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TRUE RESTAURANT

69 Yorkville Ave., Toronto. 416-925-8783. Dinner for two with wine, tax and tip, $150.

I had never met a Coton de Tulear until I ate on the patio at True. Cotons, as I have since read on littlepawz.com, are always in good spirits. They're loyal, intelligent and "dynamic" lapdogs, which I take to mean that they are multi-taskers. In this particular Coton de Tulear's case, he was able to bark and scratch himself and put up with his masters' cooing and hang out under the table and turn up his nose at the bowl of water that the waitress brought him on the tray with his masters' wine.

Cotons' eyelids can get mungy sometimes, so you need to take care in that department. But I'd bet that Dudley, as this Coton de Tulear was named, doesn't have eyelid problems. True Restaurant, on the strip in Yorkville, bills itself with no small amount of fanfare as "Fresh. Local. Organic." Organic, True's menu informs us, "is a way to a pure, natural, and healthy lifestyle." When you eat at True, your dog's eyelids are just fine.

True is the most organic restaurant I've ever encountered. The word "organic" appears 14 times on its dinner menu. The drinks list offers "organic juices," "organic soda," "organic coffee," "organic tea," "organic dairy," organic liquor and mostly organic or biodynamic wine. On True's seven-page drinks list, I counted the word "organic" 98 times. Even the hand soap in the bathroom is organic.

My date ordered a gin and tonic, made with organic gin. Delighted, the waitress said. Although of course she couldn't bring my date a true organic gin and tonic, because tonic is made with chemicals. Quinine, which is a prophylactic against malaria, I pointed out. "Just think that all these years you've been drinking an anti-malarial," she said. Tonic is not organic.

Dudley, however. I'd bet that Dudley has never eaten anything non-organic in his entire little life. Which would make Dudley organic. But I didn't bother just then to point that out.

True's menu mostly plies a Cal-Ital theme: bruscetta, prosciutto with melon, grilled vegetables, thin-crust pizzas (including a choice of organic white flour, whole wheat or spelt crusts), pastas and meats. We started with the organic beef carpaccio, which was good, ruby-coloured, full flavoured and garnished with crisp, fiery rocket, plus an organic baby arugula salad, which contained exactly one half of an organic cherry tomato (and at the height of Southern Ontario's cherry tomato season), in addition to sautéed organic mushrooms and a dribble of organic vinaigrette. The mushroom soup was very good: chopped mixed organic mushrooms cooked dark and broody and simmered in a vegetable stock.

We had organic meats and pasta next. I had half an organic chicken, roasted a little bit too much and without any apparent seasoning other than table salt (organic, I'm sure). It came with decent mashed potatoes, boiled yellow beans, a gigantic, but not entirely fresh hunk of bok choi that tasted, as my date put it, like a public swimming pool, and five little organic carrots.

Or not quite natural looking carrots per se. These were the little mini-carrots that appear to have been processed to uniformity on a lathe in a processing plant. Usually in California. You can buy this shape of "carrot" under the "Bolthouse Farms" brand at my local No Frills. But that doesn't make them local. These ones were dry and faded at their ends, like carrots get when they've been lathed and then shipped 3,500 kilometres and then handled by my local No Frills crack team of long-haul produce specialists. But I don't doubt that they were organic.

The date had the $35 organic rib-eye steak, which was large and nicely grilled, and ladled with a black mission fig sauce. It was also served with those little mini-carrots and the boiled beans and the public-pool-tasting bok choi.

We had spaghetti vongole, which came with plenty of clams, and no discernible flavour.

Dessert, a chocolate bread pudding, was vile, which, in all fairness, was an exception. Most of the food here is fine. Fine, like Milestones is fine. But you'd never want to go out of your way for it. And if you do, you definitely want somebody else to pay.

I can think of a dozen other restaurants - and good ones, at that - where the food is largely local, and the ingredients are often organic. And where the words local and organic stand for something more than cashing in on a lucrative fad.

Cowbell, for instance, on Queen West. Or Globe Bistro, on the Danforth. Jamie Kennedy's places on Church and on Gilead. Harvest and The Carriage House, in Prince Edward County. Treadwell, in St. Catharines. Reds, in the Financial District. Downtown's Niagara Street Café. Even Il Fornello, the pizza chain. (Il Fornello has one of the most laudable local-purchasing policies around.) Though I can't guarantee this, I feel comfortable saying that you can order a proper gin and tonic at any one of these places. And I can say for certain that Dudley wouldn't make it past the door.