What’s on the menu at Leña, O&B’s new Argentine restaurant in Saks Fifth Avenue
By Renée Suen| Photography by Renée Suen
| September 23, 2016
Copy link
Name: Leña
Neighbourhood: Financial District
Contact: 176 Yonge St., 416-507-3378, lenarestaurante.com, @LenaRestaurante Owners: O&B
Chef: Corporate executive chef Anthony Walsh and executive chef Julie Marteleira (Jump, Luma, Auberge du Pommier)
The food
For breakfast, there’s a takeaway spread of sweet pastries, but guests can dine-in with a menu that includes breakfast empanadas with poached eggs and chimichurri, or a slice of tortilla. Lunch brings Argentine sandwiches. Things get a bit heartier for dinner with dishes such as rabbit with snails and rice. On the weekend: brunch.
Some of the items from the takeaway breakfast counter.
Walsh, putting the finishing touches on Lala’s Tortilla.
Rabbit and snail rice: escargots, green pepper tomato sauce, white wine, artichokes. $34.
Advertisement
The alfajores—shortbread cookies, goat’s milk dulce de leche and coconut—are made using a recipe from Walsh’s wife. $3.
The drinks
Wines from Argentina, Chile and Spain; local craft brews on tap; and a selection of Latin-inspired cocktails, like the Leña, a South American take on an old fashioned.
The Caipiroska (back), made with blueberry vodka, demerara sugar and blueberry lemon shrub ($13), and Leña (front), a South American take on an old fashioned, made with charred cedar, bourbon, vermouth, sour and a scorched cherry. $16.
The space
Taking up a chunk of Saks, Leña has an all-day bar off of Queen West, a second-floor dining room and a lower-level lounge. The third level—yes, there’s a third level—is where the private dining areas live.
Breakfast is served at the takeaway counter in the main bar.
Here’s the main bar again. Some of the heritage building’s features were preserved.
Here’s the second-level dining room.
Advertisement
And again.
A semi-private dining space sits opposite the second-floor dining room.
Bar Lala, on the lower level, is a 70-seat lounge.
Looking out a third-floor window.
An Anthony Walsh original.
Advertisement
Chefs Walsh and Marteleira.
Elena, Walsh’s mother-in-law.
NEVER MISS A TORONTO LIFE STORY
Sign up for Table Talk, our free newsletter with essential food and drink stories.
The May issue of Toronto Life features the artists, professors, scientists and other luminaries moving north to avoid the carnage of Trump. Plus, our obsessive coverage of everything that matters now in the city.
