The Joanne Kates Toronto Restaurant Guide: By the Restaurant Critic for The Globe and Mail

Dean Tudor is a journalism professor at the Ryerson Polytechnical
Institute and founding editor of the CBRA.

These reviews are mainly from the Globe and Mail, updated (of course) as to prices, references, and food. But the writing style is the same: the opening paragraphs have little relevance to the restaurant, for these are attention-grabbers that may be useful in a newspaper review but have no place in a book — and certainly not in this book, which is supposed to be a guide. The 160 restaurant reviews are arranged alphabetically under 25 headings, from “afternoon tea” to “vegetarian,” and they include typical data: address, credit cards, hours, smoking areas, wheelchair access, etc. The topics cover brunch, ethnic food, children’s food, seafood, take-out, inexpensive, and so forth. Out of place here are those chapters that cover “Montreal” and “Out-of-town Ontario”; I would never think of looking in a Toronto guidebook for these restaurants. At the front of the book is a good index-listing that categorizes the restaurants under such rubrics as brunch, location, whether open late, whether open Sunday, outdoor dining, power lunches, and so forth. This is the book’s best value.