Best Restaurants The
top By James Chatto 10
From boutique hotel to major museum to wacky boîte, this was a very good year for new restaurants. I don’t know what was more exciting: seeing established stars taking risks with new ventures or watching unknown 30-somethings make dazzlingly successful debuts. It looks as though the next generation of chefs has finally found the self-confidence (and the backing) to cook for itself. Specific delights abounded. Chef-made charcuterie continued its macho march across the city’s menus, while Monforte and Thunder Oak added local glory to cheeseboards already richly laden with the treasures of Quebec. East Coast oysters were wonderfully plump and sweet—even in months without an “r”—which was tragic for dutiful locavores stuck on their 100-mile diets but lovely for the rest of us. Above all, this was the year meat won back an adoring audience. Carnivores found many new restaurants specializing in flesh, from the slow-cooked barbecue at Cluck, Grunt & Low to $170 steaks at glitzy Jacobs & Co. and even glitzier Prime. In any other year, all three would have made their way onto this list, as would my Number 11, Tom Thai’s Foxley, on Ossington’s up-and-coming restaurant strip. But not in this exceptional vintage. Starting with my favourite, these are the 10 places that gave me the most pleasure.
Photography by M a rga r e t Mu l l i ga n a n d Rya n S z u l c 68 Toronto Life | torontolife.com | april 2008
Lucien embodies the city’s current passion for faultless food in laid-back rooms. At right, pickerel with spiced chickpeas, broccoli, serrano ham and idiazabal cheese