The anonymous MICHELIN Guide inspectors today announced 12 additions to the MICHELIN Guide Toronto.
These establishments are highlighted as “New” on guide.michelin.com to help food lovers enjoy new discoveries before the full selection is revealed Sept. 27 at HISTORY in Toronto.
During the MICHELIN Guide Ceremony, chefs and restaurant teams will learn in real time whether their establishments have received culinary distinctions such as MICHELIN Stars, Bib Gourmands or other professional award distinctions. The event is by invitation only.
“By revealing some of the new additions made by our inspectors throughout the year, we enhance our digital tools to further strengthen the ties that bind us to food lovers,” said Gwendal Poullennec, the International Director of the MICHELIN Guides. “We hope that these regular revelations and updates to the selection throughout the year will provide opportunities to highlight the profession and invite everyone to discover and support the restaurants around them.”
Here’s the list of additions with previews of the inspector notes for each restaurant:
Alder
There’s a lot to like on this Mediterranean menu. Beef carpaccio is a crowd-pleaser, while the cucumber salad is a sleeper hit festooned with shaved fennel, dukkah and hazelnuts. Stacks of firewood in the dining room is a clue to hone-in on proteins like roast chicken, Australian lamb and a bone-in strip loin. Dessert is a must, especially if the astoundingly light coconut cream pie is still around.
BB’s
Brunch is a treat, featuring puffy-fried Adobo-fried chicken paired with pineapple habanero hot sauce. Dinner is a different speed. The cocktail bar comes alive, and the kitchen trades in Japanese milkbread French Toast for classic pancit with chili oil, chicken liver mousse and calamansi pie with orange blossom meringue.
FK
Colorful, market-driven cooking starts with excellent, crusty house bread made with garlic scapes, sundried tomatoes, olives or whatever else the chef has in mind. Are soft shell crabs in season? Is it time for morels? Such questions are front of mind for this honest kitchen, which doesn’t get too fussy with the cooking. Familiar flavors ring true in hearty entrees like the meltingly tender Cornish hen brushed in a smoky-sweet barbecue sauce.
Kappo Sato
The room is a constant blur of motion thanks to a young team that hurries about preparing multiple courses at once. Chef Takeshi Sato is their seasoned guide, as he moves with intention, ever masterful with a knife, and works with an impressive bounty of ingredients, most of which are flown in from Japan. Soulful dashi broths weave in and out of view alongside clever courses like tempura fried mackerel with shiso or seared toro nigiri with Japanese green onions.
Kiin
Chef Nuit Regular returns with her elaborate, one-of-a-kind vision of royal Thai cuisine. The elegant space is a prime setting for equally elegant dishes, which are presented with flair. Colorful mounds of rice, pineapple and dumplings shaped like flowers, and so much more arrive in petite forms in small bowls and on large platters. The dishes themselves will ring familiar, from Isan-style sausage and larb to hot and sour beef soup and the famed khao soi, all of it seasoned and spiced in a measured manner.
Mimi Chinese
The kitchen takes regional classics and spins them with just enough style. The shrimp toast, brilliantly made with fried bread and a hot mustard mayo, is worth a visit alone, but don't miss out on the scallop crudo with fried donut and that soulful soy broth. Spice-hounds will be all over the Hunan chili sea bass, and someone should probably order the picturesque “4-foot belt noodle.”
Parquet
The cooking hits all the right marks and feels unquestionably French in its richness and satisfaction. Who knew that mushroom beignets could be so light and pair so well with lime and pepper sauce? One could make a meal out of the roasted cauliflower with cumin vinaigrette and puffed chickpeas. Cassoulet with duck confit and steak frites with béarnaise are proper classics.
Sunnys Chinese
Spicy, fiery, crispy, smoky – the high-wattage cooking is a total delight, as the kitchen pulls no punches at every possible junction. Tripe and beef shank coated in chili oil is a good start before launching into the charred silver needle noodles. Best of all might be the grilled chicken thigh coated in cumin, chili and pepper. To finish, the crispy Hong Kong French Toast with black sesame jam and oolong condensed milk short-circuits all manner of restraint.
