Oh Canada!!! The wonders of Toronto

Every September Toronto, Canada plays host to an International Film Festival. Along with hundreds of great films, there are hundreds of great restaurants...I am always looking for recommendations...Anyone have any fav spots in Toronto???

Susan

North 44 used to be (and perhaps still is) on of the finest Canadian restaurants in the city. I enjoyed my meal there immensely, but this was several years back and I can't vouch for its current quality.

North 44
2537 Yonge St.
Toronto
416-487-4897

About a year ago I was able to make a day trip from Buffalo and while wandering around the large and bustling Chinatown we stopped in Bright Pearl Seafood for dim sum. Large, colorful room with a great cross section of people and cart service. You can also order off their extensive menu if dim sum is not your choice. I recall excellent head on shrimp and my first foray into chicken braised with fish maw. Not bad. A little bit south of the restaurant is the small Italian neighborhood which I recall has a nice gelato shop/bakery but the name/location escapes me.

Bright Pearl Seafood
346 - 348 Spadina Ave.
Toronto, ON M5T 2G2
Daily Hours: 9:00 AM - 11:00 PM
Phone: 416.979.3988

Hi BG --

If you haven't already, I'd check out this old thread that has a lot of good TO suggestions.

These sites may have some useful info too:
http://www.toronto.com
http://www.eye.net

Zee

My search of "Toronto" revealed this old gem , which I reprint with permission from the author:

Days 4-5, Toronto

Toronto is a charming City, a great city. But you know that. It doesn't need my boosting.

Dinner, Lai Wah Heen. This is the fancy hotel Hong Kong style restaurant lauded on CH, in the NYTimes, in Gourmet, etc., as possibly the best Cantonese restaurant in this hemisphere. Dim sum, especially. But since we were eating at 10 pm on a weeknight, no dim sum. Overall, I enjoyed it, but I was a little underwhelmed by what we had. I admit, the subtleties of Cantonese hold less a spell over me than some of the more aggressive cuisines of China.

The smoked meat plate had winners (perfect BBQ pork and great "candied" fish) and losers (the mock goose proved again that tofu can too eagerly take on smoke). Tendon-y beef was somewhere in the middle. I thought I had found the perfect dish for this kind of restaurant in the scrambled eggs with seafood, and it was very good. The chef's skill was apparent in the light, fluffy egg whites and barely-done seafood that firmed up just as the plate hit the table. A raw yolk sat on top, waiting to be incorporated tableside. Very nice, but perhaps too subtle, especially after a tray of smoked meats. Philistine that I am, I remedied this with the house's fine chili oil with dried shrimp. Taiwan noodles finished up. The pasta was perfect, as were the barely blanched vegetables. But there was not much flavor. As a side note, be aware that this Chinese kitchen goes full blast with the MSG.

PS, the place is a fancy hotel restaurant, deco-style and subdued. I have to think that it compares in many relevant ways to our own Shanghai Terrace.

Brunch: Shopsy's Deli, downtown. This was the first decent looking place as we emerged from the subway from our Yorkville hotel. It's your standard "Jewish deli" with a wildly expanded menu. However, I found the chicken soup and the corned beef to be much better than acceptable. Torontonians bemoan the lack of good delis compared to NY and Montreal. But most cities would be happy to have a Shopsy's. Nice humidor, too.

Apres-brunch: St. Lawrence market peameal bacon sandwiches. St. Lawrence is widely lauded as one of the best fresh markets in the world. This, I can agree with. Great permanent stalls, including butchers (mostly Portuguese and Italian), bakers, Chinese stalls, Italian sandwich stands, cheese mongers (lots of superb French ripe cheeses you won't see here), and, especially, fish mongers. I'd give Toronto's market the nod over similar places in, for example, New Orleans, Philly, and Seattle. Weekly markets and wholesale market "districts" are different animals. Chicago deserves a permanent market like this.

Oh, the bacon sandwich (Canadian bacon, like McDonald's but infinitely better) was very good, as was the contraband super-hot dry chorizo in my fridge from one of the Porto-Italo butchers.

Dinner: Chiado. This is the fancy Portuguese restaurant in an old townhouse in the hip "Little Italy" neighborhood (Italian and Portuguese, really, with lots of Canadian "trixies" in recent years). First, let me recommend the neighborhood. College Street is a nice place, with a good mix of restaurants and retail, not really geared toward tourists. Very human scale. Have a coffee and pastry at Riviera, which compares favorably to Prima, above.

