While we’ve been to quite a few long and narrow restaurants, most are bar like with bar food, at Dandylion, it’s an open kitchen that serves food that you would normally find at a fine dining restaurant without the expensive price tag.

Menu is simple, 3 items for starters, 3 mains and 3 desserts. Changes regularly based on seasonal ingredients so you won’t find any menu on their website.

The open kitchen is unlike many, no glass window, no door and most impressed was there’re no funny odor or smoke coming from the kitchen. You can see chef Jay Carter working at the back with his staff carefully plating each dish that goes out. Chef Carter is a veteran in fine dining, he was the executive chef at Centro and previously ran Susur Lee’s kitchen at Susur, Lee and Madeline’s.

Upon seated, you were greeted with bread baked in-house served with fromage blanc and shallots. It’s complimentary, not on the menu as a starter like some restaurants.

If there were 3 of us, it would of been an easy choice, 1 of everything on the menu but there was only 2 of us, so we started with the stuffed bacon ($15) and the raw tuna ($18). The stuffed bacon is actually served like an open sandwich – the green tomato and potato salad sat nicely on thick meaty bacon. The perfect bite is when you put a spoonful of each into your mouth. The raw tuna and avocado was just as delicious, you can taste the freshness of each of the ingredients on that dish.

For our mains, we had the roasted striploin ($26) and the cod ($24). The cod was served with charred beans and bonito sauce, it was so creamy and buttery, it just glided in your mouth. The striploin was perfectly cooked, medium rare served with corn and shrimp butter.

Unfortunately, no room for dessert, this just means we’ll need to come back another time.

Dandylion
1198 Queen Street West, Toronto, ON  » View Map
t. 647.464.9100