The Toronto dining scene is in the “middle of a great reset,” said Chris Nuttall-Smith in Toronto Life. A shake-up started by the recession is now being shaped as well by changing tastes, particularly those of “a new generation of food-obsessed diners” who are bent on “showing their spending power.” Some new hot spots are “blessedly cheap,” but fine dining has bounced back, and restaurateurs are no longer playing it safe. Here are the best of the newcomers that are “redefining” the city’s culinary culture.
Origin Chef Claudio Aprile mortgaged his family’s home to open Origin, and the gamble has given the city’s “gastro groupies” a “brash, meticulous, and beautifully trashy” culinary cathedral. Try the squid, which is “wokked” and then deep-fried: It “tastes as “lucid and tense as a half-starved stroll through a sweet shop in Southeast Asia.” 107 King St. E., (416) 603-8009
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