Best Restaurants in Canada
L’Anse aux Meadows is a UNESCO World Heritage site where the Viking Norseman created the first European settlements in North America.
Best restaurants in Canada…
When I think about dining in Canada, I visualize cozy meals in country settings, beautiful fresh seafood, and lots of organic produce. I also remember the staff because they took time to answer our questions about their area and shared both local history and insider tips.
My first experience of this kind was at Sooke Harbour House on Vancouver Island, where Sinclair and Frederique Phillip introduced the concept of serving local, seasonal, wild, and organic food. Piles of seaweed enriched the veggie garden, and when a fisherman knocked on the kitchen door – suddenly the dinner menu had to be re-written. It’s no coincidence that Sooke Harbour House was the subject of an early article on this site.
More recently, my husband and I spend a wonderful few hours at The Norseman Restaurant at L’Anse aux Meadows on the northern tip of Newfoundland. Having just toured the wind-swept historic site once inhabited by Leif Ericson and other Vikings, we arrived a bit dazed and disoriented, but were warmly welcomed and seated at a table with a sea view.
I was captivated by the wild beauty of this area, but before long the flavors of Adrian Noordhof’s warm salad of seared scallops was successfully competing for my attention. My husband, ever the carnivore, enjoyed the caribou.
Best restaurants in Canada and a literary connection
When Gina Noordhof stopped by our table, we learned that Annie Proulx, author of The Shipping News, was from here, and I could see the remoteness she described in her books all around us.
L’Anse aux Meadows is dramatically beautiful and our meal at The Norseman – for sure one of the best restaurants in Canada - remains a favorite memory.
“Vikings” enhance the experience of visiting L’Anse aux Meadows.
So given that I have these great memories of dining in Canada, imagine how excited I was to see that Air Canada’s enRoute magazine had published a list of Canada’s Best New Restaurants. I quickly scanned the list, and then thinking I’d missed a page, scanned it again. Of the ten restaurants, six of “the best” are in Toronto; two are in Montreal; and two are in Calgary. No mention of British Columbia and no mention of the Maritime Provinces. Yikes!
“For the most part, the nation’s current restaurateurs are independent-minded, balancing high-quality food against low overhead. Locales tend to be smaller, often just 40 seats, including bar stools. With settings spare and industrial (although lampshades are back, covering that ubiquitous filament lighting), shouting is the new talking,” the writers summarized.
Really? The first reader comment at the end of the article began with “This list is just offensive” and others followed in the same (polite) vein – except that almost everyone agreed that the chosen eateries were, indeed, worthy – just that geographic distribution seemed a bit off.
Not the best restaurants in Canada
But enRoute’s stated goal was to “discover the latest trends in Canadian dining; to look for new restaurants that advance the Canadian culinary identity and find places where the overall dining experience will have a lasting and significant impact on our restaurant culture.”
And apparently in 2012, most of these places were in Toronto.
Best restaurants in Canada: Edulis, Toronto.
1. Edulis (Toronto). “…the make-it-look-easy restaurant of the year. Refreshingly more show than tell, it does barn to table without the fuss. …it’s above all not self-conscious…Nor should you be when you come back for more.”
2. Model Milk (Calgary). “Justin Leboe is taking his cooking down home without dumbing it down… perfectly tender southern-fried rabbit, the golden crust stung by hot pepper vinegar, sits on ethereally creamy grits.”
3. Ursa (Toronto). “…rootsy and possibly radical, but with more than a touch of glam… A cuisine that is health-oriented and highly original, but not preachy. We’ll drink to that.”
4. Acadia (Toronto). “Encompassing Lowcountry and Acadian cuisines… the menu reinterprets with technical aplomb the messy jumble of rustic French and southern coastal influences.”
5. Pastaga (Montreal). “Pastaga shows off chef Martin Juneau’s kooky but tightly controlled creativity… bison smoked meat sandwich with homemade rye, chopped liver ‘à la juive,’ marinated salmon and salmon jerky shavings…”
6. Hopgood’s Foodliner (Toronto). “…Geoff Hopgood presents East Coast comfort food with intimacy and intelligence. His nouveau Scotian cuisine is equal parts nostalgia and now.”
7. Grand Electric (Toronto). “…doing for Mexican what the isakaya scene did for Japanese. It’s exciting, fun, affordable, quality late-night food to get drunk by.”
8. Keriwa Cafe (Toronto). “Keriwa’s seasonal-minded menu draws First Nations techniques and unspoiled tastes of the Canadian landscape into an urban context…Canadian head-to-tail cooking with a history: a real dream catcher.”
Borgo, Calgary
9. Borgo (Calgary). “…a workhorse of a restaurant. It hustles from day to dark with the clatter of espresso cups and shared plates of the cuisine’s greatest hits – golden arancini, imported salumi, crudi and cicchetti….”
10. Nora Gray (Montreal). “Emma Cardarelli honed her command of red sauce at Liverpool House… the parade of direct, unfussy, seasonally motivated plates comes at you nonna style.”
I suggest that if you’re headed to Toronto, Montreal, or Calgary, you take this list with you. I also hope that you’ll explore the scenic beauty and flavors of the Canadian countryside in places like Vancouver Island and the Martitime provinces.
Cheers,
Category: British Columbia, Canada, Newfoundland
Subscribe
If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to receive more just like it.
Spending summers in the Maritimes i can say enRoute missed the
boat not including excellent restaurants using fresh local
ingredients. Two of our favorites are Fleur de Sel in Lunenburg and Magnolia’s. In Halifax i heartily recommend Jane’s on The Common. I could list many more where local chefs are offering outstanding food in the Canadian Maritimes.