The 38 Essential Toronto Restaurants

"Many successful restaurants that populate the city today are helmed by chefs who got their start at this one. Since 1995, Canoe has showcased the provenance of Canadian ingredients from coast to coast. The fancy enterprise calls the 54th floor of the Toronto-Dominion Centre home, offering views of the skyline and demanding high prices to go with it. Executive chef Ron McKinlay (who worked alongside Tom Kitchin and Gordon Ramsay) leads the elaborate tasting and hyperseasonal menus. A portrait of Canada is framed in hedonistic creations like his intricate Pig’s Trotter: a compact porky cylinder stuffed with sweetbreads, lap cheong sausage, and wild shrimp from the North Atlantic, counterbalanced by a relief system of tangy pickled pears, salty spot prawn bisque, and grassy tarragon emulsion. It’s worth saving room for dessert; chef patissier Raffaele Stea offers a tipsy tarte au sucre, a textural love child between a lustrous creme brulee and quivering flan, spiked with a hiccup-inducing slug of Screech rum and served with a heady brown-butter milk sauce." - Tiffany Leigh