Volo
587 Yonge Street
416-928-0008

The restaurant business, as we all know, isn’t easy. Statistics tell us that a large percentage of new restaurants fail within the first year (the exact percentage depending on which stats you choose to believe. Making it to five years is impressive. Ten years, really impressive. Twenty years? To many, that’s a minor miracle.

If so, then some higher power or other must be smiling onto the corner of Yonge and Dundonald, where Ralph Morana has just passed his twentieth anniversary as owner of Volo, an unexpected success story if ever there was one. And to be clear: The “unexpected” descriptor is not meant as a criticism of Morana or his restaurant, but rather commentary on how someone with absolutely no restaurant experience can take a struggling Italian restaurant, keep it going through times thick and thin, and eventually turn it into an indispensable destination for lovers of local beer, wine and cheese.

Continue reading Viva Volo! »

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.

Continue reading This Is Where the Magic Happens »

Jolly II Italian Restaurant
2625 Weston Road
416-242-6666
Complete dinner for two with all taxes, tip and wine: $72

Sandwiched between Nevada Bob’s and a Bell Mobility store at Crossroads Plaza (Weston Road and the 401), it’s an odd place for a sit-down restaurant. But Jolly II Italian Restaurant has occupied that odd place for twenty years. And after twenty years of driving by the place on my way to the gigantic LCBO just two doors down from the Jolly II, I am finally curious enough to set foot inside its doors. It can’t be the location that’s responsible for Jolly II’s longevity. So it must be the food.

The website says that the restaurant offers “a casual, relaxing environment for a romantic dinner for two or a family get-together”. Family get-together, maybe. But romantic dinner for two? Hmm. My idea of a romantic dinner doesn’t involve two large televisions angled toward the main dining area and intrusive whistly background music.

Continue reading Finally Getting My Jolly’s »

Arrabiata Trattoria
692 Yonge Street
416-916-7034
Complete dinner for two with all taxes, tip, beer and mineral water: $75

Smack downtown on Yonge Street between Bloor and Dundas, it can be hard to find a restaurant that produces consistently tasty food, is not a fast food chain, and is not a tourist trap. As I live in the neighbourhood, once I find a place I like, I tend to stick to it and find it hard to deviate from what is familiar. Hence, I took a chance stepping into Arrabiata Trattoria, an Italian resto-bar that took over the spot of the now defunct Living Well. The former incarnation was known more for the “dirty bingo” nights rather than their food, so I was hoping this new place would be up to the challenge of providing delightful eating experiences on an ongoing basis.

Continue reading Tasting Arrabiata »

Festival
649 College Street
416-539-3985

They are all sorts of travelling rules: pack your identification cards and money in a waist pouch that fits snugly under your clothes. Plan to arrive 2 to 3 hours early to the airport, don’t leave your bags unattended, and bring your own toilet paper… There are books upon books devoted to travel preparation and safety and while I like to be prepared for the trip, I prefer fitting in when I’m there. Fine, I’m still recovering from social extradition in high school.

In Italy, for example, I find myself gesticulating dramatically, a natural accompaniment to passionate conversation, which of course can be something as un-academic as whose mother makes the best tomato sauce. As expected, when it comes to the Italian diet, I pretend I am one of the locals as well, capable of digesting inordinate amounts of alcohol, cheese, pasta and gelato. I am beginning however to understand the repercussions of excessive consumption, though in my youthful naivety, I still think I can beat the system. Preparation, as with travelling, was all I needed.

Continue reading Party in my Mouth at Festival »

The Central
603 Markham Street
416-913-4586
Dinner for two with all taxes, tip and wine: $75

Curiouser and curiouser, thought Alice well after falling down the rabbit hole. And as I have thought after several visits to The Central. Fortunately, the food rises above this at Mirvish Village’s Restaurant Makeover participant.

