LOKA 620 Queen, at Bathurst, 416-995-9639, facebook.com/LokaSnacks
For a year, the adventurous cooking of chef Dave Mottershall was prepared on the humblest of appliances. At Loka Snacks, the pop-up he ran out of the back of Riverside rock ‘n’ roll bar Hi-Lo, the entire kitchen consisted of an electric flat-top grill and a home-kitchen-sized deep-fryer.
“All that equipment had to be set up every day, and it was torn down every night,” says Ayngelina Brogan, Mottershall’s partner and co-restaurateur.
But what came out of that plug-and-play kitchen, a constantly rotating lineup of farm-fresh, Canadian-focused bites, was enough to make Loka Snacks a cult hit. Despite arriving in Toronto after a seven-year stint in PEI with a very low local profile as a chef, Mottershall soon had a crew of devoted “locals,” a designation that’s more of a play on words than an actual geographic descriptor, since most of those fans were trekking in from the more culinarily happening west end.
So profound was that goodwill that Mottershall and Brogan managed to raise a cool $40,000 in a Kickstarter campaign earlier this year to turn Loka into a permanent restaurant.
“We were overwhelmed by how generous everyone was,” says Brogan, who pulls over mid-service to chat while Mottershall’s racing around in the kitchen.
“I’m starting to send out the T-shirts, and I realized someone paid $500 for just a T-shirt. We were like, ‘Hey, would you like something else?’ ‘No.’ They just gave us $500.”
Should you taste Mottershall’s work, or meet the immediately likeable, red-bearded chef himself, you can understand that tide of generosity. His cooking is marked by a painterly eye for presentation (which has also earned him 39,000-plus followers on his Instagram account, @chef_rouge) and a sense of balance that’s playful and acute, every dish peppered with handfuls of diverse textures and flavours.
Loka fries broccoli in very creative ways.
Mottershall now has a whole kitchen at his disposal in what was formerly Del Ray So-Cal Cantina on Queen West, the spot chosen partly because the only changes it required were cosmetic, and partly for its central location. A few east-enders were sore that they were leaving, but Mottershall and Brogan are adamant that they needed to go to where their customers were, feelings be damned.
I drop in on their second night of service and perch myself at the counter below the kitchen pass, a handsome, nicely ergonomic slab of weatherbeaten white oak they dragged in from the back alley. The two counter spots are reserved for those experiencing the $100 tasting menu, an opportunity I pounced on the second Loka made it available, since every other seat is walk-in only.
You can also go à la carte, with 10 or so savoury dishes and two desserts available nightly. If you’re dining with a group, you can order one of every dish for $100, a practice held over from the snack shop, where they sold the whole menu for $40.
How often will the menu change? “It’s already changed, like, four times,” Brogan replies. Their relationship with small suppliers, many of them located in Mottershall’s native Port Elgin, means they make what they can based on whatever’s available.
“Farmers say, ‘We’ve got a ton of pheasant hearts,'” Brogan says. “Perfect – we’ll put em on the menu.”
On my visit, that translates to a menu that kicks off with a paper-thin sheet of fatty lonza, a house-cured pork loin, on a plate swiped with spruce aioli and sweet hazelnut crumbles ($14 for a full-size portion). Next is a red-hot broth ($16) made from pickled cherry bomb peppers, packed with round dumplings made from leek ash, ribbons of smoked fennel, chunks of frico (a northern Italian wafer made of fried cheese), and a few sprigs of dill – ideal fall food.
A plate of duck prosciutto and delicate fried quail egg ($14), road-tested as a tasting menu bite the previous evening, now appears on the menu dusted with fried onion straws and potato crisps.
The smoked bone marrow ($15) is blended with mustard grains, parsley and garlic and topped with salty shavings of a cured egg yolk. It’s some of the best I’ve had in the city, rich and sweet without the usual marrow funk.
Chef Dave Mottershall makes Loka a hit.
Mottershall’s East Coast training pops up in the mussel-corn chowder ($14) topped with a salt biscuit crumble. “East Coast chowder, West Coast mussels,” he quips as he slides a taster-sized bowl over the pass. His background is also evident in the buttery grits/mashed potato blend that underpins a hearty, slow-simmered pheasant and pig ear ragout ($21) topped with fibrous lichens.
A few other tasting-menu-only treats come our way, including a plate of crumbly, oily seared n’duja with peppery arugula, chicharrón and a honey drizzle. And if you show up on the right night, you’ll still find an old Loka Snacks fave: chicken hearts doused in Buffalo-style hot sauce and topped with crushed peanuts. The secret: he soaks them in milk to take out their metallic taste.
There’s barely a misstep through the service – though the pan-seared trout ($19), with its rhubarb beurre blanc, might have leaned a little too heavily on the sweet side of the balance, and the chocolate-beet cake ($10) is more beet than chocolate. From the front-row seat, Mottershall and his crew are a joy to watch. They’re firing on all cylinders, remarkable for a place that opened only two nights before.
Maybe it’s because before throwing the doors open to the public they reserved a full five nights for hosting the folks who backed their Kickstarter campaign, all of whom are immortalized in a mural at the front of the restaurant. Clearly, the Loka crew aren’t about to forget where they came from.
food@nowtoronto.com | @nataliamanzocco
