isn’t a review of Agg or her policies. It’s about her self-serving restaurant.
In my first visit to Grey Gardens, I’m rushed through two glasses of wine and six courses in 90 minutes.
Gardens makes its two-hour, 15minute time limit clear online and on the phone. This is better than Agg mocking Black Hoof diners on Twitter, as she once did, for overstaying their welcome.
Who’d want to linger here? One server corrects my wine pronunciation.
Another addresses me in the majestic plural, as in “what kind of water will we be having?”
The biggest letdown comes from the open kitchen led by chef and co-owner Mitch Bates. His cooking at Momofuku’s Shoto soared. Now, it stumbles.
Creativity isn’t the problem. It’s the execution. Salt cod ($22) needs more soaking to reduce salinity. Ravioli ($28) are hard at the edges. Gigli pasta ($21) is just boring macaroni and cheese with bacon until diners add the proffered hot sauce; we make it work.
By the time the underwhelming fried egg, monotonous chopped salmon ($29), so-so beet salad ($18) and fishy oxtail with crab ($36) come around, I realize there’s not much to recommend.
Plus, the food looks ugly. Case in point: chocolate squiggles ($13) that resemble what dog owners scoop. It doesn’t fit with the attractive room.
“I don’t think it needs to be pretty to be good,” Bates says later.
Gardens makes a better wine bar than restaurant. Go for a glass or two of muscadet ($14); pair it with sea bass ceviche ($14) in pickled jalapeno juice and Hello Kitty green apple flowers. Follow this with the cronutty deliciousness of deep-fried, sugardusted cylinders of croissant ($7). Then move on. apataki@thestar.ca, @amypataki