Canada’s Best New Restaurants 2008

N˚3

The Harbord Room
89 Harbord St.
Toronto, 416-962-8989
theharbordroom.com

It’s official: Toronto’s Harbord Street now ranks alongside Montreal’s Boulevard Saint-Laurent and Vancouver’s West 4th as a bona fide restaurant row. Co-owners Dave Mitton (Czehoski) and chef Cory Vitiello (the Drake Hotel), along with sommelier Anton Potvin (Niagara Street Café), have brought a taste of Queen West cool to the Annex. The restaurateurs may be colour-blind – how else to explain the Pepto-Bismol-pink walls? – but their taste buds are in solid working order. Joining calamari, clams and chorizo with olives, stewed tomatoes and basil isn’t rewriting the rules of gastronomy, but it is a classic combination that works. When those flavours are paired up with the Aphrodisiac cocktail, an amorous blend of herbs, vodka, Chambord and lemonade, the combination takes on new dimensions. Mennonite-farmed pork achieves an ideal level of doneness, and is paired with a dark, crispy potato pancake and apple and Calvados butter. Reimagining the standard lemon tart as key lime tart with mango and coconut ice cream is an inspired manoeuvre that is typical of how the kitchen tweaks expectations.
 

N˚4

Chef’s Table
1126 Memorial Drive N.W.
Calgary, 403-228-4442

The luscious aroma emanating from the Dungeness crab bisque is causing my guest to bow her head in gentle veneration – or maybe she’s just aiming to get another whiff. The idea was to share, but suddenly the bisque is finished. That’s okay; the short-rib ravioli, served with a little reduced braising liquid, a scattering of pea shoots and fresh horseradish, more than compensates.

Theo Yeaman honed his skills at some of Canada’s top tables (Canoe, Lumière, Auberge du Pommier) before settling into the role of executive chef here. His pheasant supreme with its creamy, herbaceous sauce – reduced to a consistency ideally suited for sopping up with fresh morels – shows just how succulent this bird can be. So tender is a glistening fillet of Queen Charlotte Island halibut that it virtually trembles at the approach of a fork. Understated luxury – not a style normally associated with a city better known for brash exuberance – defines the slate-grey dining room. Widely spaced tables provide a view into the open kitchen, where the young staff works in almost monastic silence in full service to the food.
 

N˚5

Boneta
1 W. Cordova St.
Vancouver, 604-684-1844
boneta.ca

Conceived by proprietors André McGillivray, Neil Ingram and Mark Brand – stalwarts in the Vancouver restaurant scene – as a let’s-put-on-a-show kind of project, Boneta was created quick and on the cheap for what was originally meant as a one-year lease. (The building was slated for condo development.) When the market went soft, the successful team negotiated an open-ended extension, and the whole neighbourhood broke out into a choreographed song and dance routine – or so we imagine.

Riding the line between the Gastown of steam-whistle clocks and cobblestone streets and the Gastown of wobbly derelicts gives the location a frisson of excitement. Inside, tilted mirrors on the ceiling encourage eavesdropping. A table of elaborately pierced scenesters dissect their octopus terrine with professional equanimity, while, next to them, a gaggle of suburban bachelorettes down El Diablo cocktails (gold tequila, crème de cassis, house-made ginger beer) as if their lives depended on it. It’s not every day you see a server offer his arm and personally escort a flattered patron to her next destination, but it does give credence to the restaurant’s motto: “Boneta Loves You.”