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Sort-of Secret: The new walk-in lunch service at Affinity Fish

Part of our ongoing series highlighting the city’s edible hidden gems

By Liza Agrba| Photography by Nicole and Bagol
Sort-of Secret: The new walk-in lunch service at Affinity Fish

The sort-of secret: The new lunch menu at Affinity Fish, a Little Portugal fishmonger that sells mostly Great Lakes catches from Indigenous fisheries You may have heard of it if: You’ve popped in to buy some lake trout or spotted their sandwich board outside But you probably haven’t tried it because: It’s a 16-seat counter and they advertise only on Instagram

Affinity Fish is no ordinary fishmonger. While much of Toronto’s seafood is flown in from the faraway waters of Japan or New Zealand, Affinity focuses on oft-overlooked catches from the Great Lakes—and on a sustainable, humane approach to fishing that prioritizes quality as much as environmental impact. Soon after opening their shop in 2022, Jon Klip and Matt Taylor started offering a rotating dinner series with premium fish and sake pairings. This past September, building on that success, they started a lunch program that would excite any seafood enthusiast. Think katsu sandos, soba with whitefish and other dishes prepared by chefs who eat, sleep and breathe all things fish—and with product worlds apart from what’s served at most of the city’s restaurants.

One man looks on while another demonstrates how to slice fresh fish

Related: Inside Affinity Fish, a new Toronto fishmonger dedicated to sourcing Canadian freshwater fish

Fish hang from inside inside the dry-aging fridge at Affinity Fish in Toronto

Unlike Affinity’s reservation-only dinner series, lunch is for walk-ins only—just grab a spot at the 16-seat counter and order from the short set menu. There’s a sandwich with Lake Huron whitefish, breaded and fried to order, nestled in a toasted brioche bun with a tangy Japanese shibazuke (pickled eggplant) tartar sauce, mustard greens and sweet ginger pickles. The fish is naturally the star—tender, clean-tasting and enhanced by a dry-aging process that brings out the flavour without overwhelming the palate. For extra crunch, the sandwich comes with senbei, crispy crackers made using leftover rice and bonito seasoning.

A whitefish katsu sando
A bowl of rice with whitefish katsu

There’s also the hulking katsu-don, with panko-fried Georgian Bay whitefish on a bed of steamed rice. It’s topped with simmered scallions, a Conestoga Farms egg, sesame, nori and house-made shibazuke pickles. All that goodness is finished with a drizzle of teriyaki with sake kasu, a by-product of the sake-making process that infuses the sauce with the floral fruitiness of the spirit.

For noodle lovers, there’s the warm-dip soba—slippery soba noodles with an ultra-savoury concentrated dashi-citrus broth for dipping. On the side: bok choy and napa cabbage from Ontario’s Clearwater Farms, plus a piece of panko-fried whitefish with tartar sauce, a lemon wedge and wasabi (the real stuff—not the ubiquitous dyed horseradish that masquerades as wasabi).

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Soba noodles with whitefish katsu

Related: Island Oysters, a sweet little seafood bar in Bloordale

The lunch menu will stay more or less stable in the coming months, though garnishes will rotate based on seasonality. For those who aren’t familiar with the bounty of the Great Lakes, any of these three dishes are a good way to test the waters. And on the way out, guests who like what they had for lunch can grab seafood from the retail section. Affinity’s offerings include mainstays like lake trout and whitefish alongside drum, perch, pickerel, burbot and salmon, which are available a little less frequently. All the Great Lakes fish come from close partnerships with Indigenous fisheries. They’ve also expanded to include carefully sourced saltwater options like albacore tuna and spot prawns from BC and swordfish from Nova Scotia. There’s even octopus, a by-catch of the spot prawn fishery.

The counter inside Affinity Fish, a fishmonger in Toronto's Little Portugal neighbourhood
Fridges stocked with beer, wine, sake, dips and smoked fish inside Affinity Fish

Anyone intimated by the unfamiliar fishes should know that this is one of the city’s friendliest places to buy seafood—Klip or Taylor will happily listen to cooking plans and recommend a suitable species. They sell their stuff whole or portioned, with cuts sliced to order based on what customers plan to make. And all the seafood (with a few exceptions, like the spot prawns) is dry-aged in-house for better flavour and texture.

We’ll see more ready-to-eat offerings from Affinity in the future—one day, they may even open a stand-alone restaurant. For now, they’re serving up one of the best fish sandwiches in town and reminding Torontonians that high-quality seafood doesn’t always need to take a plane to get to their plates.

A sandwich board sign outside of Toronto's Affinity Fish, a sustainable fishmonger

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