Toronto Life
April 2006

Best Restaurants

Article by James Chatto
Photography by George Whiteside

Torontonians are spoiled for choice. Our best restaurants, laden with talent and abuzz with energy, generate endless culinary delights—and at prices that leave foreign visitors gasping in envy. This year—a year of Wagyu beef and six-part desserts, tasting menus and vegetable foams—we celebrate those who have outperformed the field.

Splendido

Have a bellini from the champagne cart and nibble a teeny tartlet of leek and molten raclette cheese while admiring the humane structure of David Lee’s menu—big appetizer, small one, main course—exactly the right amounts of food. Slip in a sorbet, frame all with an amuse, great house-made breads, then cheese, dessert, mignardises and you’re done.

Splendido grows grander by the year, each detail and nuance of the evening pondered and buffed by host Yannick Bigourdan and his team, like chauffeurs polishing a royal Rolls-Royce. Thus the discreetly lit room runs as smoothly as the parsley emulsion Lee spoons beneath slow-roasted Dover sole fillets. He's a fan of sous vide cooking, so flavours are vivid, tenderness a given.

Thyme-scented rabbit roulade is daintily pink, but there's nothing effete about the accompanying slow-simmered rabbit leg with wild boar sausage, soft, sweet onions and a swashbuckling cacciatore sauce. Who says a luxe establishment restaurant can't be hearty and arty both?