Opening Soon: a neighbourhood restaurant on Queen West from Top Chef Canada’s Vittorio Colacitti
The Good Son is a soon-to-open restaurant at Queen and Dovercourt from Vittorio Colacitti, a Toronto chef who made the top five on Top Chef Canada this season before getting booted over an insufficiently experimental tomato salad. Colacitti sees his first solo venture, an 85-seat eatery housed in the former Nyood space at 1096 Queen Street, as the kind of neighbourhood spot where locals will be able to grab a casual midday meal, weekend brunch, or an evening cocktail. “It’ll be the type of place you can go on Friday night to grab a drink, some warm olives and grilled bread,” he says. In keeping with current trends, the menu lists an eclectic mix of shared plates, which Colacitti—who trained in Thailand and Italy between stints at Toronto restaurants like George and Didier—characterizes as “Toronto cuisine.”
Specific items on the menu include raw oysters, a signature burger and thin-crust pizzas cooked in the restaurant’s wood-fired oven, which was imported all the way from Bologna, Italy (“The Ferrari of ovens,” according to Colacitti). Price-wise, dishes top out at $28 (for a rack of side ribs), although some off-menu items may run a little higher—like a bone-in rib eye served with a whole lobster on top, or a version of the foie gras dish that won Colacitti $5,000 in a Top Chef Quickfire Challenge. The Good Son opens at the end of the month.
I’ll put it down to the editing, maybe, but still Vittorio came off like a bit of a dbag on Top Chef Canada. That makes me more than disinclined to patronize this establishment. Especially one in an area that is hardly lacking in great restaurant options.
Having known him for over 12 years – my take – life’s a
stage and for TV a bigger one where a certain amount of direction had to have
been given to all participants for performance and ratings. The big question
can he cook – a resounding YES! Go see for yourselves and you’ll be the judge…
Cheers Vito and good luck on this adventure.
It was a “reality” show which basically means scripted and edited to include
a variety of “cast” members. He was cast as such. If you choose
where to eat based on the attitude of the chef you will be hard pressed to find
an establishment worth going to. I was there for their friends and family night…Food was delish. Not one bite of Dbag on my plate.