Story & Photography | Renée S. Suen
When it comes to the city’s dining scene, Torontonians and visitors alike are blessed with choice. Those that have been completely overhauled –both in room aesthetics and menu offerings – have added to the already eclectic culinary landscape and, in some cases, pushed flavour boundaries.
AMANO TRATTORIA
As the upscale flagship of the Amano brand, this cavernous and deep Design Age room was formerly Open Concept Hospitality’s Uncle Ray’s. The team has divided the St. Lawrence Market area restaurant’s 5,000-square-foot space into
four dining areas that seat 220 – a main dining room that can be separated by curtains into three zones, including the Projector Room (equipped with a projector), a front dining space flanking the main entrance for up to 24, plus an open space made up of a central bar area with high-top seating, booths and access to another dining alcove.
The warp-around central bar is the focal point of Amano Trattoria’s large dining room.
Amano Notte, its late-night cocktail lounge, is accessed through the main room or via a separate entrance. Meant to accommodate overflow from the dining room, it’s available as a private event room for up to 45. It’s also where the restaurant’s signature pinsas are made. This is a Roman pizza-like dish that christens hand-pressed pizza dough with toppings that are baked on, or added after – such things as fior di latte, white anchovies, pistachio or n’duja.
The Anchovy Pinsa is topped with Stracciatella cheese, white anchovies,parsley and capers.
According to executive chef Michael Angeloni, the food here is inspired by their heritage but not defined by it. While rooted in Italian traditions, it has Toronto-based sensibilities, including using mostly Canadian ingredients.
Wild Fluke Crudo is capped with pickled mussels, green pepper,crème fraiche and shallots.
Unlike the more faster casual fare served at Union Station and Newmarket’s Amano Italian Kitchen, Amano Trattoria’s dinner menu focuses on sharefriendly dishes, including assaggini with small snacks like fried smelts or arancini made with pancetta and pear, antipasti and handmade egg yolk pastas.
The fresh Tagliolini is tossed with PEI mussels, white wine, chili and garlic,then topped with pangrattato.
The Beef Carpaccio tops thinly-sliced beef with red wine, hazelnut emulsion, arugula, parmesan and mushroom.
In addition to the pinsas, elevated secondis include a roasted squash risotto with sea urchin, chicken jus and crispy chicken skin and a 40-day aged duck fat-cooked rib steak with seasonal changing sides. Crowd-pleasing classic desserts include a hazelnut and dark chocolate torte, pavlova, yogurt panna cotta, cannolis and a cookie plate.
The Grilled Pork Shoulder is brined, sous vide for seven hours before it’s grilled, then served sliced perched over braised Swiss chard, cauliflower puree and apple mostarda.
To pair with the food, Amano’s cellar spotlights mainly organic and biodynamic regional Italian wines from consignment, plus a selection from BC and Ontario. The drink list features a dozen wines by the glass, crafted cocktails
and negronis, a shortlist of draft beers, local brews in cans and bottles, as well as an amaro cart that has a few options not typically found in the city.
9 Church St.
647-349-7297
eatamano.com/trattoria
PICCOLO PIANO
Inspired by Old World restaurants, executive chef and co-owner Victor Barry (formerly of Splendido), along with partners Nikki Leigh McKean and Brendan Piunno, has converted beloved Harbord Village’s Café Cancan brunch spot
into an eclectic wood-fired pizzeria and snack bar.
Piccolo Piano is a visual spectacle, a room filled with eclectic furnishings and décor.
The 30-seat room is a visual spectacle: coated completely in red with a bright neon red “pizza is life” sign as a focal point, it’s strewn with mounted framed pictures and over-the-top décor and furnishings. It’s what Barry describes as being like “PT Barnum driving a Ferrari eating a pizza on his way to Moulin Rouge.”
Mozza Caviar Stix – topped with Ossetra caviar, chives and crème fraiche.
While the room is busy, the kitchen and bar keep things simple and fun. Featuring a tight, frequently changing menu, the food focuses predominantly on wood-fired pizzas and sharable snacks Barry describes as “really delicious.”
The Octo-Dawg is topped with white onions, paprika and pickled jalapeno, all stuffed in a potato bun.
The flavourful food might be Italian influenced but is not traditional, including the high-hydration pizza dough he’s developed. While he uses 100-per-cent, naturally leavened sourdough like the version at Piano Piano, the pies at Piccolo Piano are cooked in a wood-fired oven at 1,000-degrees Fahrenheit (versus 750-degrees at Piano Piano).
The Ezzo Pepperoni also tops Piccolo Piano’s soft pizza base with tomato, mozzarella, cherry tomatoes and tear-drop chilies.
“The key difference that temperature makes is in the texture of the crust,” Barry explains of the minute cooking process of the 10-inch pies. “It’s very soft, light and slightly chewy; because it cooks so fast it doesn’t get crunchy or crispy at all – that’s exactly what I’m going for.”
Oysters XO features a pair of East Coast oysters topped with lime, coriander and radish.
