I stumbled onto this restaurant as I was looking for a special Montreal restaurant for my partner’s birthday. This came up as I was looking into gastronomy. The ingredients and menu looked interesting in that it had some whimsical tones to it, but also being a restaurant that had stood the test of time for at least a decade. In 2018 right before the pandemic, it was voted as the best Canadian restaurant. In 2016, it was voted 50 on Canada’s 100 Best. Reviews of the chef and restaurant have gone all the way back to late 2000s.

My partner has lusted for Portuguese chicken for some time for some reason. Essentially, it’s just wood fire-cooked chicken. You can expect lots of woodsy flavors, and supposedly a lot of juicy flavors as well since you’re sweating the chicken. We saw Phil Rosenthal from “Somebody Feed Phil” on Netflix come here and have a fantastic time. The real big question though for me is his palette similar to mine (or ours). When we arrived here around 2:30 PM in the afternoon, and there was a line already.

This was the primary reason for us to come to Toronto. My partner saw this restaurant somewhere, and has been yearning for this for a few years. Don Alfonso 1890 is located near the top of the Westin hotel that lies next to the water. We have not been to a Michelin Star Italian based restaurant, so this was something for us to be excited about. In addition, Canada has a “100 best” restaurant list, and in 2023, they rated this restaurant 35 out of 100.

We planned to stay in Toronto for only 3 nights. On night 2, we decided to try this restaurant since it also had baked alaskas which are my favorite dessert. As mentioned previously, Toronto was a fairly dead city on December 25 and 26. We wanted to make reservations at Michelin Star restaurants, but they either were unavailable or they canceled my reservation because they wanted to give staff a break for the holidays. I made a reservation about a month in advance, and fortunately, they were open.

For this 2023 Christmas to New Years holiday week, we spent time in downtown Toronto for the very first time. The unfortunate reality that we faced was that Toronto did not have a lot of restaurants opened on Christmas that weren’t original Chinese. So we were stuck with 3 options, and we chose this because of the dessert option. This was a special Christmas dinner at $175 CAD ($132 USD today) per guest.

As a Christmas celebration before we embark on a trip, I wanted to knock this final yakitori tasting off the list. We’ve been to a slew of yakitori tasting places, and this is the last one that is on the higher end. Torien still has 1 Michelin Star in 2023, and it also has a sister 1 Michelin Star restaurant, Torishiki, in Tokyo Japan. We were able to make a reservation for this for a Saturday a few weeks back without issues. Let’s see how this compares to the other yakitori tastings, considering they use a special oak for the taste.

If you visit sample sales frequently, there are 2 nearby the Nomad and Koreatown area. Because the sample sales close at 7 PM sharp, it compels you to look for food during core dinner hours. Fortunately if you go shop right after work and finish around 6 PM on weekdays, foot traffic to restaurants won’t be too bad. Olle is a Korean restaurant about a block away from the sample sale store on 5th Ave. We were able to walk in with no reservations at around 5:30 PM, which the restaurant started coincidentally getting busy around 6 PM.

My partner had won some tickets to watch Appropriate on Broadway starring Sarah Paulson. The show starts at 8, but we had to pick up the will-call tickets by 7:30. I saw this Japanese small eatery was nearby the theater on 46th St, and I thought this would be a decent restaurant to try out since there’s a lot of little things we can order. We were able to walk in on a Saturday evening at around 5:30 PM before it got busy.

It was raining on this gloomy Friday, and we wanted to eat somewhere close to Rockafeller. I recalled we had tried to walk into this restaurant on prior days with no success. I looked them up on OpenTable and saw that they had openings throughout the night. We figured it was worth a shot to try to walk in, and we found success. We were seated next to the door inside a glass section of the restaurant towards the front at around 6:30 PM. There was a live trio band playing Cuban style music, and some people dancing near the entrance.

This restaurant is from a renowned Korean chef (Ok Dongsik) and is a 6 time Michelin Seoul Bib Gourmand restaurant. We were nearby at a popular sample sale, and this was on my list for a while to checkout. The menu is very small and is straight forward. We were able to walk in at around 6:30 PM on a Wednesday evening without reservation. They turn over seats fairly quickly even though there can easily be a line of people waiting.