Restaurant Write-ups: Regal Heights Bistro in Toronto
The windshield wipers of our car are trying to slap away the pouring rain that’s turned this part of Corso Italia into a place full of gravel and dirt, as we make our way towards the Regal Heights Bistro on St. Clair, just east of Dufferin. The streetcar track/road improvement project on St. Clair Avenue West is still not finished, reducing the traffic to one lane. Fortunately it looks like everybody else stayed at home in this bad weather, so the traffic is light and we find a parking place just across the street from our bistro. First we have to walk across the no-man’s-land of cracked pavement and orange cones, and then I can finally squint at the building where I think the Regal Heights Bistro is housed. After a brief look, I have to observe: “There’s no sign, there used to be a big sign, and it looks like a pub inside. I hope this is still the right place.” “Yep – Regal Heights Bistro,” my partner confirms, pointing at a small hand-lettered sign inside the front window, and we notice the trademark Jazz Brunch sign as well.
Just after we cross the threshold, a hostess is already waiting to seat us, and we may pick a place according to our wishes. At eight fifteen, the restaurant is about a third full, with most patrons seated near the bar area. “Are you here for the fist time? The original sign blew down, and the new one we put out on a chalkboard was washed away by the rain.” “Tonight you are going to have lots of fun, there’s a birthday party and a jazz band is coming.” So now we are reassured we are indeed in the right place, though when I look around us, I can see more of a pub than an upscale bistro interior, with the smell of French fries in the air. We examine the menu and my partner is disappointed at the two-sided affair we’re presented with.
“They must’ve changed their menu,” he observes with a sad face. Maybe as an elitist jazz musician himself, he is just uncomfortable about the prospect of a live band. I re-read the restaurant name written at the top of the menu just to make a hundred percent sure we are in the correct place. The Bistro doesn’t have any internet pages (at least I couldn’t find any) and the only information available on the internet I found were some really positive reviews and a few posted menus including dishes such as caprese salad, provencale escargots, chicken liver pate, smoked salmon crepes and black squid ink linguine. I don’t need a menu to tell me that no homemade black squid ink linguine is coming out of this kitchen. When we look at the current offer, we can see it’s mostly typical pub food, if a bit gussied up by some special flavours and toppings.
Our hostess comes back to take our order and I observe that the menus are very different from what we found online – what happened? Different owner? “Oh no, it’s still the same ownership,” she replies reassuringly. “Well, we haven’t updated the website in a long time, our menu has stayed this way for the last few years. Just the chefs have been changing a lot here. Our focus is always on fresh food; we shop every day, we cut our own meat, we prepare our own burgers, there’s no microwaves…we just wish to have more of a free dining feel.” Although the whole pub is definitely casual, including the paper napkins, when I see the wall signage from around the world, I would still expect a bit more sophisticated gastronomy.
“We shrink from that term gastro-pub,” she laughs, putting us at her ease with a charming, nice manner.
Want to read the rest of the story? Here you can find the whole Regal Heights Bistro review.
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Restaurant Appraisals: Quince Restaurant in Toronto
Quince is one of the Toronto must-try venues - a Mediterranean-inspired bistro with reasonable prices and fresh, innovative flavours. It has been evaluated as exceptional by the Eye Magazine and after getting some mixed reviews from Toronto Life, also one of the Toronto’s Best New Restaurants of 2007. Formerly of the high-valued Stork on the Roof, the husband and wife team of Jennifer Gittins and Michael van den Winkel came back in fall of 2006 with this new midtown digs, just a couple blocks south of the busy intersection at Yonge and Eglinton.
Quince is surrounded by a nice patio decorated with teak furniture and a plenty of bright-coloured cushions, but still located straight across the street from the abandoned hulk where an infamous nudie bar named Cheaters was once placed. Only two doors down, we can find the famous restaurant Coquine and a neon sign saying “Adult Video & Novelties” - I bet you wouldn’t expect this in a neighbourhood famous for its prospering business district and parks popular for families. But this part of Yonge Street between Eglinton and Davisville has always had, at least for the latest twenty-five years, an interesting selection of shops. A quick survey of the neighbourhood shows everything from clothing boutiques to bead and paper stores, home d
Tags: Quince, restaurant review, Toronto