Dine Digest

At the northern edge of Yorkville on Avenue Road, Osteria Giulia welcomes guests into an architectural cocoon of bleached limestone walls, woven blonde cane ceilings, and curved leather booths washed in warm amber sconce lighting.

Chef Rob Rossi focuses relentlessly on the maritime cooking of Liguria: hand-pinched lorighittas with braised wild boar ragù, paper-thin focaccia di Recco stuffed with molten crescenza cheese, and whole Mediterranean branzino roasted over wood charcoal with taggiasca olives.

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At the corner of College and Palmerston, Bar Raval looks like a Gaudi sculpture brought to life, with 75 hand-carved Spanish mahogany panels rippling across the ceiling, walls, and bar like flowing molten wood, wrapping guests in a warm amber cave.

Chef Grant van Gameren and team recreate Barcelona’s standing-room pintxos culture: glistening cured boquerones on toast, warm blood sausage with sweet caramelized onions, Galician razor clams warmed in olive oil, and paper-thin slices of 100% acorn-fed Jamón Ibérico de Bellota.

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At the corner of Queen Street West and Spadina Avenue, guests step into a quiet brass-lined elevator and ascend to the top floor of a 19th-century Victorian building, stepping into an airy cocktail parlor framing downtown streetcars below.

Chef Patrick Kriss synthesizes classic French saucing with Ontario's seasonal rhythm: butter-poached Nova Scotia lobster bathed in silken vin jaune reduction, sea bream crudo with Meyer lemon, and Miyazaki A5 Wagyu glazed in jus infused with foraged forest mushrooms.

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Tucked into a residential enclave of Victorian row houses on Niagara Street, Edulis feels less like a commercial restaurant and more like the candlelit dining room of two passionate culinary wanderers lined with preserved chanterelles and cookbooks.

Husband-and-wife chefs Michael Caballo and Tobey Nemeth cook without a printed menu, following daily maritime and forest harvests: wood-roasted turbot basted in cider butter, wild Ontario morels in poultry broth, and house-cured Iberian lardo melting over crusty sourdough.

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Located in a modest strip mall at Middlefield and Steeles in northern Scarborough, SumiLicious is instantly recognizable by the queue of eager diners and the hypnotic aroma of coriander, black peppercorns, and smoldering hardwood smoke wafting into the parking lot.

Pitmaster Sumith Fernando, who spent 17 years hand-slicing brisket at Montreal's legendary Schwartz's Deli, brings old-world Jewish-Romanian curing technique to the GTA: beef briskets dry-cured for over two weeks in proprietary spices, smoked for hours, steamed to tenderness, and sliced by hand across the grain while hot and dripping.

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Entering Congee Queen’s flagship Agincourt location in Scarborough, guests are met by the energetic roar of a world-class suburban dining institution: massive live seafood aquariums holding colossal Atlantic lobsters, a gleaming glass roast-meat bar hung with lacquer-skinned barbecue ducks, and multi-generational family banquets filling round tables with lazy susans.

The kitchen's foundational triumph is its namesake congee, slow-simmered for eight hours until the jasmine rice grains break down into an impossibly smooth, velvety ivory porridge, eaten alongside fresh sea crab, shredded pork with century egg, and colossal Atlantic lobsters wok-fried with crisp ginger and scallions.

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Occupying the historic Westin Harbour Castle building on the Toronto waterfront, Don Alfonso 1890 translates Sant'Agata sui Due Golfi elegance into panoramic Lake Ontario views framed by museum-grade glass fixtures and contemporary European art.

The tasting menu celebrates Mediterranean coastal mastery: tender seared red mullet with artichoke emulsion, wild turbot poached in seawater broth with sweet Sorrento tomatoes, and delicate paccheri pasta tossed with Mediterranean lobster.

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