restaurants – Page 12

Four Scores With Delicious, Healthy Dishes

Four
187 Bay Street, Commerce Court South, concourse level
416-368-1444

Fine dining and healthy eating have never exactly gone together. Luxurious sauces, marbled steaks and decadent desserts are a far cry from the salads without dressing and those awful “diet plates” of cottage cheese and melba toast that we tend to think of as low calorie meals. And pious health food restaurants serve up hefty portions of morality but the food at those places has never been known for being especially tasty.

Four aims to change that.

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Sunday Brunch – Yitz’s Delicatessen

Yitz’s Delicatessen and Catering
346 Eglinton Avenue West
416-487-4506
Brunch for two with all taxes, tip and coffee: $30

One of my very first jobs in Toronto was at Eglinton and Avenue Road, and ever since then, I’ve loved going to Yitz’s. Between the Eglinton location and the old Switzer’s on Spadina Avenue, these two restaurants often made me wish I had my very own Jewish Grandmother who would stuff me with blintzes and latkes and matzo.

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Life’s a Bowl of Cherries

Although I try to eat a mostly seasonal diet, I’ve got to admit that in the dark months of January and February, I start craving fruit. Not just apples and pears, but bright juicy summer fruits like berries. At least once every winter I break down and come home from the grocery store with a bag of cherries, just because I really, really need them, even if they’re nowhere as good as the local cherries we get in the summertime.

Given that this week is the first National Eat Red Week (February 4th – February 10th), I don’t feel so bad about indulging in some cherries. Particularly since local tart cherries are available both dried and in juice concentrate form year round – Ontario is the sole producing province of commercially-grown tart cherries, most of which are the Montmorency variety, and over the past five years, the average annual crop has been an average of 10 million pounds.

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Sunday Brunch – Sunset Grill

Sunset Grill
1 Richmond Street West (and other locations)
416-861-0514
Brunch for two with all taxes, tip and coffee: $23

People like breakfast. They want it hot, fast and familiar. They’re even willing to stand in line for it if that combination can be guaranteed.

Thus is the business plan on which the Sunset Grill is based. And it seems to be working. Starting with one all-day breakfast diner in the Beaches in 1985, this local chain has grown to 15 locations and counting. Most are known for their line-ups, especially on weekends. That’s a lot of bacon and eggs.

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This is Where the Magic Happens

My dogs always know when the pizza guy is coming. They go crazy when the door buzzer rings and run around the house in a frenzy. Pizza is their favourite food and they believe it is their dog-given right to the uneaten crusts. They are less happy when the pizza comes from Magic Oven, though, since their share of the crust is minimal indeed. I love my dogs, but when I’m having a healthy pizza with organic ingredients, my pups are outta luck because I’m eating the whole thing.

Which is to say, this ain’t your average pizza.

The concept behind Magic Oven’s gourmet pizza was developed when owners Tony and Abby Sabherwal took a trip to California and visited over 100 pizza restaurants in 16 days. They were enthralled with the use of fresh, high-end ingredients and were determined to recreate the delicious pizzas they had tried in Carmel By the Sea back in Toronto. Continue reading “This is Where the Magic Happens”

Sunday Brunch – Niagara Street Cafe

Niagara Street Café
169 Niagara Street
416-703-4222
Brunch for two with all taxes, tip and coffee: $52

I’ve always heard good things about the Niagara Street Café. It’s original incarnation was run by a mother/daughter team who used free-range and organic ingredients. When it transferred hands in 2004, it continued to gain accolades, particularly at brunch.

Everything about the place seems ideal – nice cozy space that would be filled with sunshine if we weren’t in the middle of a run of grey days, great looking menu with interesting options. But there’s an undercurrent of something that wasn’t quite right, especially in terms of the menu. What looks good on paper doesn’t jibe so well when reality sets in.

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A Tiny Touch of Tati’s Paris

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Tati Bistro
124 Harbord Street
416-962-8284
Dinner for two with all taxes, tip and wine: $130

I’m not a fan of science fiction. I’m a grounded in reality kind of gal. So every time I watch the film Mon Oncle by famed French actor/director Jacques Tati, I am always relieved when main character Monsieur Hulot leaves his sister’s “house of the future” to return to his little garret across the market square from the quintessential Parisian bistro. The juxtaposition of the modern kitchen and M. Hulot’s primitive, neighbourhood, family-run bistro speak to generations of people, both in France and elsewhere, who long to retain their cultural roots.

Chef Laurent Brion manages to capture exactly the mood of Hulot’s neighbourhood bistro (okay, minus the pack of dogs out front) in Harbord Street’s newest gem, Tati Bistro. Sporting a logo of Tati’s bumbling postman character atop his bicycle from the film Jour du Fête, the restaurant takes over the location of the former Kensington Kitchen and brings a tiny touch of Paris to downtown Toronto.

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Sunday Brunch – The Gladstone Hotel

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The Gladstone Hotel Ballroom Cafe
1214 Queen Street West
416-531-4635
Brunch for two with all taxes, tip and coffee: $35

Okay, so to be straight up honest, it’s not actually Sunday when we visit to do this review. It’s the morning of January 1st, and the oldest continually operating hotel is Toronto is serving up brunch – not to weary travellers as it did so many years ago, but to hungover locals and hipsters looking for something hearty and filling to ease them into the new year.

The high windows of the south-facing ballroom cafe normally have warm sunlight streaming through them, but today it’s a grey view of wet snow. The servers are bright-eyed and smiling, however, and water and coffee arrive at our table quickly.

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Feeling Brazen

brazenbar

Brazen Head Irish Pub
165 East Liberty Street
416-535-8787
Dinner for two with all taxes, tip and beer: $80

In the still-barren wasteland of culinary choices that is Liberty Village, a beacon has been lit. Yes, yes, there’s Thuet and Liberty Café, but there really isn’t a cozy place with a decent beer selection and a reasonable price tag that locals can call their local. Until now.

For months we’ve all been peering across the vast expanse of parking lot at the nearby Dominion, straining to see if there was any activity in the historic industrial building that is now home to the Brazen Head pub. Progress in the retail sector of Liberty Village is slow and plodding, and while the renovations started this past summer, the doors of Liberty’s first pub didn’t open until just a few weeks ago.

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The Orange Glow of the Disco Era

Okonomi House
23 Charles Street West
416-925-6176
Dinner for two with all taxes, tip and tea: $30

Despite its reputation as “Toronto the Good”, our fair city was supposedly quite the hedonistic place during the disco era. Centred around the Yonge Street strip, beautiful young things in white suits or wrap dresses and wedge heels congregated at the dance clubs to do the hustle, the bus stop and to drunkenly sing along to Dancing Queen by Abba. Like all club-goers, they likely wandered out into the night looking for a bite to eat, at which point, like so many generations of Torontonians after them, they would follow the beacon of the orange glow down Charles Street West to Okonomi House.

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