It was a bitterly cold night and the movie turned out to be numbingly dull. We were in the back of Toronto’s beyond; the faceless, shapeless litter of strip malls along Lawrence Ave. in Scarborough. Not exactly the mean streets, more like a vacant smile. A place where the ambience is aimless, driftless, nothing-to- do. Trouble comes in pockets and the pockets boil up out of nowhere.
You want to get off the streets on a cold and soulless night like this, and you want to get the taste of the bad movie out of your mouth as quickly as possible. You want a Schwartz’s, a Ben’s, a Shopsy’s or a Yitz’s. A place with clatter and character, spice and gusto.
Tough. You’re in the middle of Scarborough, you get franchises. Burger and pizza, mufflers and pubs; they come in kits, and they come in clusters.
Barbara spotted the anomaly in the neonscape: Mandalay Fine Dining. Tucked away in the back of a mall built to funnel gale force winds past the storefronts, flanked by a car wash and an unlit parking lot, Mandalay Fine Dining was easy to overlook.
But if we’ve learned nothing about Toronto, we’ve learned to look in strange places for the things that make us feel good.
Like Van Horne Fish, a fresh fish store (rare in Toronto) with the range of Waldman’s and La Mer – shark, orange roughy, mahi-mahi, grouper, squid, monkfish, deep-sea scallops, Greek olives and take- out tzatziki – housed in someone’s concrete nightmare that’s supposed to look like a houseboat. On aesthetic principles alone you don’t want to go near the place; if you love fresh fish, you line up with everyone else and thank the deity of your choice for its existence.
So into Mandalay Fine Dining we went. Eclectic to say the least. Surf ‘n’ turf and Burmese chicken. Margaritas and Indian beer. The chicken satay in peanut sauce was sublime and the Brie fritters melted in your mouth. There was no crushed ice for the margaritas and the waitress was reluctant to disturb the other clients by applying a hammer to the ice cubes. But the warm glow of hot spices and tequila thawed the bones and softened nasty memories of Sean Connery’s ponytail and Lorraine Bracco’s whine.
You can eat remarkably well in Toronto, and from just about every corner of the world. Asian food here may be the best in North America. There are four Chinatowns to choose from with restaurants serving everything from Hong Kong street food to Imperial delicacies rarely seen outside state banquets. There are massive dim sum emporiums in Scarberian malls, gallerias of stall vendors just east of the Don Jail, and hot and sour soup at the Pearl Court that’s kept me cold-free for three winters.
Besides a staggering array of Japanese restaurants, you can eat Thai, Malay and Indonesian; Vietnamese, Burmese, Goan, Timorese and Singaporean. A mall in the farthest reaches of Scarborough is completely devoted to Asian dining: formal Japanese, Chinese hot- pot and Korean barbecue joints sit side-by-side and packed to the rafters seven nights a week. The gas grill is built right into your table at the Korean place, and you haven’t lived till you’ve seared your own squid, dressed it up with a little kim-chee pickle and washed it down with warm plum wine. And watched Asian yuppies on all sides nattering away on their cellular phones, stuffing the tenderest morsels into the baby’s mouth, and eyeing the only white face in the restaurant (mine) with idle curiosity.
The freshest, tastiest Indian food I’ve ever tasted we found high on Yonge St., north of the 401. There’s a down-east oyster bar with corn, clam and sea-food chowder straight from the shores of Nova Scotia’s St. Margaret’s Bay around the corner from RCMP headquarters.
Italy is represented by delicacies from every corner of the boot, not just the monotonous litany of Neapolitan and Sicilian cliches that passes for Italian food in Montreal. Real risotto, folks, including the Venetian one in squid ink; spit-roasted kid and polenta with a little gorgonzola melted over it at the last minute. At Grano they serve the very best of Italian wines by the glass, and you mix and match your own antipasto platter from a dazzling array in the showcase.
Best of all, the recession has scared the arrogance out of the people who run these places. Gone, or at least going fast, are the surly hostesses and the reservations honored late (“Just find some room in the bar and I’ll call you when your table’s ready.”) or never at all. Customers are a lot harder to come by; the welcome is warmer these days and more likely to be genuine. Heck, you can even walk into a restaurant without a reservation these days, and nobody will sneer.
