Review: Cellar Door brings the urban trattoria experience to Toronto’s outskirts
Cellar Door ★½ 3003 Lakeshore Blvd. W., 416-253-0303
Chef Robert Rubino brings the urban trattoria experience—original cocktails, handmade pastas, wood-burning-oven pizza, seasonal ingredients—to Toronto’s ever-expanding outskirts. A colourful caprese salad with orange and red cherry tomatoes and creamy burrata is a lovely starter.
Shrimp and octopus grill has nice flavour, though another element is needed to really pull the dish together. Pizzas are crispy, large and salty, with tangy sauce and lots of cheese. Bucatini is fat and dense but drowns in too much chunky sauce that camouflages the tasty bits of guanciale. Butter tart, a decidedly un-Italian dessert, nevertheless tastes as decadent as a fine butter tart should, and the house-made pecan gelato on top caps off a real winner. Service is friendly, polite and energetic, but on an understaffed, nearly full Wednesday night, plates remained uncleared throughout the meal.
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