Toronto and Niagara

Top Ten Restaurants and Their Chefs

1. North 44 - Mark McEwan
2. Susur- Susur Lee
3. Canoe- Anthony Walsh
4. Truffles- Jason McLeod/Lynn Crawford
5. Jamie Kennedy Wine Bar- Jamie Kennedy
6. Bymark- Mark McEwan
7. Thuet Bistro and Bakery- Marc Thuet
8. Auberge Pommier- Jason Bangerter
9. Celestine- Pascal Ribreau
10. Lai Wah Heen- Ken Tam

Honourable Mentions

1. Eigensinn Farms- Michael Stadtlander
2. Langdon Hall- Jonathan Gushue

Top 3 Chef's Bio





Mark McEwan, one of Toronto’s many celebrity chefs, is chef/owner of three of Toronto’s most exclusive and prominent restaurants. Currently, Chef McEwan is managing North 44, Bymark, and his newest venture, One, located within Toronto’s newest boutique hotel, The Hazelton.


From 1976 to 1979, McEwan began his career and studies in Toronto at the Regal Constellation Hotel and George Brown College respectably. He worked under the tutelage of Executive Chef, Joseph Vonlanthen as an Executive Sous Chef. Upon graduation, Mark McEwan landed an apprentice position at Switzerland’s prestigious Grande National Hotel. He later returned to Toronto and began his endeavors as one of Toronto’s top chef. After moving up the kitchen brigade to Executive Chef at the Sutton Place Hotel, McEwan acquired Pronto Ristorante with two partners. For many years this was Toronto’s most prestigious restaurant and was deemed the pinnacle of the city’s finest cuisine.

This wasn’t enough for Chef McEwan though; he needed a restaurant to call his own. To fulfill this need, McEwan opened his own restaurant, North 44, in May 1990 and sold his share of Pronto Ristorante in 1992. Between opening North 44 in 1990 and Bymark in 2002, Mark McEwan kept busy as a chef/owner in local restaurants (Marketta, Terra Restaurant) and even offered his knowledge and experience as a consultant for the Air Canada Center and The Old Mill Inn and Spa.

McEwan’s newest endeavor, One, is located within Toronto’s Hazelton Hotel located in Yorkville. This restaurant opened the summer of 2007 during the Toronto Film Festival which immediately gave One a infamous reputation.





Chef McEwan’s main concern is providing his guest with a good meal. The menus at all three of McEwan’s restaurants draw from the best local purveyors of meat, fish and produce, with a focus on seasonal ingredients. Menus change every few months in order to keep up with the freshest products. He feels that he may have taken a bit of a step backwards in terms of focusing his cuisine more on classical styles compared to the trends of “fusion confusion”. McEwan’s favourite menus are the more classic European-style menus, which focuses on simplicity, which is why he refers to it as sophisticated home cooking. This is the only cooking that will turn his head these days.

North 44:
Located in the Yonge and Eglington area, a popular and busy district of Toronto lays McEwan’s notorious restaurant, North 44. As the website promotes, this “restaurant possesses a sophisticated, yet relaxed atmosphere with a contemporary decor. A destination for celebrities and out-of-town visitors, North 44 is a gourmet experience perfect for business professionals, social and romantic dinners.”

Bymark:
This restaurant is located downtown at the TD Centre. Located in the atrium, the rays of incoming sunlight flood the restaurant and provide warmth to the below ground dining rooms. The restaurant consists of a main dining room with three private rooms, each with a 14 guest capacity. The dining room provides intimate surroundings and the bar is always busy and exciting. Their menu demonstrates a contemporary, fine dining touch, with core of classic cuisine matched by an extensive wine list.

One:
Recently opened during the Toronto Food Festival in the Hazelton Hotel in Yorkville, One provides guest with the simplest of dining experiences. This restaurant is built on the philosophy of simplicity being the new complexity. Diners are presented vegetable and garnish free plates, highlighting the one main food item that McEwan has mastered. One is a perfect example of how fine dining cuisine is returning to its roots. Yabu’s Pushelberg, one of Toronto’s most acclaimed interior designers, provides the perfect sexy and elegant atmosphere.

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Internationally acclaimed Chef Susur Lee emigrated from Hong Kong to Canada and opened his first restaurant “Lotus” in 1987. Throughout the years, Susur Lee has never deviated from a consuming passion: to explore beyond the horizons of received culinary knowledge, and to create unique, sublime compositions for the palate that blend textures and flavors in sensuous harmony.

