REVIEW
Located in a historic building at Avenue Road and Prince Arthur, this restaurant is recognized for its fine Indian cuisine at affordable prices. Steps from the prestigious Park Hyatt and Four Seasons hotels, it is perfect for business lunches, intimate dinners and group dining. While the Kesri Tikka (a Tandoori chicken dish) and Haryali Champey (marinated lamb chops) are excellent, it is the vegetarian fare that makes this restaurant a treat. Dishes include the Malai Mater Paneer (green peas and cottage cheese cooked in tomato and cashew blend), and Saag (fresh spinach puree with potatoes).
Source: travel.yahoo.com
REVIEW
With its peach-coloured walls, candlelit dinner tables and a lounge, The Host fits its predominant business clientele. Relying on word of mouth advertising it has garnered a good reputation for cozy dining with spicy, exotic dishes and there's a lunch buffet available too.
Source: dine.to
REVIEW
While all around us, they’re clamouring for fast, faster and fastest food, Indian food remains classically slow and unabashedly complex and delicious. Even the most tender cut of lamb or beef cannot be marinated in minutes. Chicken cannot tenderize in a carefully prepared bath of yogurt and spices and cheerfully hop from pan to plate lickety split. Time and a canny hand with fenugreek, garam masala, turmeric and a host of other exotic seasonings are key. And owner-brothers Sanjeev and Jay Sethi have the mysteries of fine Indian cuisine and upscale service down pat.
“So,” I ask a group of acquaintances who’ve just come in for dinner, “are you here because this is the only place open on a holiday Monday or do you come here often?” They’re quick to defend the quality of the cuisine, citing location and reasonable prices. And this group of the cities well known legal eagles are not alone in their enjoyment of The Host. Here’s a well behaved new “boy band” happily digging in to a table full of vegetarian dishes. Here’s a group dressed in beautiful, traditional Indian garb heading for one of several private dining rooms. At tables for two adjoining ours, they seem to know what to order--and from them we take our cue.
Mulligatawny soup, a pretty, coral coloured puree of lentils plump with bits of chicken sets my taste buds tingling. A swirl of yogurt mellows the flavour, but even without the cooling element, it’s a good beginning. Folklore has it that this pureed soup was created for the British over a century ago, because they had bad teeth and could not chew their vegetables. Mixed vegetable soup is a splendid, complex broth as well, totally different in flavour.
There are memories of many dinners here in what was the French restaurant, The Rendezvous. The charming rooms and pleasing, sophisticated comfort remains.
A minor tragedy. All around us, waiters are carrying baskets of hot-from-the-oven Naan, the gorgeous puffy flatbread that’s baked by hanging rounds of dough on the hot walls of the tandoor oven, while our Aloo Parantha, a bread supposedly stuffed with spiced potatoes (we found one small piece of potato) is hard and unappealing. I’m reminded of the last time I reviewed The Host, when it first opened on Bay St. in the space vacated by La Scala and found the food wanting.
We have no complaints about Tandoori Machi, a whole fish marinated in the traditional style, baked in the tandoor oven and served on a sizzling hot plate. The dish gets admiring glances on the way to our table, red and fragrant from spicing, slightly blackened and crisped from the extreme heat of the oven, it sizzles on its bed of onion and coriander. Our server obliges and bones the white fleshed Pomfret fish for us. In fact, service throughout is quite professional.
A plate of Kesri Pillaw, saffron flavoured Basmati rice is quite wonderful. Whole bay leaves, streaks of gold saffroned rice mixed with long, slender grains of white Basmati, a few whole cloves add to the lovely simplicity of the dish. We must have a curry. Gosht Elaichi Pasanda, a picatta of lamb, that is, sliced tender lamb enfolded in a curry of cashew nuts and whole cardamoms is a luscious addition to our meal.
Though many Indian sweets are not to my taste, I sometimes think it’s the literal translation of the ingredients that turn me off. How does “fried milk and flour” sound to you? Still, we take a small risk and come out ahead. Our shared dessert is two golf-ball size deep fried rounds of dough, soaking in rose-water scented honey. The outside is crisp, the inside has turned custardy, and in fact, the flavour is unique and elegant. Just the right ending for an exotic culinary fling.
Source: dine.to
LOCATIONS
Toronto
14 Prince Arthur Avenue
Tel: (416)962-HOST (4678)
Richmond Hill
670 Highway 7 East
Tel: (905) 709-7070
Mississauga
33 City Centre Drive
Tel: (905) 566-HOST (4678)
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