Review: Hudson Kitchen, the Dundas West restaurant that hosted TIFF’s most paparazzied parties
Hudson Kitchen ★ 800 Dundas St. W., 416-644-8839
Before it even opened, the new restaurant at Dundas and Palmerston was hosting TIFF’s most paparazzied parties. The buzz has held strong ever since. A distracted hostess directs walk-ins to the small front bar for retro-tropical cocktails like a colada made with three types of rum (the liquor of the moment). The kitchen struggles to keep up.
Standout dishes like discs of tuna crudo coated with a hazelnut crumble, or a clever salad of manchego, Serrano ham and broccoli two ways (blanched and deep-fried), are outnumbered by duds like a dry steelhead trout with bland spears of cauliflower, or a plate of luscious cider-glazed pork belly overwhelmed by under-roasted onions. In a pretty dessert, ginger cookies and house-made ginger ice cream surround a compressed whole pear that’s so dense it can only be sliced with a steak knife.