The digs: a two-story Annex house on Markham street, between Honest Ed’s and Southern Accent (its better known eatery neighbour). Upstairs is a pleasant patio for those feline-minded diners who like to be higher than those on the street. (That’s an analogy, there are no cats, not even Cheshire ones.) Inside, upstairs, curiously sits a foosball table surrounded by haphazard tables and a tiny stereo sitting diagonally on the mantle. It’s like a minimalist friend’s rec room set on an aging hardwood floor. If you are the only diner upstairs, it feels like you have walked into someone’s house uninvited.

Continue reading A Mirvish Village Rabbit Hole »

The Big Ragu
1338 Lansdowne Avenue
416-654-7248
Dinner for two with all taxes, tip and soda: $73

Recently, on one of those steaming hot summer days, I found myself walking down The Corsa Italia on St. Clair Avenue. When I hit Lansdowne I was tempted to go home, because the strip appeared to be over. Then from the corner of my eye I saw a tiny little restaurant across the way called The Big Ragu. It was unassuming and quaint, not the type of place that I would normally notice.

Be it fate or luck I noticed this one, and for some reason was compelled to try it. The interior was dark and well kept. It felt clean and cool and was an oasis from the sweltering summer heat.

Continue reading The Big Ragu »

Il Fornello
491 Church Street (and others)
416-944-9052
Complete dinner for two with all taxes, tip and beer: $90

I’ll be honest up front and admit that I haven’t actually been to an Il Fornello restaurant in over ten years. I had a super terrible service issue at the King Street location some years ago that made me never want to go back. But when we heard that Il Fornello’s chef Owen Steinberg had created a changing seasonal menu based on local ingredients in addition to the existing menu, I was happy to set aside my reservations and give the place another go after so long.

We opted for the Church Street location because it’s known to be the most attractive, and that’s definitely the case. The space is long and linear with clean, sleek lines. Tables are still traditionally dressed in white linen, but the room has a modern feel that is not the norm for your typical pizza and pasta place. I especially liked the co-ed style washrooms with individual stalls and a shared trough-style sink – very risqué for stuffy old Toronto.

Continue reading ‘Tis the Season at Il Fornello »

Bocca on Baldwin
26 Baldwin Street
416-348-0731
Dinner for two with all taxes, tip and wine/beer (no dessert): $65

The great thing about Baldwin Village is that you have your pick of cuisines. It’s a fun treat to stand on the corner and pick a country, and by extension, a restaurant, or vice versa. Recently we wandered into the neighbourhood with some friends we were treating to dinner and stood in front of each place trying to decide. We opted for Bocca on Baldwin, mostly because none of us had been there before.

I was familiar with the space in its previous life, the fun but somewhat rundown Dessert Sensations Café. The building has since been completely gutted and renovated and is now an airy space full of gleaming wood and light.

Continue reading Bewildered by Bocca on Baldwin »

College Street Bar
574 College Street
416-533-2417
Dinner for two (apps and mains only) with all taxes tip and beer - $75

In 2005 College Street Bar was revamped and showcased on “Restaurant Makeover”. I must say the new look seemed very stylish and sleek, but when we arrived for dinner I realized they must have run out of money when it came to the lighting. It was so dimly lit that both my dinner companion and I struggled to read our menus. Trying to focus on the menu was also made difficult due to the noise of the birthday party table we had been seated right next to. When I say “right next to” I mean we were so close that the waitress had to squeeze past every single time she went by. Even though I’m a fairly small person, I had to keep leaning closer to the wall to let her pass, at which point I banged my head into the low hanging mirror, sending it rocking. After making sure I wasn’t about to receive a concussion from the mirror toppling over I managed to focus enough to place an order.

Continue reading A Night to Remember… To Bring a Flashlight »

California Sandwiches
244 Claremont Street
416-603-3317
Lunch for two with sodas and tax (no tip): $18.50

California Sandwiches spends nothing on advertising. Less is spent on décor. The World Series Poker pinball machine (which replaced the Sopranos pinball which replaced the Elvis pinball) sits mostly unused. Bright orange walls, a cobwebbed espresso machine, and a photo of Italy’s 2006 soccer team do little to inspire romantic conversation. The storefront sits on a short, one-way side street in little Italy. The light bulb in the basement restroom flickers incessantly like set decoration in one of those new horror movies where teenagers get tortured for two hours. No one just strolls past California and decides to get something to eat. They come looking.