Pronounced by Zagat as a “culinary genius”, Susur Lee fuses the complex food traditions of China with the classic techniques of French cuisine. He also places great emphasis on daring and original plate presentations. Chef Lee currently owns and operates two of Toronto’s hottest restaurants under the names of “SUSUR” and “LEE”

“SUSUR” opened its doors in 2000 and immediately earned great reputation. Since its beginnings, the restaurant has consistently received the highest possible rankings from many food critics and international restaurant ratings. In 2004, the chef opened “LEE”, a less formal sister to “SUSUR” in which Chef has fun creating an inventive menu yet consistently showcasing the best of gastronomy. With the two restaurants side by side, “SUSUR” “LEE” is synonym of perfect harmony.

Even though Susur Lee is a perfectionist, he delights by playing around with freedom and experimentation. Susur's recipes are not ordered by fish, game, or vegetable, nor are they ordered by season or course. He likes to combine old recipes and techniques into new experiments. An example of this is the emulsified fatty Tiajin stock Susur learned to make while stunning and gutting fish at Peking House in Hong Kong he recreated in the form of a Wuxi-Style Wild Boar Belly on Parsnip Romano Bean Puree with Apple and Cipollini Onions, which at the same time evolved from an Ontario Rabbit with Szechwan Garlic and Eggplant Sauce with Black and Sweet Rice Sausage once served at Lotus in Toronto.

Susur Lee really likes to make balanced food and draws from different sources of sweetness. Sweetness plays an important part in the composition of his dishes. On a recent interview he describes how in his pig’s ear terrine he likes to use sugar cane because that kind of sweetness is not very harsh and it does not destroy your appetite.

The pieces of Susur's culinary puzzle come together as every story tells a dish. In what can only be described as Susur-style.

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Located on the 54th floor of the Toronto Dominion Tower in downtown Toronto, this critically acclaimed restaurant has been said to be the definition of Canadian cuisine. Canoe restaurant and bar offers everything from a breathtaking view of the city to the finest and freshest Canadian produce, game, and fish to an outstanding selection of Canadian vintages.

Through the textures and flavours of some regional Canadian cuisine, Executive Chef Anthony Walsh has brilliantly captured the rich raw environment that is Canada. This fine dining, business casual restaurant is mostly corporate dominant, with menu items ranging from $19-$44. Whether trying to decide between the Roasted calamari and cuttlefish, served with artichokes, orange and olives or Grandview Farms venison loin accompanied with Cape Breton chanterelles, potato gnocchi and Niagara concord grapes, you are sure to leave very satisfied.

The Chef is Anthony Walsh, a name that many people know in Toronto. He was the first chef to ever represent Canada at the World Food Summit in Singapore, was awarded the Ontario Hostelry Institute Culinary Gold Award in 2004 and captured the Olympic Gold Metal Plates for Ontario in 2005. But how did this man become the chef he is today? Walsh started off as an English student majoring in Classical Literature at the University of Toronto, shortly after he went to George Brown College to embrace the culinary arts.

Upon his completion of the culinary program, Walsh began his apprenticeship at the Windsor Arms then moved over to the Founder’s Club where he was introduced to Jamie Kennedy, one of the biggest influences in his life to this day. Chef Walsh also had his own place, JAW (his dad’s initials), until the doors were closed after two and a half years. In the fall of 1995, Canoe hired Chef Walsh as the day saucier. After two years he is still working at Canoe, however with a much more demanding role as the executive chef. As if that wasn’t enough, along with overseeing the daily productions at Canoe, executive Chef Walsh also oversees two other restaurants, Jump and Biff’s Bistro.

Chef Walsh’s favourite thing to do is keeping as many of his ingredients Canadian; such as Prairie grain crusted lamb loin with Cumbrae Dorset lasagna, Cookstown turnips and Applewood smoked Atlantic salmon, Cookstown beets, Chicory and Pelee Island caviar.

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Honourable Mentions

At the intersection of Osprey Township Tenth Line Road and Side Road 30 you will find a lonely dirt road leading off to a driveway. Down the driveway, a 19th century brick house and an old red barn. The property is surrounded by chickens, pigs, and ducks recreating a picture perfect scene of remote country life with smells that lead you to wonder what’s cooking inside.

This is the home and refuge of one of Canada’s best chef’s, Michael Stadlander. The farm, one of the most unusual restaurants in North America considered one of the best restaurants in the world. With over 15 years of experience, Michael Stadlander offers an extraordinary culinary experience in six or eight courses to a maximum of 18 people a night for approximately $250.00 per person.

