Paired with creamy polenta and red chard and topped with crispy fried sage leaves, Paramour’s lamb shank is among the restaurant’s highlights.
Paramour 94 Ossington Ave., Toronto 416-953-2356 $150 for dinner for two with wine, tax and tip www.paramourdining.com
Thank you, Joe Pantalone. When you tried to protect first Ossington and then Harbord Streets from becoming boozy beehives of decadence, you unwittingly drew foodie attention to both neighbourhoods and thus helped them grow into the great dining destinations they are.
But c'mon, Councillor. Have you ever been to New York? While your heart may have been in the right place, it's a good thing your one-year moratorium on more eating and drinking establishments on Ossington is temporary. What's happening on both Harbord and lower Ossington mimics the many "restaurant rows" that have developed organically in the Big Apple. And there are so many great things about that, including the fact that more restaurants bring more diners into these areas at night. This makes them safer because the kind of people who go to restaurants do not tend to be gun-toting, drug-addled party-hearty types.
Restaurants are also good for the economy. Lower Ossington, a hotbed of trendy bistros, is a neighbourhood reborn. So thanks again, Joe, for focusing attention there and building the buzz and the bustle. Surely credit is due partly to you for how well Paramour has done since the instant it opened. If it were anywhere else in town, it'd be just another bistro, as Paramour really has only one distinguishing factor: Adly Gawad.
Prior to Splendido's change of hands last year, Gawad was its most requested waiter. As the manager of Paramour, he makes it his business to greet every diner by name, to serve your wine (and provide whatever wine education you'd like, shining a tiny flashlight on the label so you can read it in the dim light), to bring you a complimentary Frangelico on the rocks after dinner and to send you out the door with a fond farewell, bidding you adieu by name.
How does the guy figure out names? From reservations, and by using his ears (and heart). Gawad serves customers as if each is a cherished guest in his own home - a most unusual approach, and unusually wonderful. Unfortunately, though, the food that he serves doesn't measure up to those standards. One evening the cauliflower soup has little discernible flavour and the shaved fennel and citrus salad tastes as if it maybe sat a while. Jalapeno-zinged hush puppies with smoky chipotle mayo are much better - ungreasy and light - and the raw scallops are sweet and fresh, but adding deep-fried capers was an error: Deep frying dried them out and made their inherent saltiness excessive.
Why is the place called Paramour? The waiter (not Gawad) says he doesn't know and doesn't offer to find out. Are the big fashion pics lining one wall putative paramours? They and the bright silk cushions on the banquettes form the major decor notes in the room.
Chef Laura Malin, who spent four years cooking at JKROM before working as a private chef, restricts herself to five mains: three meats, one fish, one veg. The New York strip loin is accompanied by bread pudding laced with just enough Ermite (blue) cheese to make a statement, but no bread pudding, however clever, can rescue that tough steak.
Lamb shank fares much better in Malin's hands: It is tender and moist, topped with crispy fried sage leaves and nicely paired with creamy polenta and red chard. Pan-seared rainbow trout is also properly cooked and splayed over a delicious stew of cute little fingerling potatoes scattered with fancy sea salt, warm endive salad and snazzy mushrooms.
The chicken pot pie is the one distinguished dish from Paramour's kitchen: It is small pieces of perfectly cooked chicken with carrots, potatoes and peas in a splendidly tarragon-scented cream sauce with a roof of buttery golden pastry, flaky and fine. On the side is the same lovely braised sweet and sour red cabbage as on the sides list. The other side we like is Puy lentil sauté, in which tiny French lentils are first boiled and then fried, to jump up their usually bland flavour.
Despite my lifelong chocoholic status, I cannot eat Monique, which is the name they give to chocolate terrine. I love dark chocolate but this terrine is too dense to enjoy. Danielle is tastier: This is pumpkin flan with cinnamon-scented whipped cream. The flan is a lighter version of pumpkin pie filling, accompanied by fine hazelnut biscotti.
Paramour offers mostly good bistro food and it's great that diners on the lower Ossington strip have yet another dining choice. Remember this lesson, Joe, if you get to be mayor.