Chiado is supposed to be the "best" Portuguese in North America. I don't doubt it. (I went to the recommended "best" portuguese in Rio, which paled in comparison to Chiado, BTW.) An amuse of queijo fresco followed by lightly marinated, grilled sardines. This is the simplicity and respect for fish that I had hoped to enjoy from such a well-regarded Portuguese place. For my main course, I avoided the novo stuff for home cooking -- acorda. This is a casserole of shellfish and stale bread soaked in broth with roasted garlic and a little parsley. Delicious comfort food not unlike the Italian aquacotta. Very Portuguese: simple, austere, honest. But I must admit, the dish was soft, white and subtle like the scrambled eggs at LWH, and I felt the need to besot it, just a little. (I think that all the Thai and Mexican here has blown out my taste buds, maybe.) Luckily, the chef sent out his own malgueta sauce, which tuned my seafood paste into the perfect meal. Great all-Portuguese wine list. Chilled porto for dessert. PS, the fries were among the best I've had -- limp, dense, olive oil and garlic packed sticks, stacked like Lincoln Logs into a cube. Get a side order like we did.

Apres dessert: Gelato and espresso corretto at Sicilian Ice Cream. This little chain really captures the feel of a Southern European bar in a tourist zone. I mean that in a good way. Families with little kids eating ice cream, young Italian and Portuguese guys watching soccer and drinking beer, and bewildered Anglo Torontonian twenty-somethings wondering why the Latins keep their kids out so late. Truthfully, the ice cream's not great.

Absolutely go to the St. Lawrence Market. I asked all of my Toronto friends and acquaintances about T.O. native food and, while they had trouble with the question, eventually most decided that the main local delicacy was the peameal bacon sandwich. That settled, everyone agreed that the best was to be had at the market, particularly at Carousel Bakery.

I have to say I found the sandwich good but unexciting -- compared to, say, Italian beef or a Chicago style hot dog. The market, though is fabulous, jealousy inducing, with produce sellers, butchers, bakers, a wide variety of everything and reasonable prices.

Speaking of hot dogs, there are decent ones to be had from street vendors around the city, though the vaunted Shopsy's weiner has no snap.

Lai Wah Heen serves some of the best dim sum I've had in three countries, including Hong Kong. It's also very expensive -- an elegant, dress-up, white-tablecloth restaurant in a hotel. You order from a menu, not carts.

I found Chiado disappointing. It's upscale and contemporary. If I came from, say, Boston, where there's a lot of Portuguese food, I'd probably like it better, but coming from Chicago, where there is none, I'd hoped for more rustic, traditional fare.

We had some fabulous meals at Focaccia, a tiny place that sounds as if it were Italian, but isn't. I guess you could call it "contemporary Canadian." However, I understand that the chef has left since I was there last, and I don't have reliable recent reports.

I also enjoyed Marche Movenpick, a kind of elaborate buffet with chefs cooking different cuisines at different stations. It's lots of fun, with surprisingly good food and late hours. Be sure to try the rosti potatoes. There are several of these places. I think the name may have changed to Richtree Market.

St. Lawrence Market
92 Front Street East
Toronto
(416) 392-7120

Lai Wah Heen
Metropolitan Hotel
108 Chestnut St.
Toronto
(416) 977-9899

Chiado Restaurant
864 College St.
Toronto
(416) 538-1910

Focaccia
17 Hayden (at Yonge)
Toronto
416/323-0179

Mövenpick Marché
www.richtree.ca

St. Lawrence Market is very good and is a great place to spend Saturday morning. However, a long stroll through the Kensington also should not be missed. It is much more "blue collar".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kensington_Market

Also a long stroll down Spadina St. is also very interesting, especially for all the Chinese bakeries.

LAZ, I think we agree on most of the above. The bacon sammy is very good, but pretty bland. I would reiterate my opinion that Chiado is sort of like Topolobampo is that it is at once traditional and upscale/progressive. If you look at what I ate there you will see a menu that is so traditional it's practically reactionary. Fresh cheese, grilled sardines and acorda is as traditional as it gets, and they didn't try anything cute with it. I appreciate your experience, but based on my own if I found myself back in Toronto for a week I'd be tempted to eat there at least twice.

LAZ wrote:Lai Wah Heen serves some of the best dim sum I've had in three countries, including Hong Kong. It's also very expensive -- an elegant, dress-up, white-tablecloth restaurant in a hotel. You order from a menu, not carts.

I found Chiado disappointing. It's upscale and contemporary. If I came from, say, Boston, where there's a lot of Portuguese food, I'd probably like it better, but coming from Chicago, where there is none, I'd hoped for more rustic, traditional fare.

LAZ,

While I enjoyed Lai Wah Heen I found it a bit more sizzle than steak, though my expectations were almost impossibly high.

