Torito
276 Augusta Avenue
647-436-5874
Dinner for two with all taxes, tip and wine: $70

Torito is the restaurant most chefs dream of opening. Breaking their backs making coulis for a coolie’s wage, cooks fantasize about owning/running a modest 30-seat restaurant, repeating the mantra “I’m here to get an education, that’s why I’m being paid so little”, while fearing they’ve become just like the whore who tells herself, “my pimp loves me.” This dream is based on the desire to serve unpretentious food made with the best ingredients as a rebellion from the circus of infinite garnishes and needlessly bizarre pairings like red snapper with coffee gellee (I’m not making that up).

Chef-owner Carlos Hernandez has realized this dream. His cozy tapas restaurant Torito has scored with its elegant, honest food and relaxing décor and now it’s bursting at the seams. Hernandez and co-owner Veronica Laudes have doubled their capacity with front and back patios and work the room with the guileless grace that only stakeholders will. They don’t take reservations so we arrived at six. When we left at eight (on a Tuesday), every seat was full.

When I hear tapas, I think, “ok, this will be the real deal.” Without the gingham tablecloth cop-out of large slabs of protein beside four-ounce scoops of starch, there should be, as Kramer once said of thinly sliced meat, “No place for the flavour to hide.”

Plate design at Torito is just meticulous enough without being ornate or burdened by unnecessary garnishes. The simplest dish, patatas bravas ($9); Spanish chorizo and fingerling potatoes submerged in a sweet and fiery reduced tomato sauce drizzled with aioli, is presented with elegant honesty. I ask Hernandez what makes the sauce so intense and he confides that it is reserved fat from the sausage. God bless you, sir. The cylinders of potato are crisply browned and the sweat of pork fat glistens in the late afternoon sun on Torito’s back patio. My fork dives straight into the chorizo and juicy fat erupts in my mouth, spilling heat and smoky paprika, giving me my first, visceral “unghhh” of the meal. It’s like Isaac Hayes music and dim lighting in my mouth (1973 Isaac Hayes, not Scientologist Isaac Hayes).

I almost never order shrimp off a menu. The quality is usually disappointing and the product overcooked. Hernandez uses them successfully as balance, chopped loosely and creamed with avocado, to offset the acid of his triumphant yellow tomato & gooseberry gazpacho ($8). The stoichiometric (my roommate’s a chemist) ratio of tart to sweet is so superbly pleasing that this gem of a special needs to be on the regular menu. It’s a knock-out. But the chef is humble about it: “Oh, eet’s just something that’s been een my brain for a few years.”

Being landlocked, we often take inventory of the shellfish we’re served as an imperial reading of our hosts stinginess. Crab croquettes ($12), another item I’d avoid anywhere else (the potato or flour or whatever starch is used to bind them is usually the main ingredient), are so bursting with briny Dungeness crab they have no need for the accompanying parsley aioli. A ceviche ($10) of Peruvian white bass has a remarkable density, the fat of the fish preventing it from flaking apart. It’s just the sort of ultra-strong flavour that works so perfectly in a small dish. The puckering citrus-cured fish is flanked by toasted corn and cilantro and sits on top of a disc of sweet yam. It’s so popular with the regulars Hernandez can’t take it off the menu. Lamb sausage ($10), long and thin and blooming with the smell of pepper and cumin, lays on oblong chunks of cucumber and (slightly over-ripe) heirloom tomato dressed in just a little olive oil and lemon.

The service is top-rate. Although I was unable to obtain a salty dog, when my spoon (not me) deposited a morsel of fish in my dining partner’s wine glass our server was demonstratively pleasant about replacing it (and not making me feel like a dunce). The new one was placed away from me for its protection. A respectable list of Spanish and Chilean wines is unappreciated by a wine ignoratti like me. The dessert list is small. A chocolate flan ($6) is suitably light and fluffy but fresh black mission figs ($7) with benedictin blue cheese seem a more appropriate finishing touch to a meal this earthy.

I have a serious aversion to patios. Bringing crowds and outdoorsiness to the dinner table does nothing for me. But I have to say the tasteful construction of Torito’s back patio, well enclosed and panelled in dark wood, is a welcome addition to Toronto’s “let’s pretend we’re not in an alley” patios.

A word on pricing. Toronto has a glut of “mid-range” places that are just shitty pubs serving poached salmon on rice for 20 dollars, tarting it up with a sprig of rosemary and a thesaurus. Torito is for realsies. This is not cheap grub, nor is it high-hatted gastronomy fit for a bunch of swells. It is genuine coin of the realm mid-range. And best of all it’s located in the city’s most top-drawer neighbourhood, Kensington. That’s not a judgement. Look it up on Wikipedia. Best neighbourhood ever.