ORETTA
King West has Gusto, Buca and its sister Bar Buca, Ovest and Forno Cultura, so you might think the locals were about ready to say “basta” to modernized Italian food. But incoming arrival Oretta, set to open at 633 King West (at Bathurst) this spring, might just whet the neighbourhood’s appetite all over again.
A downtown sibling for midtown trattoria Capocaccia, the new spot will be a sprawling Italian food hall offering everything from morning espresso to quick between-meeting lunches and space for large parties.
“We have something, really, for everyone,” says Capocaccia’s PR manager, Vanessa Crapsi. “It’s going to be a multi-floor space with a lot of different areas. It caters to different kinds of clientele at every point of the day.”
The Oretta team – Salvatore Mele, David Rocco and chef Christian Fontolan – are still hashing out the menu, but Crapsi says to expect contemporary Italian, made with meats, cheeses and other ingredients imported directly from Italy and presented in a laid-back setting with speedy service.
“In Milano, the restaurants are very family-oriented. There’s food, there’s camaraderie, people go for a good time,” she says. “You don’t need to invest a lot of time to spend time with your friends.”
Michael Watier
Bar Isabel and Bar Raval’s Grant van Gameren is getting ready to unveil El Rey Mezcal Bar.
EL REY MEZCAL BAR
Most people would take a little downtime after opening one of Toronto’s hottest new restaurant. Grant van Gameren is not most people. A year and three months after opening Bar Raval, he’s closing in on yet another opening day.
The spot in question is El Rey Mezcal Bar, which is weeks away from opening in 2A Kensington, the space left vacant by Kensington Cornerstone (which went under last year, letting one of Kensington’s best patios lie idle for a season).
During a recent visit to Zane Caplansky’s Newstalk 1010 show, van Gameren told the deli-king-cum-radio-host the kitchen would be helmed by Montreal chefs Julio Guajardo and Kate Chomyshyn. The husband-and-wife duo are friends of van Gameren’s and previously ran Montreal paleta outfit La Catrina. In the new kitchen, they’ll be overseeing a small menu of Latin-inspired dishes.
As for drinks, the bulk of the bar menu will revolve around – you guessed it – mezcal, an agave-based liquor native to Mexico.
“The beautiful thing about mezcal is that, unlike tequila, you can buy the same tequila or whiskey five years from now and it will taste the same,” van Gameren says. “Mezcal is this kind of primitive way of making alcohol, out in the mountains, where they make small batches. And if you like it, you have to buy many bottles from that batch, because you’re never going to taste it again.”
Of course, van Gameren already knows what he’s doing after this one’s up and running: opening Prettyugly (all one word, van Gameren specifies), a drinks-oriented cocktail bar, in the former Salvador Darling space with Raval co-owners Robin Goodfellow and Mike Webster and Harbord Room’s Evelyn Chick.
Chef Anthony Rose
BIG CROW… BUT SMALLER
It looks like the last traces of the Swan have finally flown the coop at Rose & Sons on Queen West.
The venerable diner’s original sign and the California-fresh menu introduced by chef Anthony Rose when he bought the joint are both gone. For all intents and purposes, it’s now a second location of Rose’s Dupont diner, Rose & Sons.
So here’s an awkward question for Rose: did the changes have anything to do with Chris Nuttall-Smith’s recent tough-love review in the Globe and Mail?
“Oh, absolutely,” the chef says, between stickhandling Passover meals at his Middle Eastern spot, Fat Pasha. “That’s not an awkward question. I’ll tell anyone. You gotta take the good with the bad. I think at the beginning we were trying too hard to do something I wasn’t 100 per cent familiar with, and it was a little wishy-washy.”
Instead, he’s given Queen West a treatment he already knows works beautifully – right down, as it turns out, to a mini version of Big Crow, the much-lauded BBQ joint that occupies a covered deck behind Rose & Sons. Big Crow… But Smaller – “I came up with the name myself,” Rose says – is set to open in mid-May behind 892 Queen West.
Originally meant as a straight-up patio, the 15-seat space behind Swan conveniently overlooks Trinity Bellwoods Park, so Rose decided to have it double as a takeout counter for picnickers. “The idea is just to have two or three offerings, either as sandwiches or as plates, like a BBQ brisket or a chopped BBQ pork, with maybe one addition every day.”
In short, look for BBQ sammies to join Bang Bang ice cream sandwiches and paper-bag beers as a traditional Trinity Bellwoods libation. Cocktails also will be available on the licensed patio – if you’re the lucky owner of one of the butts in those 15 seats.
MACHO RADIO BAR
CityPlace residents, get ready to throw a fiesta. Starting this week, you won’t have to leave the neighbourhood for tacos and tequila.
After INK shuttered Citta last year, it handed the space over to up-and-comer Guillermo Herbertson, who was fresh off redeveloping the menu at Barsa Taberna. As he developed his initial concept for a Mexican snack bar, he began pulling in a mishmash of influences from above and below the southern U.S. border, and Macho Radio Bar (92 Fort York, 416-623-2323) was born.
So, is it a Tex-Mex spot? “It is, and it isn’t – I’m taking inspiration all the way from L.A., Arizona, a little bit of southern influence.”
That’s reflected in the name. A “radio bar,” Herbertson explains, is a party spot that pulls in all kinds of Latin-American influences. As for the “Macho” part, despite the obvious bro connotations, Herbertson says it was meant to evoke more a general swagger: “It’s a fun, catchy name.”
So what’s a Macho man (or human) eating? Expect reasonably-priced, shareable snacks: ceviche tostadas, corn empanadas, nachos and high-technique takes on usually-trashy Tex-Mex dishes. His fajita platters, for example, combine poblano peppers, smoked red peppers, pickled Spanish onions and a “Latin-Asian influenced” fajita sauce with soy, chili and citrus, plus hangar steak or piri piri chicken.
On top of that, there’s a cleverly-designed menu of tequila cocktails that can be tweaked to substitute any rail booze, plus Pac-Man, Galaga and Golden Tee arcade consoles.
“We want to be the bar where everyone wants to go party,” Herbertson says.
nataliam@nowtoronto.com | @nataliamanzocco
