THE GABARDINE (372 Bay, at Richmond West, 647-352-3211, thegabardine.com) Complete dinners for $50 per person (lunches $30), including tax, tip and a pint. Average main $20/$14. Open Monday to Friday 8 am to 10 pm (breakfast to 10:30 am, full menu from 11:30 am). Closed Saturday and Sunday, some holidays. Licensed. Access: one step at door, tight entrance, washrooms on same floor. Rating: NNN
Building a buzz ain’t what it used to be.
Back before Twitter, it took weeks for a new restaurant to get any attention. First there’d be the usual industry whispers about some new joint du jour, followed by the inevitable soft opening for the movers ‘n’ shakers.
After a few strategic mentions in the gossip columns, the critics would eventually descend and, if the word was good, the lineups would form.
That was then. These days, it’s one tweet and the place is packed to the rafters.
Such is the case with the Gabardine, the biggest thing to hit Bay Street since the Black Bloc. It’s lunch on day one just three weeks ago and Allison Mackenna and Katherine Rodriques’s 50-seat self-styled gastropub is an instant flash mob, with another 20 or so waiting patiently at the door and a constant stream of would-be customers turning away.
Pushing through the crowd, they find a bustling room, its warm taupe walls hung with faded photographs of long-gone Hogtown, the regulation tin ceiling overhead. There, they sit sandwiched at tightly spaced tables topped with butcher block and bellow to be heard above the general din and Al Green’s greatest hits.
So why the foodie frenzy? Those obsessed with the minutiae of the local resto scene know that Rodney Bowers is Gabardine’s consulting chef. Best known for Rosebud and the Citizen, Bowers has been keeping a low profile of late, who up until just recently was cooking at Le Petite Castor, itself an it-spot a lifetime of tweets ago.
But make no mistake. Gabardine is not a Rodney restaurant. Sure, he helped design the short comfort food card, trained the lumberjack-shirted kitchen crew and installed his former sous and Mildred Pierce vet Graham Pratt to lead them.
They do a substantial Ploughman’s lunch ($17), an easily shared board piled with a terrific terrine of miscellaneous pork parts and sweetbreads wrapped in bacon, a deliciously fatty chicken liver pâté and rabbit rillettes laced with sour cherries. It also comes with a slew of house-made pickles, a blob of buttery apple sauce, a wedge of sharp Chèvre Noir cheese from Quebec, some grilled Boulart baquette and a hard-boiled egg.
The mac ‘n’ cheese ($15) also requires a team to finish, a massive bread crumb- and country ham-topped casserole oozing with cheddar, goat cheese, Parmesan and provolone. The retro theme continues with wedges of crisp iceberg lettuce doused with tangy buttermilk blue cheese dressing, crumbly bacon and chef’s equivalent of crunchy French’s fried onions from a can ($11).
The Gabardine burger ($14 with fries) sees 7 ounces of house-ground Rowe Farms sirloin defiantly cooked medium-rare and dressed with aged cheddar, aioli, butter lettuce and roasted San Marzano tomato jam on a toasted Brick Street Bakery bun. Though the first four forkfuls impress, a monochromatic red beet risotto ($16) soon bores, a dead ringer of the same beet and goat cheese salad served at virtually every beanery in town, only warm and puréed.
Another missed opportunity, a ridiculously rich pool of creamed polenta swirled with tart vincotto vinegar and plated with purple watercress would be far better served by a great honkin’ pork chop instead of the sad grey slices of brined pig of no particular provenance with which it presently comes ($21).
But who can fault ice cream sandwiches in caramel sauce ($7) made with burnt marshmallow ice cream from Ed’s Real Scoop in Leslieville or strong drip coffee ($1.50) brewed with beans from Caffe Brasiliano on now-trendy Dundas West?
The Gabardine might be flavour of the day with the twittering set, but it looks like it could be in for a long run.
stevend@nowtoronto.com
