HABITAT
Located in Toronto's Queen West Art and Design District, Habitat offers a contemporary dining experience that is as colourful as its art-enriched surroundings. A comfortable, Zen-inspired interior of natural stone and wood create an ideal canvas for the dining lounge's eclectic crowd. Habitat's spectacular palette of culinary offerings features World cuisine by Executive Chef Martin Warnick.
Seasonal flavours and finessed preparations mark Executive Chef Martin Warnick's new culinary compilation for the spring menu at Habitat, located in the Queen Street West Art and Design district. The new menu pays zealous attention to presentation, with harmonized ingredients to create a beautiful culinary sequence. Habitat's artfully designed wine list is the perfect complement to Chef Warnick's cuisine. Indulge in our newly created spring flavours - New Zealand Smoked Trout, Foie Gras "Petit Dejeuner", Gomasio Crusted Hokkaido Scallops and Hakka-Style Organic Berkshire Pork.
REVIEW
Dinner for two with wine, tax and tip, $150.
How often do I say to a waiter, "Ask the chef to feed us," and wave him away. There is no greater compliment that a diner can pay a chef than to put oneself 100 per cent in his or her hands and say: "Do it . . . have your way with me." To cede that much control, to choose to trust the chef that far with your taste buds, your money and your evening -- that hasn't happened to me in Toronto since Perigee (and that was two years ago).
But my dinner at Habitat the week before had been so delicate and clever and loaded with flavour that I had to take the leap. Especially when I was egged on by the menu's structure. They offer kaiseki-style (a.k.a. tapas) tiny plates to start, in great and varied numbers. Then conventional mains to fill the corners of the belly and reduce confusion.
We would never have gone back to Habitat after the spicemeister, Greg Couillard, left but for a très enticing press release -- the new chef's CV. Chef Scot Woods was a no-name to me, but quels credentials: After George Brown College (1988), Woods worked at Jov, stepped up to sous-chef at Sen5es and then cooked for Toronto greats Chris McDonald at Avalon and Albino Silvo at Chiado. Couillard's tenure at Habitat had been both brief and uninspiring. With him, it was not wonderful. Without him? A dark nondescript room on a funky stretch of Queen Street West. Why bother?
The answer is Woods. This guy can cook the pants off most Toronto chefs, except the very first string; and he has a service brigade to match. The room is still dark and dour, but the people part is 100 per cent in place.
Chef sends out amuses: A shot glass of creamy cauliflower soup topped with a dollop of horseradish cream supporting a salmon rillette and five or six salmon eggs. Kaiseki is a parade of small plates: Baby squid with house-made Korean kimchee pickle sauce is hot and complex. "Loaded" potato -- Japanese mountain potato stuffed with beef marrow and herbs, and cooked confit-style crisp! A scallop in intense carrot sauce. Small gossamer pork and shrimp dumplings. Posole -- Mexican stew of hominy corn and chilies with a rich undertone of coriander, and topped with coriander sprouts, lime-scented tortilla strips and fried pork belly for jazz. Ungreasy pork rillettes. And so it goes.
This chef loves pork. On the regular menu he offers 24-hour pork Okinawan. Which the waiter obligingly explains: "The chef cooks pork belly sous-vide for 24 hours, then he browns it, and uses some Chinese mustard." Sous-vide means cooking meat in a vacuum pack; the technique was in vogue with top-flight French chefs a decade ago. It works very well to keep in flavour and juice. Pork belly is the fatty cut that gives the world bacon. Need I say more? Chef also does ultramoist and tender slow roast of organic pork with tasty ricotta salata gnocchi, browned turnip and squash cubes, sautéed romaine and sweet olives. The pork is an evil pleasure, and great in both renditions (though I'd trim the fat before serving).
The waiter explains the pork, discusses the provenance of the aforementioned olives, answers all our questions about what he's serving (how unusual) and so we, astounded at his professionalism, ask him how come he knows so much. Says he, as if it weren't painfully obvious: "We're briefed. And also we work in the kitchen." Which doesn't sound like rocket science to me, but then I also fail to comprehend (or tolerate) why more Toronto restaurants can't live up to that standard of knowledge and service.
Chef's Tuscan white-bean soup blows the cover off the ball: robust chicken stock with beans, tomato, kale (so Italian!), sharp pecorino, and grilled Italian bread slices catching all the flavours. Osso buco features deep-fried sage leaves (uber yummy) from maître d's garden, browned baby onions and juicy veal shank with wild mushrooms. Chef is geographically multi-extrous. He does Mexican: black grouper Veracruzana in intense tomato salsa with coriander and crispy tortillas (Fritos for epicures). He poaches beef tenderloin in wasabi-spiked Asian stock à la ramen. Only halibut and chicken disappoint -- both overcooked, with ho-hum sauces. But chef's moist and tender chorizo garnish (as opposed to the usual industrial chorizo -- dry and hard) almost makes up for the overcooked halibut.
For dessert, chefs swings again from Mexico to Italy: Churros are deep-fried long doughnuts served with dark Mexican-style hot chocolate to dip them in, and fab fresh kumquat marmalade. A marriage made in heaven if you like deep-fried dessert. I prefer panna cotta, a sweet cloud inflected with the happy harmony of lemon and a hint of sweet corn (not enough corn to be unsubtle and do damage).
Skip the cheese plate, for the cheeses are unexciting and not quite warm enough. But do not under any circumstances skip this restaurant, for Scot Woods is the best thing to hit the scene since the McEwan/Kennedy/Lee/Stadtlander generation took flight.
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