Tiflisi
The Pkhakadze family delivers some of the city’s best and brightest Georgian cooking. The cold leek pkhali salad bound in a light walnut sauce is a vibrantly green beginning and especially essential before the Acharuli khachapuri arrives. A celebration of carbs and dairy, this stretch of fluffy bread cradles a pool of melted cheese topped with butter and an egg yolk. There’s more on the way: large lamb khinkali with warm broth and long skewers of juicy kebabs topped with fried potatoes.
Vela
By design, the menu has faint Asian touches but is otherwise broad in its selection of seafood, pastas, steaks and vegetables. The results? Surprisingly dialed-in, largely thanks to a kitchen that makes as much as it can in-house. Highlights include cod with beurre blanc and chili crisp and, for dessert, a sugar-crusted profiterole filled with miso dulce de leche mousse and mascarpone cremeaux.
White Lily Diner
Old school diners are rare creatures these days, but ones that smoke their own bacon, make their own biscuits and donuts, bottle their own hot sauce and grow their own vegetables? Even rarer. A culinary unicorn, this bright yellow nook sets the standard not just for diners but for any restaurant that aspires to serve both people and planet.
The Wood Owl
The menu is small, nothing extravagant or overly complicated, and offers far more vegetables than one might expect from a wine bar (adobo roasted carrots with green goddess, anyone?). Beef, though, is still very much welcome at the table, highlighted as a weekly special, usually paired with a superb tangle of shoestring French fries.
The MICHELIN Guide in North America
In May 2022, Toronto became the first MICHELIN Guide destination in Canada and sixth in North America, and its first selection of restaurants was revealed in September.
Michelin published its first North American Guide in 2005 for New York. Guides have also been added in Washington, D.C.; Chicago; California; Miami/Orlando/Tampa, Florida; Vancouver; Colorado; and Atlanta.
Recognized globally for excellence and quality, the MICHELIN Guide offers a selection of world-class restaurants.
- The famous one, two and three MICHELIN Stars identify establishments serving exceptional cuisine rich in flavor and infused with the personality of a talented chef.
- The Bib Gourmand is a designation given to select restaurants that offer good quality food for good value – often known as personal favorites among the inspectors when dining on their own time.
- The MICHELIN Green Star honors restaurants that are the world’s leaders in sustainable gastronomy.
- Recommended restaurants and special professional awards are also highlighted by MICHELIN Guide inspectors.
The MICHELIN Guide remains a reliable companion for any traveler seeking a great meal. The guides were first published in France at the turn of the 20th century to encourage tire sales by giving practical advice to French motorists. Michelin’s inspectors still use the same criteria and manner of selection that were used by inspectors in the very beginning, now applied in more than 40 destinations around the world.
The restaurant selections join the MICHELIN Guide selection of hotels, which features the most unique and exciting places to stay in Toronto and around the world. Visit the MICHELIN Guide website, or download the free app for iOS and Android, to discover every restaurant in the selection and book an unforgettable hotel.
About the MICHELIN Guide
Thanks to the rigorous MICHELIN Guide selection process that is applied independently and consistently in more than 40 destinations (60+ Guides), the MICHELIN Guide has become an international benchmark in fine dining.
The selections of all restaurants in the guide are made by Michelin’s anonymous inspectors, who are trained to apply the same time-tested methods used by Michelin inspectors for many decades throughout the world. This ensures a uniform, international standard of excellence. As a further guarantee of complete objectivity, Michelin inspectors pay all their bills in full, and only the quality of the cuisine is evaluated.
To fully assess the quality of a restaurant, the inspectors apply five criteria defined by Michelin: product quality; mastery of cooking techniques; harmony of flavors; the voice and personality of the chef as reflected in the cuisine; and consistency over time and across the entire menu. These criteria guarantee a consistent selection so that a star restaurant has the same value regardless of whether it is in Paris, Toronto or anywhere else in the world.