Toronto’s diverse cuisine pioneers
What they lack in authenticity, they make up for in nostalgia and staying power
Roti. Quesadillas. Thai noodles. These foods were once exotic in Toronto. A generation ago, we weren’t known for our diverse cuisine scene. (Remember all that roast beef?) Thank goodness a handful of restaurants broke new ground with so-called “ethnic” dishes in the 1980s and 1990s. While Star critic Cynthia Wine counted just a dozen Mexican restaurants in 1988, today’s online yellow pages list 407.
“Pad thai is now as prevalent as spaghetti and meatballs,” says Andre Rosenbaum of the Queen Mother Café.
Rosenbaum is one of the pioneers. He and his former business partner first tried Thai/ Lao food at the home of his then-chef, Vanipha Southalack, a Lao refugee.
“We just thought, ‘This is amazing food. Why don’t we introduce it? It’s mind-opening and taste bud-opening,’” Rosenbaum remembers.
So introduce it they did, in 1985, doling out sticky rice and Lao grilled chicken in their historic Queen St. W. dining room. Rosenbaum says the Queen Mum was one of two Toronto restaurants to serve pad thai back then; the now-closed BamBoo claimed to be the first, in 1983.
It wasn’t a success. The abrupt switch from salads and sandwiches scared off customers, after which the Queen Mum adopted its current mix of global comfort foods. When the Queen Mother Café turned 40 last month, it sparked a look at — and a taste of — three Toronto ground- breakers who ushered in a new, global dining age. Tex-Mex mainstay La Hacienda is one of them, namechecked in the Star in 1987 for its “good, solid bean-beef-tortilla combinations.”
Burrito lovers should thank La Hacienda for helping pave the way.
“We would not be so arrogant to pretend we are serving authentic regional Mexican food,” says co-owner and one-time punk rocker Janusz Baraniecki.
La Hacienda has stayed in its lane with success. Opened in the ‘80s by rock musicians who canvassed their neighbours on what type of food they wanted, the shabby chic LaHa feels as comfortable as a well-worn pair of Dr. Martens.
Co-owner Anna Barss runs the kitchen. She tops chicken mole tacos ($13 for four) with shredded cabbage and crunchy radish to complement tender poached breast meat laced with pulverized pumpkin and sesame seeds, chocolate and cinnamon. Decent guacamole and chunky salsa play their parts. It works.
As to what lies behind LaHa’s long existence: “We’re primarily an aging hipster joint. People are drawn to it because they sense a freedom to express themselves here,” says Baraniecki, 56, who with Barss fully took over the restaurant in1999.
There was a changing of the guard at another pioneering restaurant when Kingsly Marino Mariathasan and Justin Mohan Peter took over romantic College St. spot Kalendar Restaurant and Bistro in 2104.
Kalendar opened in1994, back when saying “hummus” meant you were talking about garden soil, not chickpea dip. For Kalendar to serve roti — at that point more common at Indian or West Indian restaurants — in a chic Parisian setting was out there.
Nowadays, the double room is too dark and stylish to show its age but that’s not the case with the kitchen.
Roti here are called “scrolls.” The floppy, blistered shells are interleaved with ground seasoned lentils and wrapped around seven kinds of filling. Chicken ($14.95 for half ) brings an abundance of sliced breast meat in a sweet curry sauce seemingly thickened by ground almonds. Spinach ($14.95 for half ) is less successful, hardened by apparent reheating in the microwave.
At 24 years old, Kalendar has clearly outlasted the 60 per cent of new restaurants that fail in the first year. That makes Queen Mother Café, at 40, the equivalent of120 in human years. Chef Noy Phangnanouvong’s pad thai ($15.95) is how I remember it from my last visit, in 2002: thin rice noodles in a sticky sauce tasting of ketchup and vinegar. Better not to examine it too closely and give oneself over to the tangy pile with chopped chicken and scrambled egg, topped with contrasting bean sprouts and crunchy peanuts.
I prefer Salad King’s subtler version.
But tiaras off to the Queen Mother Café for expanding our palates.