Toronto best Italian restaurants

Buca

604 King St. W., 416 865 1600
Few places where executive chef Rob Gentile prepares several of the city’s encapsulate Toronto’s dining culture better than Buca most original and intricate plates in a barebones industrial room. Smoked burrata tops hot pig’s blood spaghetti with sausage and rapini. Truffle shavings adorn ricotta-filled fried zucchini blooms—a dish that’s described (correctly) by a nearby diner as “better than sex.”

Aria Ristorante

25 York St., 416-363-2742
The room is a showstopper, with enormous starburst light fixtures and floor-to-ceiling windows. Translucent pink sheets of tender veal dressed with anchovy tuna and caper sauce make for the city’s best vitello tonnato. Desserts are lusciously traditional (a pistachio tart with macerated strawberries) or brilliantly unusual (a creamy popcorn, pine nut and sweet corn ice cream bar). Closed Sundays unless there’s an occasion in the ACC.

Bricco Kitchen and Wine Bar

3047 Dundas St. W., 647 464 9100
Using its midcentury Scandinavian furniture, intricately patterned ceramic plates and whitewashed brick, this wonderful 45- in the Junction is easily among the prettiest places in the city. The polished-but- unfussy aesthetic applies to the cooking at the same time, with nuovo rustico dishes from your Piedmont region emphasizing flavours that are substantial and both fashionable presentation. The antipasto board departs from the normal meat-and-cheese spread to incorporate chickpea fritters, blue cheese–filled superb lonza dates and prosciutto-wrapped bread sticks. Lemon rind balances creamy uncooked Arctic char, and starchy support is lent by large, fluffy gnocchi to your rich braised rabbit. Wine rotates every fourteen days, along with the trios of two-ounce pours are an effective strategy to sample the many all-natural, small-company alternatives being offered.

Mistura

265 Davenport Rd., 416-515-0009
The fine, grey-on-gray room is best scanned in the comfort of a plush booth. Chef Klaus Rourich sends out sophisticated interpretations of classic northern Italian dishes. A vibrant salad of orange slices, shaved fennel and celery uses ricotta and niçoise olives for seasoning, and almonds for texture. Earthy puttanesca, without a trace of mush, offsets octopus. Textbook bolognese, hardly bound with milk, is strong with flavour.

F’Amelia

12 Amelia St., 416 323 0666
The kitchen of the Cabaggetown favourite continues to wow with its originality, while preserving the Italian spirit of simplicity. Appetizers are terrific: lightly battered and grilled calamari comes brushed with garlicky pesto, and an yummy fig salad is livened up by smoky grilled radicchio. Chef Riley Skelton offers an original take on carbonara—possibly the most sacred dish in the Italian canon— adding sautéed red onion, crisped prosciutto and spinach, and using handcrafted tagliatelle in place of spaghetti. Creamy eggplant is the star of a spicy lamb sausage pizza. In warmer weather, the patio is the perfect area to drink a glass of wine and take in the neighbourhood sights and doubles the size of the restaurant.

Buca Yorkville

53 Scollard St., 416 962 2822
At Rob Gentile’s new Yorkville restaurant, the focus is on top-notch seafood and fish. The “ salami,” made with octopus, scallop, swordfish or tuna blood combined with pork fat, are like headcheese that is wonderful, though nowhere near as popular as deep-fried exotica like Atlantic cod tongue or puffed dumplings dyed a deep black with squid ink. The day’s catch, cooked in a carapace of salt, is cracked tableside and presented like a devotional offering. Everything is ideal, including the zeppola—an Italian doughnut— dusted with confectioner’s sugar and stuffed with a rich pistachio -mascarpone cream.

Tutti Matti

364 Adelaide St. W., 416-597-8839
Don’t let dinner jazz playlist and the dated decor only at that Amusement District trattoria dissuade you— long as you’re starving, there’s no better place to be. Servers are concurrently efficient and laid-back, a mix that implies an all-too-uncommon sense of authentic hospitality. The menu features humble Tuscan basics—tons of beans— of boar and a lot but the dishes arrive to the table conceived and expertly cooked. A well-timed glug of amber vin santo catapults sage butter and chicken livers, tossed with gold house-made tagliatelle and briny capers, into a heavenly plane. While the short ribs are popular, the bunny entrée is superlative, its meat gently cooked sous vide before being dusted with flour, deep fried and plated with fingerlings that are lemony and grilled greens. It’s a sly showstopper, memorable precisely because of its brazen simplicity executed. Which, come to consider it, additionally describes Tutti Matti to a T.


Amalficoastrestaurant.ca

Ardo

243 King St. E., 647-347-8930
Chef Roberto Marotta’s Sicilian-inspired dishes offer a level of sophistication that sets this new St. Lawrence spot above many of the city’s trattorias. Acciughe—punchy white anchovies and roasted red peppers on crunchy herb butter–soaked crostini—are an ideal two-bite snack (or spuntini, as the Sicilians would have it), and sourdough starter makes an exceedingly puffy pizza crust. It’s a welcome change from the Neapolitan tyranny.