The Toronto List
Ten editorial picks, ranked by the only filter that matters: why you are dining.
Sushi Masaki Saito
Canada's only two-Michelin-star restaurant. Masaki Saito left a New York three-star to build a 10-seat omakase counter in a Yorkville Victorian — the most disciplined sushi room in the country.
Alo
Patrick Kriss's third-floor blind tasting room above Queen West. The most disciplined modern fine-dining kitchen in Canada and Toronto's most reliable splurge.
Aburi Hana
Modern kaiseki on Yorkville's quietest stretch — 18-course tasting, hinoki-and-stone room, and a chef's counter that runs the most architecturally precise Japanese kitchen in Canada outside the two-star.
Don Alfonso 1890
The Iaccarino family of Sant'Agata sui Due Golfi opened their Toronto outpost at the Westin Harbour Castle and won a Michelin star within two years. By their own claim, the best Italian restaurant outside Italy — and they may be right.
Edulis
The husband-wife project that operates with no signage on the door, a chalkboard menu, and the most disciplined natural-wine programme in Canada — truffle dinners in fall, summer crawfish boils, and a fan base that has booked the room for 14 years.
Quetzal
Open-fire Mexican cooking from the chef who put Mexico's contemporary kitchens on the international map. Bathurst Avenue's most ambitious dining room since Buca closed, with a pulque programme to match.
Canoe
TD Bank Tower's top-floor view dining room since 1995 — a relentlessly Canadian menu (Pacific salmon, Quebec foie gras, prairie bison) and a view that does the room's work for it.
Cafe Boulud Toronto
Daniel Boulud's Four Seasons Toronto brasserie since 2012 — the corporate-core French address and the most reliable Yorkville-fringe deal dinner.
Buca Yorkville
The 90-seat downstairs Italian cellar — cured-fish programme, brick-fired pizza, and the most disciplined seasonal pasta menu in Yorkville since the original King West Buca.
The Chase
King Street's rooftop seafood room — raw bar, plateaux de fruits de mer, and the most theatrical view dining in the financial-district fringe since Canoe.
The Top Ten in Toronto
Ranked against a single question: if you had one night in Toronto, where would you go?
Sushi Masaki Saito
Canada's only two-Michelin-star restaurant. Masaki Saito left a New York three-star to build a 10-seat omakase counter in a Yorkville Victorian — the most disciplined sushi room in the country.
Alo
Patrick Kriss's third-floor blind tasting room above Queen West. The most disciplined modern fine-dining kitchen in Canada and Toronto's most reliable splurge.
Aburi Hana
Modern kaiseki on Yorkville's quietest stretch — 18-course tasting, hinoki-and-stone room, and a chef's counter that runs the most architecturally precise Japanese kitchen in Canada outside the two-star.
Don Alfonso 1890
The Iaccarino family of Sant'Agata sui Due Golfi opened their Toronto outpost at the Westin Harbour Castle and won a Michelin star within two years. By their own claim, the best Italian restaurant outside Italy — and they may be right.
Edulis
The husband-wife project that operates with no signage on the door, a chalkboard menu, and the most disciplined natural-wine programme in Canada — truffle dinners in fall, summer crawfish boils, and a fan base that has booked the room for 14 years.
Quetzal
Open-fire Mexican cooking from the chef who put Mexico's contemporary kitchens on the international map. Bathurst Avenue's most ambitious dining room since Buca closed, with a pulque programme to match.
Canoe
TD Bank Tower's top-floor view dining room since 1995 — a relentlessly Canadian menu (Pacific salmon, Quebec foie gras, prairie bison) and a view that does the room's work for it.
Cafe Boulud Toronto
Daniel Boulud's Four Seasons Toronto brasserie since 2012 — the corporate-core French address and the most reliable Yorkville-fringe deal dinner.
Buca Yorkville
The 90-seat downstairs Italian cellar — cured-fish programme, brick-fired pizza, and the most disciplined seasonal pasta menu in Yorkville since the original King West Buca.
The Chase
King Street's rooftop seafood room — raw bar, plateaux de fruits de mer, and the most theatrical view dining in the financial-district fringe since Canoe.
The Toronto Dining Guide
Toronto runs the most architecturally diverse fine-dining scene in Canada. The Michelin Guide arrived in 2022, the city's first restaurant earned two stars in 2023 (Sushi Masaki Saito), and the editorial map has stretched accordingly — from the long-established Yorkville hotel rooms to the chef-driven cellar projects of King West, Ossington and Little Portugal. The pantry is genuinely global, the wine programmes are deeper than the city's reputation suggests, and the booking windows for the rooms that matter run two to six weeks ahead even on a Tuesday.
The pantry leans Ontario-led at the top end — Lake Erie pickerel, Cookstown produce, Niagara fruit, Prince Edward County wine — joined by a serious Pacific salmon and Atlantic shellfish flow that the city's Japanese rooms in particular have built reputations on. Italian is the strongest single category by depth, with rooms ranging from old-Yorkville to Calabrian cellar to two-Michelin-starred Westin. Coffee is third-wave; cocktails are New York-classical with a stronger Negroni programme than New York usually permits; and the wine programmes increasingly show Canadian pinot, riesling and chardonnay alongside the standard Old World benches.
Neighbourhoods
Reservations & Practical Notes
For deeper editorial coverage, see our Editorial column — including pieces on Impress Clients, First Date and Proposal dining.