Alo is temporarily closed—but its test kitchen is open
Diners can get a glimpse of the Michelin-starred restaurant’s future at Gallery
In 2015, at a time when Toronto restaurants were leaning rustic, chef Patrick Kriss and his business partner Zane Pearl boldly opened Alo. Now, after just over a decade at the top of the city’s (and country’s and world’s) culinary lists, Alo is pressing pause.
And they’re not the only ones. Renovations and rebrands by Antler, Mimi Chinese, Hana, Byblos and Belle Isle, plus the endless cycle of pop-ups, closures and openings, are keeping a city of selective diners happy.
Related: Toronto chefs and restaurateurs explain why all your favourite kitchens are pivoting
At Alo, the closure will yield not just a facelift or a menu change but a completely reimagined interior and a different dining philosophy. Ten years in, this is a new Alo.
“It started to feel like our dining room wasn’t keeping up with the level of our kitchen and service teams,” says Kriss. “It felt like it was time. If you wait until the perfect moment, you’re already too late.”
While the dining room will be dark for the rest of the month, the lights are very much on at Gallery, Alo’s test kitchen at Salon, the food group’s private dining space in Yorkville. Gallery has become a culinary sketchbook of sorts, where Kriss and his team test out recipes that hint at what Alo’s next chapter will look like.
Recent menus have covered nouvelle cuisine, as well as a globe-trotting taste of Toronto neighbourhoods with dishes that jumped from Little Tokyo to Roncesvalles and over to Little Jamaica. Think Hokkaido sea urchin bavarois, lobster cabbage rolls and stuffed chicken wings with crab curry. Did we mention there’s a roving dessert cart? Because there is. Also a little something called tableside butter service.
Gallery’s final service will take place on February 21, just weeks before Alo reopens in March. If the test kitchen is any indication, Alo’s return will be more confident, more mature, and unmistakably itself while being a brand-new experience for the restaurant’s fans. Consider this the calm before the city’s most anticipated spring reservation scramble.
