Page 38 - SHARP Summer 2024

DISH IT OUT
OUR INDUSTRY EXPERT’S GUIDE TO NAVIGATING TORONTO’S EVER-GROWING CULINARY WORLD
By Peter Alexandropoulos
A S SOMEONE IN THE RESTAURANT
industry, the thing I hate getting asked the most is, “Where’s your favourite spot?” or “What’s the best restaurant?” To be honest, you’d probably hate my favourite spot, and I don’t believe in a “best” or “worst” restaurant. A more appropriate line of questioning might be, “My artist friends are in town from Mexico City and I want to impress them without seeming pretentious,” or “I met this girl who is far cooler than me. Where should we go dancing?”
For life’s toughest questions, look no further than your friends in the industry. They have their boots on the ground, they’ve tried all the spots, drank all the drinks — they’re the guinea pigs in Toronto’s unending lab experiment titled, “How many restaurants can we open until people start cooking at home again?”
WHAT’S NEW?
The night has come. But where to go? Tonight, leave that decision to someone else.
Sure, you can’t expect your industry friends to be good at explaining to you your life’s purpose, but what they’re certainly good at is plugging you into what’s actually worth checking out. So, here are three spots they might suggest.
TAKJA BBQ HOUSE
Just west of Dovercourt and College — mere min- utes from the nouveau party epicentre of Toronto nightlife — is the newest project from chefs Jeff Kang (Canis) and Edward Bang (Omai). Opened in April of 2024, Takja means “table” in Korean, and it’s only once you sit down and see how the tables have been sexified with beautiful bronze grill fixtures, plush red suede, and severe hard- ware under the hood that you can understand why it’s the restaurant’s namesake. You order the Hansang (chef’s menu) and the table slowly begins to fill with food — live seafood, a plethora of house-fermented vegetables to accompany the grilled meat, noodles and soups that offer reprieve from the 18 consecutive pieces of pork belly you just shoved down your face. That said, there’s something comforting about your server cutting up Wagyu onto your plate with scissors and proceeding to splash you with natural wine served by the glass.
complements the coastal theme by offering light and healthy snacks, all the while still finding room on the menu to include a contender for “breakfast sandwich of the moment.” Take a date, take an old friend, or take two hours of emails. Up to you. It’ll hit the spot.
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FOOD
RAMONA’S
The people who opened Ramona’s know what they’re doing. Waseem Dabdoub (Haifa Room, Standard Time) teamed up with Toronto bar veteran Michael Webster (Bar Raval, Pretty Ugly), Michael Leach (Dynasty Plants), and Colin Sims (Standard Time) to open a cocktail bar that has more than a few perks. Opened in April of this year, the bar’s design plays on their collective travels to Mexico. It has an adobe-inspired interior with soft finishes and textured walls; groovy, moody, and funky are all words that come to mind. The style of service brings that same energy — think The Big Lebowski on an ayahuasca retreat, only a little more polished and put together. For me, what sets it apart is that you can pull up the next morning at 8 a.m., put down a couple of coffees and get some work done. The food menu starts early and goes late — chef David Solis put together a menu that
SOUNDS GOOD
I’m too young to remember the days of disco, but I’m starting to feel like I didn’t miss out. This is in large part because what was once a relic of the past has become a staple of the contemporary night- life gambit. Opened in February of 2024, Sounds Good was a project started by Dylan McArthur, a long-time audiophile and record digger who, like many people in the music scene, yearned for more spaces to be focused on sound as much as they were on everything else.
Music is the sole element of the hospitality experience that is, in most cases, free. There’s no line item at the bottom of your bill that reads, “Sound Fee.” Who would be crazy enough, then, to pour so many resources into creating an extremely robust sound system for a restaurant? It’s only once you step foot into the dining and bar space, and then into the club downstairs, that you find yourself thinking, “Damn, it sounds good in here.” It does, in fact, live up to its name. Although you will find vinyl spinning throughout the space, Sounds Good’s offering is split into a few different parts. Long-time Toronto music-man Ludovic Bacs takes care of the music programming and fills the space with an impressive range of sounds. Upstairs, you’ll find a menu that accommodates both those looking for a quick pre-boogie snack as well as those looking to eat dinner with some rare funk in the background. The wine list is well-rounded, with some old school and some new school natural. The bottom line is, no matter what you’re into, there’s no denying the quality of the sound pumping out of this place. Even the most rhythmically challenged can find their groove here — trust me, I’ve seen it with my own eyes.
RAMONA’S: PHOTO BY BEN EHRENSPERGER, JAMIL’S: PHOTO BY SCOTT PILGRIM