Sakai Bar, and taking responsibility for what you love.
Adapted from: restaurant criticism.
Food criticism has been declared dead, buried, dug up from its grave, and entombed again. Instead of dreaming of a more equitable alternative, the pole we’ve swung towards is the 30-second montage of flash-bleached dishes punctuated by a flip of the camera: bulged eyes, oil-lacquered lips, the incredulous yet approving nod. Every dish was a 10/10. Did not disappoint. These videos touch on the “what” of restaurants and zoom right past the how, by whom, and why. This is the reductive, brain-rotting brevity we’ve settled for, in line with the anti-intellectual black-and-whitism that haunts our lives online. I can’t stand it, and therefore, I cannot stand by and watch it happen.
If food criticism is an untenable practice, food influencing strikes me as even more reprehensible: the result is a culture that does not care about eating at all, but instead, focuses the lens on having eaten. Why bother telling the story when you can just cut to the ending? Why taste your life when you can just acquire the footage demonstrating that you have? It’s symptomatic of a greater, more pervasive illness: collectively, we’ve lost the ability to care. Catherine Shannon calls this a permeating numbness. Her suggestions for countering this apathy: be honest with yourself, take responsibility for what you believe in, and plant the seeds of meaning in your life.
I still believe in food writing and the bridges these words can build. I still love restaurants. Toronto has so many great ones. And I take responsibility for helping the places that I love survive—without a viral TikTok, Michelin mention, or Matty Matheson on the marquee. So here it is: my first seed.
Sakai Bar, on a Friday in December.
M. and I sat at the bar, both in a sparkly mood. I had just submitted a book proposal, and she was wearing her favourite fur coat. I had soft-sold the place by telling her that sake—low in histamines and absent of sulfites—doesn’t impart as punitive of a hangover as wine. Plus, she’d never been.
When I lived in the west end, I went to Sakai a lot. To this day, it ranks in my top 5 places to eat in this city. I don’t have to rage-refresh a reservation website to get a seat there, for starters. And I leave with the same warm, charmed feeling every time, a consistency I don’t take for granted. It’s that rare alchemy of intimate, casual, and elegant I love—setting, service, and sensorial rewards, respectively.
Sakai Bar is a sake bar on paper, although I’ve always loved the food equally. It inherits its name from owner/operator Stuart Sakai, who worked at Black Hoof & Rhum Corner in a previous life. The food is now by Dixon Cone, although I still recognize many dishes on the menu from the previous chef, Eric McDonald. Eric is a choreographer of flavour. Her dishes always dance across my palate, waltzing from salt to fat and up in the air to acid. She cooks at Cafeteria and the soon-open Jamil’s. I’d follow her anywhere.
I’ve always like my beverages like I like my environments: perfumed. As such, I’m always ordering the most aromatic glass on a menu. Our waiter tells us that our best option is a Joyo 55 Junmai Ginjo. It’s fruity in a restrained way, melon and something that shapeshifts from pear to apple, and has a limpid acidity that drinks like water. We sip happily. We are not pairing sakes for this meal.
First to arrive was the lingcod liver—marinated in a yuzu-teriyaki base, served with nori and a dollop of wasabi. It melts on the tongue—buttery, unctuous—and just as it approaches the edge of sinful, the peppery horseradish snips through. Dessert for the salt-toothed.
Next was repentance: bitter, crisp radicchio and kabocha squash on a hidden bed of gomae. I eat salad as counterbalance, not for its own merits, and have no notes on this subject.
We order another glass, a Yamagata Masamsune Junmai. Umami and earth made a little flirty with an underripe banana note. So far, I’ve never met a Sakai sake I didn’t like.
The next dishes are the kitchen’s heavy-hitters and have been on the menu for as long as I can remember. A blushing tonkatsu sando with curry gravy (optional on the menu, mandatory in my eyes): Fat. Juicy. Something worth risking gout for. It hides a wasabi aioli and zesty, gingery pickled cucumbers, which distract you just long enough from the indulgence of it all to elude the onset of guilt.
Part of the order, we realized, was missing. A bowl of rice with umeboshi. Sakai uses great Japanese short-grain rice, each grain its own universe in the mouth. Our waiter apologized—he’d forgotten, and they were now out of rice—and reassured us it wasn’t going to be on the bill. He moved on, and so did we. Like I said, casual. I’ve watched people complain about less. But I prefer it—I’ve never loved the hierarchical dynamics and ceremoniousness of capital-H Hospitality. I will give the food as much attention and reverence as the person making it, but I don’t need the song and dance and servitude. Human to human, who doesn’t forget shit until it’s too late?
Then the brown butter buckwheat cake came. I order it every chance I get. It comes with caramelized white chocolate shavings on top and a warm koji cream, which is poured as it’s served. This cake balances its smooth, rounded richness with a texture that I can only liken to making out with refined sand. This, for the record, is a compliment.
At around midnight, both warmed and charmed, we stepped out into the glacial December wind.
Sakai Bar
1576 Dundas St W.
Toronto
I dream of that buckwheat cake on the regular. An utterly perfect concoction.
Gorgeous. All of it.