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Canwest News Service
Rating 2½ Cinq 01, 501 College St.,416-964-1555
As the first decade of the 21st century ends, I celebrate by going to a restaurant that defines eating out in the noughties — the resto lounge. The anti-restaurant, it's a rejection of formal dining and intimate bistros, a space for the young and the restless who want to play as they eat. The style is metrosexual fashionista. Music must be loud, and cocktails custom-made. The food must be luxe and cosmopolitan; preferred delivery is the shared plate.
At first, resto lounges were not taken very seriously. But as the food got better, they couldn't be ignored. Roger Mooking at Nyood has a Mediterranean-inspired menu that is more alluring than many menus in more conventional dining spots. Now RL culture is creeping up the food chain. Shared plates are everywhere. One of the first major chefs to incorporate RL rhythms was Claudio Aprile at Colborne Lane: The room glitters with Morticia's menace, and his techno-emotional cooking later morphs smoothly into the bar scene. Recently, the Rubinos opened Ame in a Shogun's palace, replete with jujube cocktails.
As my emblematic RL, I pick the just-opened Cinq 01, on College Street, west of Bathurst. Owner Toufik Sarwa is one of Toronto's enduring players, with the perennially successful Amber on Yorkville, a white-on-white subbasement that blossoms with a patio in the summer.
Sarwa calls Cinq 01 a bistro, I call it second-gen RL: a refinement of the format. It looks like a luxury-dining railroad car, a long skinny space divided into bar and dining room. The lighting is so soft and glowing that it lures you in. A sexy joint. Just one or two quirky touches — some lights are encased in what looks like scarlet birdcages.
We arrive at seven, de rigueur if you wish to eat with pleasure at an RL (after 8:30 p.m., the noise rises sharply). The room is almost empty and we get interested service.
The split pea soup ($11) with ham, chestnuts, hazelnuts and seared sweetbreads is tempting, but we opt for a terrific pureed garlic soup ($11), made with chicken broth, cream and garnished with a seared scallop. Grilled octopus ($21) is a test. Octopus is so often tough, but here the tentacles are chopped into tender morsels spiked with sherry vinegar, lemon and olive oil, chopped spring onions and capers.
The moment I see there's a foie gras hot dog with onion confit and mango ketchup, I must have it. A good-sized sausage arrives and the first bite reveals the most unctuous mouthfeel, like 88% butterfat butter, but even richer. However, the aftertaste is a letdown– the sausage meat to foie gras ratio is out of whack. What I'm eating is a creamy bratwurst with only a fugitive flavour of foie gras. The bun is low-rent housing for such a luxury dog, and the French fries don't meet the McDonald's standard.
Then, the chef, Jo Castrinos (formerly of Splendido), comes through with a superb dish, little pink lamb rib chops with Moroccan spices with a Provencal vegetable gratin, glazed potatoes, a zap of mint coriander chutney and creamy Lebanese taratur sauce ($33). The fish of the day is black grouper ($39), a handsome hunk and perfectly seared. But the grouper's flavour is irresolute, perhaps because it's a transgendered fish. A bath is needed, in something like the accompaniment of delicious spiced lentils and olives.
We didn't plan on dessert, but then Toufik's trio of tarts arrived and we couldn't resist white chocolate banana cream. A feathery croustade of Armagnac-laced apples and prunes with vanilla-bean ice cream was even better.
-No wheelchair access. Dinner for two: food plus tax, $150.