With great anticipation, guests from all over the world book months in advance to visit Eigensinn Farm. The name, borrowed from the title of an essay by Hermann Hesse, means ''single-mindedness'' or ''obstinacy,'' which accurately expresses the vision and mission behind Michael Stadlander’s concept.

Imbued with the German (and Canadian) love of the outdoors, he has come to believe strongly that a chef can insure the integrity of what appears on the plate only by maintaining the closest possible links between the farmers and the fishermen who produce the food that enters the kitchen. So he has become a farmer himself, but a farmer who still practices his old craft at the highest level. In a sense, he returned to his roots: he grew up on a small family farm, where as a boy he handled chores like feeding the chickens and ducks.

Most of his culinary techniques came from his mother and grandmother from whom he learned things like how to make pickles with a bumper crop of cucumbers. For this reason and more, his peers such as Jamie Kennedy consider him a legend and speak of his cuisine as “clean, pure and visionary”. And precisely clean and pure is what you should expect. Stadlander is not a fan of lavish or trendy cooking methods or voguish presentations. This means no tall food, no dusting of plates, and very little greenery.

A sample six course dinner would include the following:

-Very crusty, whole-grain sourdough bread
-A nibble of tuna carpaccio served in an abalone shell, with seaweed on the side, collected, salted and mailed to Singhampton by Mrs. Stadtlander's mother in Japan.
-Fish dressed with wasabi, rice vinegar, soy and ginger.
-Consommé with floating ravioli, stuffing of celery-root and beef tongue inside the pasta, beef marrow poached in the soup and chopped celery greens sprinkled on top.
-Risotto with foie gras, tons of herbs and plump, moist, locally picked chanterelle mushrooms
-Black currant sorbet, made with kirsch and red wine and little sugar as a palate cleanser
-Tender lamb chops and loin from milk-fed animals raised by a friend of the Stadtlanders in neighboring Grey County, with carrots, acorn squash, yellow summer squash and a wedge of cheesy rosti potatoes.
-Strudel made from some wild apples on the porch of the farm and homemade vanilla ice cream with a few spicy home-preserved damson plums served on the side. _________________________________________________________________

Langdon Hall is a 52-room inn located in Cambridge and offers guests some of the best services available anywhere in the region. Their restaurant has a CAA/AAA rating of 5 diamonds and offers guests breakfast, lunch, tea, dinner and room service. They also provide sommelier Sylvian Brissonnet who can make wine pairing suggestions for the food prepared by chef Jonathan Gushue.

Jonathan was born in St. John’s Newfoundland and attended Georgian College for front of the house operations. It wasn’t until a co-op experience that he realized his place was in the kitchen. After graduating he worked in Japan and England, and returned home to the Fairmount Newfoundland in 1998. He worked in Vancouver before moving to the Four Seasons in Toronto, and then Truffles from 2003-2005. And finally he came to Langdon Hall to continue learning and incorporate his idea of “bons produit, bonne cuisine”.

This is an important philosophy that he tries to incorporate into his menu ideas. His goal is to use local farmers and blend local culture into his menu. Jonathan Gushue has tried to use Cambridge’s rich Mennonite community to inspire him to create great food. I feel that this would be his favourite trend in the restaurant industry.

He loves to use the fresh ingredients from his kitchen garden or to use whatever the farmers have in season. He says that it is a disadvantage to be out of the city not getting deliveries daily, but you are closer to farmers with fresh ingredients. Chef Gushue has put a lot of time into his tasting menus and works hard to pair it appropriately with wine. I also noticed that in true Newfie form cod was on the menu a few times. When asked about his favourite foods, he said that his Dad’s clam linguini was one of his most beloved meals.
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Justification

We rated our restaurants based on a 3 tier ranking system which rated the awards that each restaurant has been granted. Through the points system, we graded each establishment and ranked them in their appropriate order. Although we don’t feel that this is the most accurate way to definately say which are the best restaurants, it is a good way to benchmark the top establishments.

We also looked outside of the immediate Toronto and Niagara region to showcase some of the excellent chefs from the surrounding areas. Because these restaurants, including the ones located in the Niagara Peninsula, are not within the specifc geographic location of our research, they did not receive the exposure, recognition or acknowledgment from the Toronto mainstream media. The process of ranking these restaurants was scientific and shows the most established restaurants that have experienced continued excellence in southern Ontario.