The Joanne Kates Toronto Restaurant Guide

Joan McGrath is a Toronto Board of Education library consultant.

Kates has made the task of rating an army of restaurants a special mission. Here she reviews over 170 of them, including 77 new reviews added since her 1984 edition. Further, she includes all sorts of other useful information dealing with such matters as wheelchair access, price ranges, smoking/nonsmoking, and liquor licenses. Restaurants are listed by city area for convenience, as well as by type of cuisine: for example, “afternoon tea,” “grand lux,” “kid’s stuff,” “Eastern European” — 25 such listings in all. Four sections are new: “Haute Bistro,” “Iberian Peninsula,” “New York,” and “Vancouver.” Oh yes, she offers frank, fair-minded but critical opinions on the food and service at all restaurants listed, and invites comment from readers/diners who may wish to comment or disagree with the restaurant critic from the Globe and Mail.