At Kiin (kiintoronto.com), the new Thai restaurant from well-known husband-andwife team Nuit and Jeff Regular, Chef Nuit has broadened her northern Thai canvas to take in more of the country’s cooking styles, and has been winning plaudits for dishes like creamy tum yom soup with lobster and sen buk noodles, and oily-rich Wellington County short rib, cut with sour tamarind. She takes inspiration as well from Royal Thai cuisine, which traditionally fuses the delicate and complex – and there’s just a hint of opulence, too, in the elaborately picture-lined restaurant interior. To discover some of Toronto’s less elevated but no less enjoyable eateries, you might schedule a walking tour with Foodies on Foot (foodiesonfoot.ca), a company founded by Torontonian Steven Hellman a decade ago, when the cool dining-out scene was still fledgling. A tour might take in one of the budget Banh Mi Boys ( banhmiboys.com) outlets for amazing Vietnamese subs or a visit to The Burger‘s Priest (theburgerspriest. com), whose founder was studying for the priesthood when he discovered that burgers were his real calling. Fancy Franks ( fancyfranks.com) is Hellman’s pick for gourmet hot dogs, a North American staple. And the sausages and craft beers at WVRST (wvrst.com), which general manager Bram Zimmerman smilingly describes as “a German beer hall run by Italians and Jews”, and where he says there’s pushchair gridlock every weekend, make for another good pit-stop on the tour. Toronto, in truth, has never been much of a fine-dining city, and now that fine dining is dying a near-universal With symbolismrich works by renowned artists like SPUD and Elicser, the stretch, aka Rush Lane, is part of Toronto’s wider street-art scene death, that’s probably all to the good. But sophistication, at least by Toronto’s easygoing standards, does play a big part at Alo (alorestaurant.com), the Relais & Châteauxaffiliated, third-floor restaurant on the edge of Chinatown, where menus come with their own wax seal and the high-end tasting menu can take three hours or longer to enjoy. Regardless of its sexy black bar and smoked mirrors, Alo is by no means a styleover-substance fly-by-night – its kitchen is an extremely serious enterprise and it must be said that you really haven’t lived until you’ve tried chef Patrick Kriss’s St Canut rack of pork with corn succotash or his crisp sweetbreads with Korean hot sauce. (And if tasting menus really aren’t your thing, Kriss’s Aloette, on the ground floor of the same building, is the way to go.) Cross Spadina Avenue and you find yourself on Graffiti Alley, Toronto’s famed lane of street art. With symbolism-rich works by renowned artists like SPUD and Elicser, the stretch, aka Rush Lane, is part of Toronto’s wider street-art scene, for which these days the city is every bit as well known as it is for its older, more obvious landmarks like the CN Tower and Public Library. Nowhere demonstrates Toronto’s new iconoclast sensibility as much as BarChef ( barcheftoronto.com), on Queen Street West, with its immersive and multisensory cocktails, tilted towards a hip, younger crowd. “When we opened ten years ago,” owner Frankie Solarik says, “there was no cocktail bar in the city, if you can believe it.” Now, BarChef’s “liquid in a plated form” cocktails have created a new genre, and Food & Wine magazine has designated it one of the best bars in the world. Last year, Solarik participated in Taste of the Six, a series of three dinners in partnership with Bosk, the highly regarded restaurant at Toronto’s Shangri-La (shangrila.com) hotel. (The Six, or 6ix, as it is written, is a nickname for Toronto, coined by homegrown hip-hop star Drake.) Liquid dishes included Ontario Strawberry Manipulation in Soil Carbonic Negroni and Cascumpec Bay Oyster with Dill Cream and Mezcal – elaborate, multilayer cocktails from BarChef, fully integrated into cerebral dishes from Bosk’s talented chef de cuisine, Richard Singh, not a pairing, as such, but rather, a single entity. Bosk, of course, is a great restaurant in its own right, offering a cuisine which Singh describes as “always local, sustainable, simple and elegant”. It has a whiff of Switzerland to it, but ultimately, like the city itself, in terms of innovation and pizzazz, Toronto is giving not Geneva or Zurich, but New York itself a run for its money. PILLOW TALK Indulgent new hotels are also calling the city home The birthplace of the Four Seasons ( fourseasons.com) brand, Toronto punches well above its weight in terms of choice in hospitality, including the hometown outpost. The Shangri-La, Toronto ( shangri-la.com), meanwhile, is one of the city’s loveliest hotels, centrally situated at the junction of University and Adelaide. Then there are the newcomers, and the picks of the bunch include The Broadview Hotel (thebroadviewhotel.ca), an 1891 landmark building in the city’s East End, with vinyl record players in the guestrooms and a rooftop bar, and Bisha (bisha.com), a 44-storey hotel with residences, located in the Entertainment District, with a swimming pool on the roof and an entire guest floor designed by rock-king Lenny Kravitz. On the city’s Exhibition Grounds, along the regenerated Lake Ontario waterfront and close to the newly opened 1.3km William G Davis Trail, is the Hotel X Toronto (hotelxtoronto.com), the city’s first urban resort. Opened earlier this year, it‘s a game-changing newbie that features swimming pools, tennis and squash courts, a golf simulator, a chiropractic clinic, stadiumstyle cinema, three-storey SkyBar and a tanning lawn. 82 CENTURION-MAGAZINE.COM FOR MORE ON TORONTO‘S HIGH LIFE: CENTURION-MAGAZINE.COM
DISCOVER THE WORLD WITH CENTURION OPPORTUNITIES ABOUND FOR THE INTREPID VOYAGER Centurion would like to invite you to enjoy the rarest and most exclusive experiences around the world – boutique shopping and world-class entertainment. We’re here to help you get the best out of your journeys far and wide and look forward to curating a unique experience just for you. TRAVEL IN COMFORT When it comes to arranging your trip, your Centurion Travel Service can take care of all your travel needs. Whether it’s booking your flights and hotel, or leveraging our insider knowledge and contacts throughout your destination to create a bespoke itinerary designed around your personal passions and preferences. For those who want to experience the world at a more leisurely pace, for instance, rail travel could be the answer – in particular, the opulent trains of the Belmond company, which recall a bygone age of luxurious travel. RESIDE IN STYLE As a Centurion member, enjoy exclusive privileges and upgrades available to Centurion members through the Hilton Honors Diamond Elite programme. UNIQUE INSIGHTS Through American Express Invites® you’ll also get access to unique and highly exclusive events throughout the worlds of music, style, film and entertainment. And to enhance this experience, in nine locations around the world, American Express Invites Lounges will provide the perfect pre-event venue to soak up the atmosphere and enjoy a drink or fine food. Whatever your passion, we draw on our global network of contacts to handcraft you truly exceptional moments. WE ARE ALWAYS HERE FOR YOU Don’t forget that you will also enjoy the reassurance that comes with knowing you and your family are covered with our world-class travel and purchase protection whenever you travel. FOR MORE INFORMATION CALL YOUR CENTURION SERVICE AT 2277 2888
