Chotto Matte is definitely A Scene
Black nightclub lighting makes the washroom mural glow. Funky privacy film on the windows separates diners from the rush-hour commuters skittering to catch the GO train home. A DJ spins every night.
It is A Scene, most likely to appeal to tourists and office workers.
When it comes to eating, though, Chotto Matte delivers a shaky rendition of Nikkei cuisine. This is the fusion cooking of Japanese Peruvians popularized by Nobu Matsuhisa, for whom Chotto founder Kurt Zdesar once worked.
But Chotto Matte (“wait a second” in Japanese) is no Nobu, not with flavours this repetitive and execution this inconsistent.
Chotto certainly is wellstaffed. Clad in black, the servers and runners pay close attention to the tables, whisking away empty cocktail glasses and clearing space for new dishes.
Chef de cuisine Chris Kanka (now-closed West Hill Wine Bar), under corporate chef Jordan Sclare, runs the kitchen. Miso soup ($7.50) with tofu and seaweed one night is as smoky as a burnt tire, normal the next. Corn on the $12 cob comes a la Huancaina, the cream cheeseyellow chili sauce thinner and blander than usual.
At lunch, sizzling beef toban yaki ($40) features limp asparagus, while the vegetables in Kurt’s Special Salmon Bowl ($25) really put the mush in mushrooms.
Many dishes lead to questions: Why go to the trouble of making crisp tempura shrimp ($29) then turn them soggy by laying them atop sauce? Why change our plates but not our chili-stained wooden chopsticks? Must raw red onions garnish every dish?
Then there’s the sweetness that creeps into a lot of dishes. Soft fried eggplant ($11.50) is nicely offset by crunchy puffed buckwheat, but doesn’t need chopped dried apricots; never did, never will. Nor do spicy shishito peppers ($8.50) need that much den miso, a mix of white miso with sugar, mirin and sake. (It also glazes Chotto’s boneless chicken thighs). Even the deliciously crispcreamy fried pork belly ($18.50) with its smoked chili flavours gets topped with diced Asian pears.
Worse are the indistinguishable dishes. I have to look at a menu to realize it was tuna, yellowtail and salmon in supposedly spicy mayonnaise in the lunch set sushi rolls. At least sea bass ceviche ($18.50) makes a vivid citric impression.
Still, I’m having a good time. Engaging, attentive service has something to do with it. So does the balanced pisco sour ($16). Cocktails here are as attractive as the room, garnished with purple orchids or dried rosebuds.
Beer-wise, the list includes Kagua blanc and rouge, Japanese-style strong beers brewed in Belgium.
The server shares this fact: Zdesar, the founder, always orders the same dessert in restaurants — two scoops of vanilla ice cream with hot chocolate sauce.
Say what you will about his tastes, at Chotto it’s called Ecuador 64 and it costs $10. Problem is, it is melting by the time it hits the table. The sauce doesn’t so much slide down the ice cream as repel off it, unable to find purchase.
Let’s blame Toronto’s humidity for this and other dessert letdowns. What should be crunchy honeycomb toffee is instead sticky enough to pull out fillings; it decorates an otherwise wonderful chocolate cream ($11.50).
Likewise, the glass sugar lid on passion fruit crème brûlée ($11) is floppy instead of crackling; underneath, the pudding is runny on the bottom, souffléd on top. It’s like the batter couldn’t make up its mind what to become. Same with Chotto, which wants to look good but needs to taste better.
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