Fine dining alive and By Corey Mintz Toronto Star Columnist Yes, the current global recession has swept through Toronto’s restaurant scene like a brushfire. Food empires have crashed. Chef’s fortunes have crumbled. Some culinary temples of grandeur, such as Splendido, have downsized, scaling back the glitz. Others, like Truffles, have been laid to rest. Even Susur Lee, poster boy for kitchen pageantry, has started serving lunch at his restaurant Lee. He’s even put a hamburger on the menu, the culinary white flag. But for those with anniversaries to celebrate or CEO titles to validate, there is still luxury to be had in some corners of Toronto’s dining scene. There has always been somewhere in this town to drop a c-note on a piece of beef. The steakhouse style of dining that once dominated Toronto is still alive in rooms such as Harbour Sixty Steakhouse, Jacobs & Co. Steakhouse and the 51-years-young Barberian’s. At Jacobs, you could spend $190 on a six-ounce portion of wagyu beef from Australia. For the kids at the opposite end of the cultural spectrum — those who would claim bragging rights to exclusivity over spending — there is the emergence of the underground supper club. Invitations to multi-course meals at Charlie’s Burgers are obtained through subjugation to, and approval from, the anonymous, eponymous host. Those bohemian dinners, held at secret locations, routinely run over $150. When Bay-streeters who frequent Canoe’s bar need to celebrate a big commission, a $21 lobster sandwich may as well be a hot dog at the Rogers Centre. Canoe offers a raw seafood platter for $72. The current plate contains such exotica as Queen Charlotte coho belly tartare, sablefish brandade, scallop boudin with fiddles, oysters (such as Beach Angels or Caraquet), B.C. albacore tuna, Qualicum beach scallops, and lobster Waldorf. “The presentation,” says executive chef Anthony Walsh of the custom-made serving plate indented with the imprints of shellfish, “gives an air of uniqueness, fantasy, as well as the appropriate dose of the high-end, knock out offerings Mother Nature has to offer.” At Scaramouche, chef/owner Keith Froggett says that clients will occasionally bring in their own fish for him to cook. Last summer, he got his hands on line-caught sturgeon from the St. John River in New Brunswick. The fish were being caught for their eggs. The 85-pound sturgeon was a byproduct. Froggett smoked and grilled the fillets, serving it with some of its own caviar. Though he reminds that, “Last year probably wasn’t the best year to reference that kind of thing.” He says that luxury is in the eye of the beholder, as does Yannick Bigourdan, who does not see his restaurant, Nota Bene, as luxurious. While mains at Nota Bene average about $25, that’s practically pub fare compared to when Bigourdan ran Splendido. On the fifth floor of the ROM, C5 Restaurant Lounge juggles the interests of high-rollers with casual museum guests. There is a kids menu with fish & chips and mac & cheese. But there is also lobster carbonara with tobiko. Asked by the museum to create an egg dish to tie in with May’s dinosaur egg exhibit, chef de cuisine Luigi Encarnacion took the tradition of pasta with egg yolks and bacon to another level. To the house-made tagliatelle and boar bacon, he’s added lobster and tobiko (flying fish roe), finishing the plate with a garnish of egg yolk that’s been cured with black truffle. The views from Canoe, Scaramouche and C5 are a primary part of the lavish dining experience. Canoe looks down on the city from the 54th floor of the TD Centre on Wellington St. W. and diners can watch the little planes landing below at Billy Bishop Airport. From the fifth floor of the ROM, C5 looks out across the old brick, spires and well-kept fields of the University of Toronto campus. The view from Scaramouche presents something more unique. It’s halfway up the steep hill on Avenue Rd., south of St. Clair Ave. W., which frustrates cyclists so much. But no one cycles to Scaramouche. From the perch on the hill, the dining room’s windows look out across the Toronto. A small barrier of trees acts as a buffer, as if Scaramouche were a castle and the trees a moat. In the quiet tinkle of the room, Toronto’s houses and offices seem like a sea of ships, slowly approaching the citadel, before melting away into the horizon with the setting sun. There’s no view at Hashimoto. The dark green room with three tables, six seats and no windows, shares its entrance with a preschool. The sign at the front, distinguishing it from the adjacent Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre, looks to be written on a piece of plywood, in the style usually reserved for the “turn here” signs that cottage owners use to direct you to hidden, nameless roads. But at $300 for a nine-course meal, Hashimoto is the most expensive dinner in the city. Kaiseki cuisine, as much as bunraku theatre, is an art form little practiced outside of Japan. It is about using the produce, fish and meat of the season, reshaping it to create something beautiful, intricate and fleeting. “My father shows his heart through the ingredients,” says assistant manager Kei Hashimoto of his chef father Masaki. Masaki Hashimoto imports nearly everything from his home country. It’s not to flaunt affluence, but to present the spirit of Japan, in season. For him, there is an incomparable taste to wild porgie, caught during cherry blossom season, that won’t be found in the fish three months later. The kaiseki experience may be pricy. But less so than a flight to Japan. The perception of luxurious restaurants is often that they are playgrounds for the rich. That may be true. But they are also the employers of working class artists, passionate people for whom no expense, or amount of effort, is too much, to create something special for their guests. And luxury itself is not just in the eye of the beholder, but a fluctuating commodity. |
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