HONEST FARE
There are restaurants in the trendy districts of Toronto whose bright lights and multi-million-dollar design inspire hope for our culinary future. You enter excitedly, order extravagantly—but when your meal arrives you find the rice crunchy, your grilled whitefish so dry that the pricey imported olive oil cannot provide salvation. You begin to wonder if there is any hope of finding somewhere to have an inspiring meal and killer cocktail, thinking, “Enough with flashy decor! What about the food?” For those willing to venture away from the usual haunts there is The Harbord Room, a restaurant in its fifth year of operation that offers patrons good food, well prepared, in uncomplicated surroundings. Walking into the little red house on Harbord Street, hip-hop is playing, although not as loudly as is nowadays the norm. Staff greet you with a casual, cool air. You begin to worry. However, once you are lead to a table by an accommodating server, sit down and take a look at the menu, you relax: Chefs Cory Vitiello and Curt Martin are in control of everything. The menu is unpretentious and substantial. It features grilled flank steak with hush puppies, a 60-minute egg, and foie gras sauce; a naturally raised beef burger with sharp cheddar, and caramelized onions on an egg bun with fries. There is no strained thematic vein. If anything, the theme is good food. As Chef Martin puts it, “we have created a menu based on food that we believe is good from our professional standpoint, and that we believe our customers will like simply because of the pleasure they may experience while eating it.” The Harbord Room is not about creating an atmosphere of imposed value; rather it is about allowing the quality of the food and the efforts of its makers to speak for themselves.
AT THE HARBORD ROOM THE PROOF OF THE PUDDING IS IN THE EATING Words / CAMILLE MOORE, Images / BRIAN HAMILTON
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