Pop-Up Pick(s): a whole month’s worth of special 12-course dinners at the Templar Hotel

There are great restaurants all over Canada, but most of us can’t go jaunting off to Calgary on a lark to try the latest meat terrine. There is a solution to this problem. Throughout December, Toronto restaurant group The Food Dudes and restaurateur Dan Gunam will be staging six multi-course dinner events at the Templar Hotel on Adelaide West, home to the excellent but mysterious Monk Kitchen (which seems to be undergoing some kind of internal reorganization—Gunam tells us that chef Roberto Fracchioni is no longer with the restaurant). Five of the events (each spanning two days) will showcase talented Canadian cooks from some of the country’s best restaurants, including Calgary’s Model Milk and Anju (both recently profiled in the Globe) and Ottawa tasting restaurant Atelier. For $89 per person, guests will receive eight courses and four “surprise snacks”—which sounds steep but actually works out to about seven bucks a course. The grand finale for the series, on December 21, is a big charity dinner featuring Toronto culinary talents like ex-Momofuku chef Matt Blondin, The Harbord Room’s Cory Vitiello and Farmer’s Daughter chef Leonie Lilla. Tickets for all six events are on sale now—email templarchefseries@gmail.com to reserve a spot. You can see the full event schedule here.

Dec. 2-21. $89 (+$49 for wine pairing). The Templar Hotel, 348 Adelaide St. W., 647-933-5546