20 Victoria, and the sites of aliveness.
Let me say it just this once: one of the best restaurants in Toronto.
The British author Oliver Burkeman has a wonderful shorthand for navigating life’s decisions. It’s the practice of asking yourself, when at an impasse, “Does this feel like it’s taking me in the direction of greater aliveness?” I’d never articulated it this way to myself, but my inner compass obeys the same magnetic field. Aliveness is the metric for everything: the work I’m drawn to, the people I surround myself with, and yes, the restaurants I love.
I felt a jolt of it when I first opened the menu at 20 Victoria to a welcome note. “I like to imagine two ‘cave people’ in Paleolithic times,” A part of it reads, “…realizing without words, perhaps using hand gestures, that their meal would be made considerably more enjoyable if they shared it together.” A truth served so simply I’m inclined to believe it. Culturally, we have exploited the magic of eating together and turned it into a trope, the unicorn solution to xenophobia and war, yet it survives in the everyday: available to us whenever we decide to sit down, pay attention, and enjoy the pleasure of being fed by one another.
And what a pleasure this meal was. I’m not one for superlatives, but will make an exception to tell you that it’s one of the best I’ve had in my life. Was it the meal, the service, the setting, or something completely unrelated, like my progesterone to estrogen ratio? You never know, which is why you should never trust a superlative. But the lasting impression, with a few weeks of distance, is that it moved me towards more aliveness.
It’s the aliveness of intimacy. That’s one of Tracy’s Laws: the size of a restaurant is inversely proportional to its charm. Just compare the tiny bars in Tokyo’s Golden Gai with the behemoth establishments of Las Vegas. Here, there are 24 seats in the dining room and a few more at the bar, which faces the open kitchen. It’s small enough to maintain romance and big enough to tap into the uniquely human experience of being gathered in a room with strangers for the same purpose. It’s a space that invites you in—cream walls, green leather, warm wood floors—without much ceremony. (It’s also wonderfully dim, which I’ll use to explain the quality of my photos to come. I cannot bring myself to use flash in a restaurant.)
It’s the aliveness in interactions. Throughout our dinner, different members of the team came by to drop off a dish or a drink, introduce themselves by name, and thank us for dining with them. We chatted about where the scallops were from and who foraged the ramps. They embodied a friendliness and sincerity that felt rare, a scarce resource in today’s individualist, transactional world. Maybe I’ve been living in a city for too long. Or maybe it’s good hospitality.
It’s the aliveness of eating with the seasons. On this day in May, they served a menu built around the firsts of spring’s bounty: scallops from Nova Scotia and asparagus from Ontario, rivals in tenderness, made verdant by a spruce vinaigrette; Fogo Island snow crab, topped with arugula and sweet little radishes, delicacy held in place by brown butter and carrot purée; heritage chicken with facets of brine (lobster jus) and allium funk (foraged ramps).
20 Victoria describes its offering as SEAFOOD & VEGETABLES+++, with a notable lack of the self-aggrandizing words their peers love to throw around. Still, I would give them the whole lexicon: elevated, inventive, refined. But also: reserved, elemental, simple.
The kitchen is helmed by chef Julie Hyde, whose French culinary training and Michelin experience (London’s Alain Ducasse, Burgundy’s Maison Lameloise) could have easily led to more flaunting and exhibitionism. Instead, her expertise is hidden— to be discovered in the mouth, like seasoning—in the velvet-like sauces, the deft touches of acid, the delicate flaking of fish pulled right on time. This restraint I felt everywhere, from the pithy menu descriptions to the minimal decor: let the food speak for itself. Let the moment be the memory.
It’s the aliveness of simplicity, most of all. At 20 Victoria, each ingredient is a hard-working and essential building block of flavour. There was sablefish, served with a clam-oyster-seaweed sauce tucked in by a bright miso sabayon—deep as the sea, rich like dreams. There were slices of creamy, nutty cheese—from Niagara’s Upper Canada Cheese Company—served with a lemon marmalade that made me question whether I’d ever properly tasted a lemon before. Milkbread with a crust you could hear. Blueberries that bloomed like hibiscus. And then, to finish the evening, Barbie-pink rhubarb served atop a sesame-crusted lime custard, a demonstration of the acid and fat love story that they write cookbooks about.
What can I say? I loved it all—the meal, the wine, the feel of the flatware in the hand—just like I loved Brothers, the restaurant above Bay Station that made way for this one.
Some will say that it’s a special occasion place, and it is, in that a prix fixe* in this town is never a casual decision.
But, I’m here to remind you, the special occasion can also be your life.
Restaurant 20 Victoria
20 Victoria Street
Toronto
* It is much easier to get a seat at the bar, where there is an à la carte menu.
love when a menu asks you to trust and delivers 💛