Musical dwarfs and girls in armour, old men with staffs and magical swords remade—by summer’s end, Toronto will be a two-ring circus, the focus of Tolkien and Wagner fans from every corner of Middle Earth. With months still to go, a group of devoted English Wagnerites has already contacted me asking where they should go for dinner. I was at school with their ringleader and once watched him eat 16 orange-and-vanilla ice lollies in the first intermission of Götterdämmerung. These days, his tastes are far more fastidious. He and his pals drink nothing but seriously good pinot noir and eat with a patient, even obsessive attention to gastronomic detail. I was ready to send him to Avalon until Chris McDonald broke all our hearts by announcing that he was closing the restaurant on March 18. Now I’m suggesting Monsoon (assuming the kitchen can be prevailed upon to open unfashionably early). The salmon tartare with wasabi cream is magic fire music for the palate.

The same advice might serve the masses now flocking to previews of Lord of the Rings, but only if they are prepared to turn the corner onto Simcoe Street, and that flies in the face of tradition where King West theatre-goers are concerned. They want casual and seem to feel more comfortable eating at places they can actually see from the theatre—which means forgoing Senses, Rain, Luce, The Fifth and other first-class restaurants within a stone’s throw of the Mirvishes’ Walk of Fame in favour of either the cluster of eateries opposite Roy Thomson Hall or that tightly packed, brightly lit strip between John and Peter, surely the only block of that length in the city that contains nothing but restaurants and pubs.

The question is, how does a stranger choose one from the others? I half expected some smart entrepreneur would change his establishment’s name to the Prancing Pony or Chez Gollum or Frodo’s Not Here, but that hasn’t happened yet. Hoping to be of some help to the hungry hobbitomanes, therefore, I set out on a quest of my own, eating my way through the most promising contenders and finding one glint of gold among the pinchbeck and lead. I also heard a unanimous refrain: times have been hard along Pre-Theatre Row in recent years. God willing, Lord of the Rings will bring the Americans back.

“We miss them,” says Roberto Perrone, general manager of the veteran triplex Marcel’s, Zazou and Le Saint Tropez. “Before 9/11, half our pre-theatre business was American tourists—coachloads from Buffalo and Rochester, families here for the weekend. Then we had SARS, the war in Iraq, the stronger Canadian dollar, the price of gas, delays at the borders. We get some Europeans in the summer, but Americans aren’t travelling anywhere anymore.”

Le Saint Tropez is certainly quiet on the day I visit. Photos of Bardot and Belmondo pout from the cheerful orange walls; a French tenor is warbling torch songs from the speakers but to only five or six pairs of ears. My lunch has been decent so far: a tranche of smooth liver pâté with a mound of sweetly dressed mesclun greens, some correctly grilled calf’s liver slathered in pale onions and a heavy, sweetish sauce, a collation of vegetables with honest textures.

Perrone watches me drink my espresso, then runs some numbers by me. When both theatres and Roy Thomson Hall are full, that’s more than 6,000 people a night in the neighbourhood, of whom about 30 per cent might want to eat before the show. Plenty of customers for everyone. But when one theatre is dark, as the Princess of Wales was for three months this winter, all the restaurants feel it. They felt it, too, when the Raptors left SkyDome for the Air Canada Centre and again when the Blue Jays changed evening game time from 7:30 to seven o’clock. Before that, many people could go home after work, change, come downtown and in some cases even have time for dinner before the opening pitch. No more. Special concerts aside, the only time the Rogers Centre feeds the King West strip in any meaningful way is for Saturday lunch before games that start at 4 p.m.

I remember such afternoons last summer. Almost every restaurant had crammed its small patch of sidewalk with tables. Cheek by jowl in the sunshine, customers tucked into Cajun, Italian, French, Thai, Chinese and Japanese dishes—or approximations thereof. The boulevard was a merry sight. This summer may be different, though. If construction of the 41-storey Festival Centre and Tower goes ahead directly across the street, it will bring the disruption of dust and noise. “The Centre will be great for us all when it’s finished,” says Perrone. “But meanwhile, everything’s riding on Lord of the Rings.”

Does that mean, I wonder, that the restaurants on the strip will be a little more imaginative where their barkers are concerned? Many of them employ someone to stand out on the street and cajole passersby to come in for dinner, but only Marcel’s bothers to dress the guy up—in their case as Napoleon. The others tend to be muffled in mittens and anoraks. I’d like to see someone in elvish armour or a Legolas look-alike urging me in to N’Awlins. Why not Peregrin Took in a toque? Barkers can be surprisingly effective. I wouldn’t have ventured into Forget About It! Supper Club (the old rule about never eating at a restaurant with an exclamation mark in its name) if it hadn’t been for the pretty blonde shivering on the sidewalk in a puffy black parka.

Forget About It! is a new kid on the block. It opened last March where Milano used to be. The owner is fruit juice czar Frank D’Angelo, who also owns Mama D’s in Mississauga, and the decor has a sort of early ’60s rat pack glamour, with deep horseshoe banquettes, coffered ceilings and diaphanous curtains between dining room and bar. They say it gets packed on weekends, but only two other tables were occupied that Monday night. As I sat down, Sinatra was telling us all to start spreadin’ the nooz, and the suggestion seemed timely. Out on the street, the blonde had promised me a free salad and pizza appetizer if I ordered a main course, and they duly arrived, described with meticulous passion by the attentive server. First came six little squares of pizza (the eggplant and parmesan one was delicious) and then a plateful of torn-up romaine drenched in balsamic vinegar, good olive oil and ground parmesan. A more flavourful lettuce would have improved the salad no end; but then again, it was free. So was the basket of unexpectedly yummy rolls, soft and warm from the oven and hidden in the genteel folds of a white linen napkin. For my main course, I had shied away from the hefty pastas and surf ’n’ turf platters, opting for rainbow trout, an item presumably included for the ladies. It was a vast fillet, a rainbow such as Noah saw, but moist and well timed, its flavour subtly enhanced by a white wine and garlic marinade. Crunchy white onions lay across the pink flesh—an odd combination—but the buttered asparagus and baby carrots were carefully prepared. A huge mound of smashed potatoes tasted like chicken stock.