It’s almost Winterlicious time again

It’s always fun to daydream about lavish restaurant meals, which is why some may be interested in taking a look at the newly released menus for Winterlicious 2015. The festival, which runs from January 30 to February 12, will see over 200 restaurants serving up prix-fixe lunches and dinners to deal-hungry Torontonians. The pool of participating spots includes all the old, reliable standbys, like Canoe, Splendido, Auberge du Pommier and Momofuku’s Noodle Bar and Daishō. There are also some interesting additions to the list, like Los Colibris, the excellent Mexican restaurant from chef Elia Herrera, and Parisian-style brasserie Cluny, which opened in the Distillery District earlier this year. One of the best options may be Susur Lee’s Luckee, which is offering a surprisingly reasonable $35 dinner made up of dishes from the restaurant’s regular menu, like soy-marinated black cod and Peking-style “Luckee duck.” Over at the Trump Hotel, glitzy America will also be taking part, though its lunch and dinner menus (for $28 and $45, respectively) seem to have been specially designed for the festival. (That isn’t necessarily a bad sign, though it can sometimes signal a two-tiered dining system.) Restaurants will start taking reservations on January 15. In the meantime, people who’d rather not wait to start cramming their 2015 dining calendars can peruse a long list of special Winterlicious events, tickets for which went on sale earlier this week.