QUEEN & BEAVER PUBLIC HOUSE (35 Elm, at Yonge, 647-347-2712) Complete dinners for $55 per person (lunches/brunches $35), including all taxes, tip and a pint. Average main $24/$18. Open for lunch Monday to Friday 11:30 am to 3 pm, dinner Sunday to Wednesday 5 to 11 pm, Thursday to Saturday 5 pm to 1 am brunch Saturday, Sunday and holiday Mondays 11 am to 3 pm. Closed some holidays. Licensed. Access: five steps at door, washrooms on second floor. Rating: NNN Rating: NNN
Opening a restaurant is a risky business at the best of times, pure folly during the worst recession since the Peloponnesian War.
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But that hasn’t stopped Crush Wine Bar supremo Jamieson Kerr from launching a gastro pub smack in the middle of one of downtown’s most touristy resto strips. Named the Queen & Beaver in honour of the Canadian nickel (Queen heads, beaver tails), the rambling two-storey Victorian was most recently home to an Il Fornello. Before that, you old-timers might remember it as the Lamplighter steak house.
Kerr’s kept much of the rooms’ period charm – vaulted ceilings, working fireplaces – but added a veneer of Brit eccentricity. Think Coronation Street’s Rover’s Return with a soupçon of soccer-fanatic chic. Why, even the Queen’s upscale pub grub comes on mismatched floral china.
Michael Watier
Accordingly, ex-Le Paradis chef Andrew Carter’s UK-centric card fits the retro space like a hand-knitted cardigan. From the all-day snack lineup, exceptionally tasty tempura-battered baby trout come complete with guts and sided with sorrel crème fraîche.
Meaty cod cheeks and velvety tongues arrive encased in cornflake crumbs, a chutney-like tomato-and-pepper gastrique for contrast (both $9), while delish beignets filled with blood pudding and chorizo ($8) show up with saffron aioli.
Michael Watier
Carter’s fish and chips ($17) is a dish of unsurpassed beauty, the ale-battered haddock correctly crisp in a pool of lemony thyme tartar sauce, the chunky skin-on chips hand-cut from russets and twice-fried to perfection in trans-fat-free canola oil.
Shame they’re served with a bottle of Heinz instead of the kitchen’s Indo-inspired ketchup that accompanies the Queen’s magnificent marrow-laced burger ($16 with chips) dressed with house-smoked bacon and divinely stinky Stilton.
Duck legs crop up slow-braised in sweet apple cider ($17) alongside garlicky mashed potato ‘n’ cabbage colcannon croquettes and a splattering of curry emulsion. Don’t forget to pair just about everything with Carter’s old-school pickled beets and cauliflower mustard piccalilli (both $3).
Michael Watier
Considering the size of the menu, it’s bound to include a couple of duds. Rustic steak pies and mild-mannered beef curries (both $18) could use an injection of veggies, and the latter are particularly let down by plain basmati rice and vanilla rather than vindaloo spicing. Listed as a main, poached Atlantic salmon with frisée ($16) is a salad in disguise, and a not very good one despite its roasted fenugreek, basil and Meyer lemon vinaigrette.
But all is forgiven after the first lovin’ spoonful of sticky toffee pudding in butterscotch sauce ($7), a positively Dickensian dessert that would do Messrs Crosse and Blackwell proud. Throw in servers as polished as spittoons, cask beer, two patios and an upstairs lounge with a large plasma TV permanently tuned to the match and the Q&B could be your reason never to go home again.
stevend@nowtoronto.com
