If you haven’t been to Mineral yet, one of the city’s busiest and buzziest restaurants, you must. Since 2019, owners Bruce Ly and Greg Toscan-Robbins, along with Hong Kong–born executive chef-owner Daniel Cancino, have been offering diners a mix of Filipino comfort food with a contemporary spin, serving dishes that are big on flavour in an upscale, fine dining environment. Cancino, who previously helmed the kitchen at the Filipino-inspired Lamesa on St. Clair West., oversees the edits in the “little blue book of yums” (the restaurant’s diverse and constantly evolving menu), which changes with the seasons. A sophisticated selection of 15ish highly shareable dishes allows for a more interactive dining experience, including a selection of small bites from Mineral’s cold bar. There’s the recently updated beet salad, with torched mackerel and brown butter aïoli, and the exquisitely savoury pineapple kombu served with black garlic, chili and puffed rice. The house-made squid ink noodles are luxuriously silky and topped with scallop, shrimp and salmon roe and can be made even more decadent with the addition of Périgord truffle. The restaurant itself is a bit of a jack-of-all-trades: stylish coffee shop by day, at night, Mineral transforms into an intimate, sit-down dining experience and later a cocktail bar. The chic Rosedale eatery’s impressive interior features dreamy murals and cobalt blue booths, understated but chic, and offers Torontonians an ideal new date night destination. Since the pandemic, the one major change the restaurant has held onto is a four-day workweek. “What we’ve seen is a great overall improvement in the mental health of our staff,” says Cancino. “Having more time to balance work life/person life becomes integral to our business model, which, I would say, is quite eye-opening.”