Healthy fare with a chic culinary edge
Mildred’s is all concrete, stainless steel and wood. They filter tap water via reverse osmosis and bring it to the table either flat or sparkling, and the menu is one of the most vegetarian-friendly in a non-veg restaurant. Chickpea and lentil stew with goat’s milk yogurt and parsley root bhaji has terrific flavours: It’s tomato-based with moderately applied sweet spices (cinnamon, cloves and cardamom).
Stellar items are Italian bread soup with deep, rich garlic broth with crunchy bread topped with melted pecorino. Ricotta gnocchi are blessed by crisped sage leaves, caramelized onions and smoky Berkshire bacon. Roast veg puffed pastry tart with stracchino hangs together harmoniously — onion, beet and zucchini atop flaky pastry, all bathed in sharp tangy, melted stracchino cheese. Heirloom carrots are puréed into vinaigrette to enrich a fragile salad.
Mildred’s Temple Kitchen, 85 Hanna Ave., 416-588-5695.
Godfather of local food still cookin’ at Gilead
At its best, Jamie Kennedy’s Gilead Bistro recalls Palmerston, the College Street bistro where from 1985 till 1990 he did very fine cooking. When Jamie’s restaurant expansion went sour and he lost most of his other businesses, he went back into the kitchen. Much of what Jamie is cooking at Gilead is from his classic French repertoire, cooked lighter and with local ingredients, as is his wont. His galantine of chicken is juicy chicken breast with herbed stuffing, mashed potatoes and encircled by grilled onions with demi-glace sauce. He struts his stuff as a highly trained classical chef with dishes like ultra-tender duck breast with a crisp potato pancake and cleverly subtle sour cherry sauce. Jamie has always built the best consommé in town, and he still does. His chicken noodle soup is sweet and crystal clear, with al dente noodles. Crispy confit of pork belly is moist, and who but a locavore maestro would accompany Ontario pork with cubes of apple braised in cider?
Gilead Bistro, 4 Gilead Pl., 647-288-0680.
Taking vegan food to new culinary heights
Fressen aims to demolish our prejudice that healthy food tastes bad. The vegan kitchen makes the most of their (mostly organic) vegetable ingredients. As an unreconstructed carnivore, I find grilled portobello mushroom and black bean corn wrap comfortingly Mexican. They bring wine, and I feel even better. Great soup of butternut squash with coconut seems very normal. They sauté polenta with whole chewy shiitake mushrooms in creamy, thick tomato sauce. I am delighted by grilled asparagus, which makes use of a clever technique to cook some of the water out of the asparagus, thus intensifying its flavour, and they toss it with olive oil and freshly toasted slivered almonds. I am not ready for wheat grass blinis or gluten roast with sauce of reduced red wine and shiitakes with green peppercorns — but you may be. And far from being a hair-shirt place of political rectitude, Fressen is a pretty candlelit room.
Fressen, 478 Queen St. W., 416-504-5127.
Real Toronto health nuts like it raw
Food is different things to different diners. Epicureans chowing down on charcuterie are not necessarily putting health first. The other one per cent go to Live Organic for their all-vegan, organic and mostly raw menu. They follow macrobiotic and ayurvedic principles: it’s local, it’s healthy, there’s neither dairy nor meat — basically grains and veg. Live makes health food taste good enough to eat, although I do not enjoy the cashew cheese that does not taste remotely like cheese. Pizza crust is mashed together grains, which bears no resemblance to the real thing, but I like crackers and it is cracker-like. The raw bacon cheese burger does not taste like a burger, but it is nonetheless pleasant.
Live Organic Food Bar, 264 Dupont St., 416-515-2002.
Regional cuisine in a green environment
Leslie Gibson’s Grace is the soul of grace, a fetching turquoise room with food to match, thanks to chef Dustin Gallagher who trained under Susur Lee. He is a pasta master whose ricotta ravioli are sauced with dandelion greens with orange juice and pine nuts bound in butter for pleasure so deep it ought to be illegal. His sweet, creamy corn chowder is a lily gilded with crunchy little crab fritters on top. His barbecued short ribs are unerringly tender, their flavour a fabulous sweet ’n’ sour balance. Who else thinks to caramelize sweet potatoes and lighten them with mint leaves? This is a kitchen with creativity to spare, most unusual for College Street.
Grace, 503 College St., 416-944-8884.
>> Check out our searchable & sortable list of Joanne Kates’ 100 best T.O. restaurants