I like Chiado quite a bit, and have directed numerous people there, including my parents who loved the place, but for more "rustic, traditional" Portuguese I'd highly recommend Amadeus in the Kensington Market area.

Enjoy,
Gary

Before departing Toronto, we stopped at St. Lawrence Market. Oh how I wish we had more time! For breakfast, we ordered two sandwiches from Carousel Bakery: the legendary peameal bacon and the breakfast bacon sandwich. The breakfast sandwich had slightly less bacon and instead included a fried egg and cheese. The egg and cheese w/the bacon made it a good breakfast sandwich but kind of overwhelmed the bacon. I preferred the peameal bacon sandwich b/c you were able to savor the taste on its own. I thought it was very tasty and addicting. I was surprised to see Portuguese egg tarts, so I had to order one to taste their version. The flaky crust was similar to the ones that I had in Macau. However, the texture of the custard was unlike any other egg tart that I've ever had. I am not even sure, but it was almost as if there was gelatin in the custard.

For the road, we ordered two sandwiches from Mustachio's: chicken & eggplant and veal & eggplant. The roll is sliced and each half is topped with marinara sauce. Then come the layers of beautifully breaded eggplant, veal/chicken topped with onions, mushrooms, and your choice of sweet peppers or jalapenos. The sandwiches end up being pretty thick. The marinara sauce and the eggplant didn't really do much for me. I found the chicken combo to be pretty bland and unexciting while the veal combo was so delicious. The veal added so much more flavor than the chicken.

I am definitely looking forward to returning to St. Lawrence Market w/a huge appetite and more time on future visits to Toronto.

This past weekend I was in Toronto and had some excellent Chinese food. See
http://ico.facebook.com/album.php?aid=1 ... =522781929 for pictures.
First up:

Lai Wah Heen on the second floor at the Metropolitan Hotel.
Generally the food was ordered by piece versus coming with a set amount on the plate. The service was impeccable and the overall experience was enjoyable. First two pics are of puff pastry with shrimp, pork and cured ham. The pastry was flaky and delicate, with excellent flavor with the ham adding just the right amount of saltiness. A high point of the meal included the duckling dumplings with foie gras paste, job’s tear and heart of garlic. This was so amazing. The soft melting texture of the inside was phenomenal. Also the noodles with shaved black truffles, lobster and truffle oil was incredible too. I had never had truffle with Chinese food before but I was awe struck. The rich aroma just lingered in my mouth and I ate this dish so slowly to fully savor every last bit. The other dishes were very well executed too, I just don’t have as much to say about them now.

369 Shanghai dim sum
We started with cold spicy cubed tendon, had new year’s cake( lien goh), braised pork belly with pea pod sprouts, a flaky pastry with crumbled pork, a bun with sticky rice filled with dry shredded pork and not pictured siu long bao, niu rou mein, hot soya bean milk and steamed vegetable dumplings. Although the noodles in the soup could not even compare to Katy’s and the broth was much simpler, the niu rou mein was enjoyable. The tendon and pork belly were outstanding. I wish I could eat these two items all the time!

Casa Imperial Fine Chinese Cuisine
This restaurant in located in an old Victorian mansion?/ building? So it has a very different vibe to it than any other Chinese restaurant that I’ve been to. We started with shark fin soup, drizzled with a bit of red vinegar. The shark’s fin was nice, it wasn’t all one piece but there was a substantial amount of it in each bowl and the shreds of cured ham enhanced it. The abalone, although small was delicious, as abalone usually is. It had a really great texture, perfect amount of chewiness and resistance. The goose foot was nice in this dish as I had one more thing to sop up the abalone sauce with. The other exceptional dish was the bitter melon in duck egg. I’ve only ever had seafood in duck egg before so the bitter melon was a definite surprise for my taste buds. The saltiness of the egg combated the bitterness of the melon and the slight crust added to the delicate texture.

I don’t remember the name of the other Shanghainese dim sum restaurant that we went to, but the siu long bao here were perfect. There is a large glass wall so you can watch the 6 cooks roll, form, stuff and shape the siu long bao in front of you. The skin was light and delicate and the soup inside was incredibly flavorful. The reason we went for Shanghainese food again was for the dessert though. I’m not sure of the name, but they are pastries made of egg whites, stuffed with red bean paste and topped with powdered sugar. They almost resemble a soufflé puff without the soufflé mold.



Lai Wah Heen
108 Chestnut St
Toronto, On

369 Shanghai dim sum
8380 Kennedy Road
Markham ON

Casa Imperial Fine Chinese Cuisine
4125 Steeles Avenue East
Scarborough, ON,