Independent, original, professionally run places where you could eat well on a weeknight without too much sticker shock used to be one of the city’s strengths. That mid-range, suddenly more expensive almost across the board, has taken a hit in pricier centres, Toronto in particular. I saw no end of main courses for $40 and up in what used to be known, I guess quaintly, as “mid-range” spots. The price of a cocktail has edged toward $20 in a lot of restaurants. Or the simple weeknight pasta dinner in Toronto with my wife and kid with just a couple glasses of wine, it came to $170 after tax and tip. Not just at one spot, but at almost every bar and restaurant where I could find them. It might have been the $48-per-dozen local (and completely average) oysters in St. The most jarring of these has been the price of eating out. For many welcome new developments, there have been trade-offs too.
Yet the industry we’ve returned to isn’t the same as before. You could tell how happy (and relieved) the staff and owners were to be back. The intention: to take the temperature of the country’s remade dining landscape-and to uncover Canada’s most spectacular restaurants along the way.Īt their best, the kitchens and dining rooms I visited ran at a consistently higher level than I’ve ever seen, offering sensational, can’t-do-this-at-home cooking and warm, joyful service. The stop-start reopening of 2022 took all of a heartbeat to become what I can only think of today as the great Canadian dining frenzy-a record-smashing rush of packed rooms and ravenous patrons unleashing our pent-up appetites.Īs the dining business began to settle early this year into a new post-pandemic normal, I set out on an epic, 50-restaurant, coast-to-coast eating jag for Maclean’s, gorging my way from Quidi Vidi, Newfoundland, to Ucluelet, B.C. It’s funny what happens when you can’t eat in restaurants for a couple of years. Nuttall-Smith and friends feasting on Hong Kong–style lobster at Fishman Lobster Clubhouse, a Chinese party spot in Scarborough, Ontario (Photography by John Cullen)
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