BELLWOODS BREWERY (124 Ossington, at Argyle, 416-535-4586, bellwoodsbrewery.com) Complete meals for $35 per person, including tax, tip and a pint of house-brewed beer. Average main $9. Open for dinner Sunday to Wednesday 5 to 11 pm, Thursday to Saturday 5 pm to midnight. Lunch Saturday and Sunday noon to 2 pm. Bar nightly to close. Closed some holidays. No reservations. Licensed. Access: barrier-free. Rating: NNNN
Now that Bellwoods Brewery’s consulting chef, Guy Rawlings, has moved on to his next project – he’s off to Europe, poor thing – it’s only natural that Rob Julen take his place. After all, they’ve only cooked together in 13 different restaurants.
“We met at Mövenpick,” recalls Julen. “We also worked at Il Mulino back in the day, and I helped him out at Cowbell for a bit. And then Brockton General, of course.”
Now three weeks into his Bellwoods gig, Julen is wisely expanding the brew-pub’s original snack-attack card of pork rinds and what Rawlings called “sticks.” Oh, both are still available – the latter better described as two skewers of grilled izakaya-style duck hearts fabulously drizzled in charred jalapeño oil (both $4) – but the new lineup goes well beyond the category “things to nibble on while necking an $8 pint of Lost River Baltic Porter.”
Ensconced on the former body shop’s curbside patio, we’re soon laying waste to the veggie micro-smorgasbord ($12), a little bit of everything including Kalamata olives, slices of fermented beet, buttery lima beans, spicy peanuts and whipped anise butter. The porous sourdough that accompanies both it and the meat platter – which ditches the beets and butter for pork heart salami and ambrosial duck liver pâté ($15) – is baked by Woodlot using malt left over from the brewing process.
Julen updates the pub grub cliché that is the pickled egg by soft-boiling it to the point that its yolk can’t decide if it wants to solidify or dissolve, then tossing it with house-pickled ramps.
Fancy a pierced tongue? Because that’s what you get when you order a skewer of grilled beyond-tender lamb’s tongue on a tangy bed of pressed house-made yogurt swirled with crushed walnuts and sweet sultanas (both $4).
Bellwoods’ barbecued pork banh mi on a crusty bun dressed with pickled daikon might cost more than twice as much as the similar sandwich sold at Ginger, but we doubt that the meat used by the cheap Yonge Street takeaway came from a naturally raised Perth County porker named Petunia. And though its provenance isn’t specified, chef’s crisply battered fried smoked chicken (both $9) arrives purposely stone cold on a sweet, fiery puddle of chef’s own banana hot sauce.
Follow the fowl with a simple dairy-free bowl of in-season strawberries, black cherries and raspberries over crushed house-baked biscotti in beet gastrique ($4.50) fermented in Bellwoods’ own beer vats for the perfect antidote to a steamy summer night. More beer?
stevend@nowtoronto.com
