Best New Restaurants 2012

YOURS TRULY When a chef comes to this city by way of some of the world’s most celebrated kitchens—New York’s Per Se, Copenhagen’s Noma, Chicago’s Alinea and Blackbird—Torontonians have astronomical expectations. Read the rest of the review »

ACADIA The cuisine is billed as Acadian—the cooking of South Carolina and Louisiana married to the briny flavours of the Maritimes, refracted through modern French techniques. If it sounds high-concept, that’s because it sprang from the mind of chef Matt Blondin, who came up through the modernist kitchen at Colborne Lane during the molecular gastronomy craze of the early aughties. Read the rest of the review »

ARIA Aria offers a much-needed master class in seduction, dazzling us with set dressing before the food even arrives. Read the rest of the review »

KERIWA On the ceiling of Toronto’s only Native Canadian restaurant, dangling feathers bounce to the bass of Motown hits. On the walls: photos of a man in full Aboriginal regalia dancing through the streets of modern Paris. We get it: Keriwa blends the traditional and the contemporary, the rustic and the urban. Read the rest of the review »

ORTOLAN Down the street from Bloor West’s notorious House of Lancaster nudie bar, in a scruffy 26-seat hole in the wall filled with high-priced hipsters (cashmere toques, silkscreen Ts), two young chefs are reviving local, seasonal cooking for a city of diners who now yawn when they hear the phrase. Read the rest of the review »

BARQUE There’s no limit to what chef-owner David Neinstein will load into his magnificent smoker: pork shoulder, beef ribs and whole chickens, of course, but also pineapple for dessert and lemons for his bourbon sours. Read the rest of the review »

F’AMELIA Torontonians will bid themselves into bankruptcy to live in a neighbourhood with a good school, a dog park and a relaxed little restaurant just up the street. Todd Vestby and John Dawson, best friends since high school, may well have upped Cabbage­town housing prices by opening the quintessential trattoria around the corner from their homes. Read the rest of the review »

MODUS Chef Bruce Woods made his name at Centro, that once-great standard-bearer for Italian cuisine in Toronto, before decamping to Brassaii on King West. Now, after two years of cooking for the bottle service and Ed Hardy crowd, he’s returned to the simpler pleasures of refined service and hushed rooms at Modus, his new Bay Street power restaurant. Read the rest of the review »

VOLOS The slick Greek estiatorio on the northern edge of the Financial District bears no trace of the motherland’s economic distress. Read the rest of the review »

MIDEASTRO The loungey Yorkville room hums with well-to-do regulars enjoying the back-slapping hospitality of owner Leon Goldstein. Chef Benny Cohen, a Moroccan Jew who grew up in Israel, draws on all sides of the Mediterranean to produce the city’s most accomplished Middle Eastern food. Read the rest of the review »