Barry has spent years perfecting the ideal dough, explaining that each of his restaurants offers a different pizza style, with the version here being “all about the bread first and the toppings second. The texture is delicate and so special.”
The show-stopping Baked Spumoni features vanilla, mint chocolate and strawberry gelato under Italian meringue that’s then doused with anise liqueur and set aflame.
It’s a casual, walk-in friendly, neighbourhood hangout where you can have anything from a couple snacks to three courses paired with their food-friendly wines that cover a range of occasions. Whether it’s a half-hour visit with a beer or an all-night affair sampling from their entire cocktail catalogue – a martini, negroni, Manhattan and spritz – it’s a guaranteed good time.
89 Harbord St.
647-341-3100
instagram.com/piccolopianopizzeria
SELVA TORONTO
Billing itself as the world’s first immersive-art restaurant and bar experience, Selva (Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese for “jungle”) aims to draw diners away from the concrete urban jungle of its surroundings and transport them to the rainforests of South America.
“A lot of people I know have gone to places like Costa Rica and a lot who have wanted to buy a cottage and escape (during this time) have done that, but not everyone can do that,” explains owner Oliver Geddes. “So, I started to work with this idea of escapism, being transported to a different dimension and having all of your senses overwhelmed.”
Selva’s eye-catching room is a 360-degree canvas by visual artists Clandestinos Art (Bruno Smoky + Shalak Attack).
Once The Fifth Pubhouse, the open dining room is now a 360-degree canvas (everything from the floor, walls, and ceiling are covered) with vibrant fluorescent spray-painted murals by visual artists Clandestinos Art (Bruno Smoky + Shalak Attack) – the duo behind the Reflections artwork at this year’s RendezViews (coowned by Geddes).
The 3D jungle experience includes an art installation with vines and florals suspended from the room’s centre, along with wicker furniture and other decorative pieces blending into the blacklight space.
Selva’s eye-catching room is a 360-degree canvas by visual artists Clandestinos Art (Bruno Smoky + Shalak Attack).
Coming from the perspective that food is also art, this continued partnership between popular Thai chef Nuit Regular (PAI, Kiin, By Chef Nuit, Sabai Sabai, and Sukhothai) and The Fifth, Regular has created the By Chef Nuit. The menu for the summer’s RendezViews East Side helps to extend Selva’s 360-degree sensory experience on to the plate.
Here, Regular exercises the culinary repertoire she developed exploring the world’s cuisines in her own kitchen during the pandemic, drawing inspiration from South America and her native Thailand, while finding a connection between them via the similarity of ingredients, or through cooking techniques.
The Scallop Ceviche is served with house-fried tortilla chips and features bay scallops with grilled corn, sweet potato, celery, red serrano chilli, pickled onion,coriander, magrud lime, passion fruit, lemongrass, mint and edible flowers.
“I started to look into each individual component of the salads or ceviches and their use of lime,” explained Regular of her incorporation of Thai fruits and vegetables into those dishes. “I already import magrud limes for my own dishes, and the flavour is unique to (Thai food), but we can use that element here, and that’s how those dishes emerged.
“I had so much fun using the flavours of the fruits themselves. When I watched, read and talked with others about South American food, I noticed they don’t add sugar like we do in Thailand for dressing, but the food itself has sweetness. So, I used things like passion fruit and other fruits that have natural sweetness and aroma.”
There’s also a vegan option available of the Grilled Corn, which Regular has shaved off the cob and topped with cotija, coconut butter, paprika and coriander.
The share-friendly menu is visually captivating with dishes that brim with bright colours from a variety of vegetables, fruit salsas, edible flowers and herbs. There’s everything from ceviches featuring fish, scallop, lobster and even young coconut, to vegan and keto-friendly dip platters, grilled whole fish or wagyu beef skewers.
Using fresh young coconut, the vegan- and keto-friendly Coconut Ceviche also contains coconut milk, sweet potato, grilled corn, celery, red serrano chili, magrud lime, passion fruit, mint and edible flower that’s served with tortilla chips.
There are also DIY taco platters sided by a mix of fruits and vegetables. For dessert, there’s banana fritters with a sweet corn-butterfly pea flower gelato that’s made in collaboration with Death in Venice Gelato. A shortened menu is offered after 10pm.
Both keto-friendly and gluten-free, the Grilled Wagyu beef skewers are served with tropical fruit salsa and a red pepper sauce).
Meanwhile, the bar spotlights nine batched cocktails on tap that include staples like margaritas to original numbers including the Espresso Lion’s Mane that’s made with Ketel One Vodka, Galliano and PowerPlant Superfoods THINK coffee that’s infused with lion’s mane mushrooms (a nod to wild mushrooms found peppered in the room’s mural and native vegetation that could be found in the Amazon) and injected with nitrogen.
Selva desserts feature banana fritters with a sweet corn and butterfly pea flower gelato that’s made in collaboration with Death in Venice Gelato.
There’s also a collection of draught and bottled beers, including a fair selection from Collective Arts brewery, plus ready-to-drink seltzers and gin-based sodas.
221 Richmond St. W. (lower level)
416-979-3000
selvatoronto.com