Continue reading The Call of the Sandwich »

Magic Oven
270 Dupont Street
416-928-1555
Dinner for two: $40 including beer and tip

“Let food be your medicine and medicine be your food.” - Hippocrates, 400 BC

So says the motto printed at the bottom of every menu at Magic Oven. Their efforts to turn local and organic ingredients into some of the tastiest and healthiest Italian fare in Toronto have proven fruitful enough that a third location has opened right next to Dupont station to feed the hip-and-health-conscious Annex crowd. Founded in 1997 by Tony and Abby Sabherwal, Magic Oven’s popularity has grown staggeringly. When we arrived at about 3:00pm, this new location was full of people either eating or hungrily eyeing others’ meals. Lemon-coloured walls were adorned with framed black-and-white snapshots of the city, lit from above by a rectangular skylight that stretched along the dining area. The cheerful menu made every effort to keep the customer informed about the ingredients used in the food, from the spelt used in the pizza crusts to the nitrite-free meat. The back of the menu was taken up almost entirely by the varieties of pizza on offer, but the front had some tantalizing selections as well. My omnivorous assistants and I ordered across the spectrum.

Continue reading Magic Offerings at Magic Oven »

Tutti Matti
364 Adelaide Street West
416-597-8839
lunch for two with all taxes, tip and wine: $90

My main interest in Tutti Matti was the rumoured crossing of the fresh pasta x-axis with the reasonably priced y-axis. It turns out this convergence features great service too (well informed and friendly without being intrusive). They’re nestled right in the middle of where no one should be. Of our cities many diverse neighbourhoods, the “entertainment district” is the ex-con cousin no one mentions at Thanksgiving and the less said about it the better.

Tutti Matti’s Tuscan food did what great food always does to me; it shamed me. It urged me to go home and get something special started. So my home is sweltering from the few pounds of brisket slowly braising in my oven as I write this.

Continue reading It’s All Sweet at Tutti Matti »

Olive and Lemon Restaurant
119 Harbord Street
416-923-3188
dinner for two, including house wine, taxes and tip: $80

As we live rather near, we passed Olive & Lemon almost every day but we had some trouble figuring out the hours of operation. Often the candles inside would be alight and beckoning invitingly but there was no soul within and the door was shut. And then one particularly frosty late evening we finally saw people inside and immediately jumped at the chance to satisfy our gastronomic curiosity. Inside it was all mirrors, abstract art and delicate early spring flowers, quiet music (although when we came another time it was the same track collection – and I find such things rather irritating) and a cosy intimate atmosphere.

They started with a pretty compliment; a saucer of green-golden olive oil flavoured to a nicety with herbs and spices, served with chewy ciabatta-style bread. It was absolutely delicious so as an oil freak I asked to see the bottle, and though it turned out to be just an upscale supermarket extra vergine Italian oil I was still very much impressed by this touch.

Continue reading Italian Evenings on Harbord »

At many pizza joints in Toronto, you’ll often see panzerotti or calzone on the menu. While the names are often used interchangeably, tradition usually dictates that calzone are baked while panzerotti are deep-fried, but even that will vary from place to place. Either way, they are generally like a pizza turnover, with cheese, sauce and other fillings cooked into a sealed dough pocket, making it a popular and portable lunch-on-the-go option.

A less-common variation on this folded pizza theme is the stromboli. Theories on the origin of this calzone cousin vary, with some claiming it was first made in Philadelphia (apparently, creating the Philly cheese steak wasn’t enough for them!), while others say it has the more likely sounding birthplace of the Italian island of Stromboli.

Continue reading Stromboli: The Other Pizza Pocket »