Thursday, February 17, 2011

Torito Restaurant, Toronto

A small informal fun boutique to have a good time with friends, while enjoying good food in small portions, tasting, while imbibing a good mojito or a lovely malbec wine. That is Torito.


In fact, that is just what we did. We began with melt in your mouth perfectly tender grilled Gallician styled octopus, spiked with a touch of fresh pepper and lemon with chopped parsley and small chunks of potato. That disappeared quickly!





Head cheese more like a dense pate rather than what I was familiar with and a pleasant but unexceptional chicken liver puree followed and was accompanied by very good grilled toasts.





Next, excellent tortilla with good flavours of onion and potato and a very good texture reminiscent of my recent trip to Spain.



Properly cooked but somewhat flat tasting shrimp with a very good slightly spicy garlic sauce was accompanied by grilled toast which had been soaked in that very good sauce.



Pan fried sardines arrived on a very spicy bed of romano beans, treviso and fennel. We ordered well done french fries and mayo to go with this dish.

Tongue and very tender slow braised cheek arrived with a delectable very rich sauce and was accompanied with potato, and braised chopped celery and carrot.



Boneless rich meltingly tender oxtail "logs", resting in a sherry beef stock reduction, were seasoned with fresh pepper and accompanied by chopped sauteed apple and cabbage and topped with baby mustard Greens.



Next we had grilled chorizo and chick peas.



We then enjoyed lobster with pork belly in a citrus tomato salsa and lobster sauce made with clarified butter. This was a very rich dish and the sweet lobster complemented the flavours and texture of the pork belly.


Then a plate of  excellent thinly sliced Ontario ham reminiscent of Jamon Serrano.



Dessert followed, first raw chocolate filled with fruits was just bitter enough to complete my palate.



The second dessert was a wonderful flan, thicker in texture and with a better mouth feel than the typical North American version of this custard. This was plated with a creme brule.



Torito 

276 Augusta
Toronto, ON
416-961-7373




No comments:

Post a Comment