The Best Places in Toronto

The line forms before the door opens, which tells you most of what you need to know about this cash-only-on-weekends pho shop just off Queen Street. Big steaming bowls arrive fast and stay steaming, the rare beef version drawing regulars back in a way that menus with fifty options rarely manage. It's a no-frills room where the broth does the decorating. The Michelin Guide has it on their list.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Tables at this contemporary Portland Street spot are built with center compartments for storing your phone, which tells you something about the vibe before the food arrives. The shared plates menu pulls from across the globe without feeling scattered, and solo diners can order half-portions to move through more of the menu. Cool, spare, almost monastery-quiet inside.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Isan-style som tum made with fermented fish paste is the point of this simple basement Thai spot on Gerrard, and the heat scale runs to levels most menus don't acknowledge. The papaya salad comes with salted crab if you want the full classic treatment, and the grilled pork jowl has quietly become the other reason regulars keep coming back. No alcohol, but the café next door handles drinks, which feels like a very sensible arrangement.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Drums play overhead while chefs break down whole fish at the counter, so the omakase here functions more like dinner theater than a quiet procession of nigiri. This is a high-energy sushi counter with outposts in Vancouver and Montreal, and the room is in constant motion, everyone grilling, slicing, or frying something at once. The price tag matches the spectacle, so come ready for that conversation.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A window at the front lets you watch the chef work the line from the street, which sets the tone for Taline: a warm Armenian dining room on Yonge where the kitchen is clearly the point. The menu draws on the chef's childhood and his classical training in equal measure, landing somewhere between home cooking and something more composed. The room runs to olive greens and feels genuinely calm, which is rarer than it sounds.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Chettinad chicken tacos and panipuri shots sit on the same menu as a deeply spiced lamb Roganjosh, which tells you most of what you need to know about this colorful Indian restaurant in a Mississauga shopping district. Weekends tip into live music and dancing. The paneer in tomato-onion sauce is quietly serious. Servers will ask about your spice tolerance; say spicy, then order the raita anyway.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Wine bottles ring the walls of this small, unhurried wine bar on Danforth, and the whole room has the warm sepia glow of a place that stopped trying to impress you the moment you walked in. The menu runs shorter than you'd expect, with more vegetables than a wine bar typically bothers with, plus a weekly beef special that shows up alongside a serious pile of shoestring fries. The Michelin Guide has it on their list.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Horseshoe bar at the entrance, rustic brick dining room in the back, and a chef who once worked a farm and still acts like it. Union is a French bistro on a stretch of Ossington shared with butchers and antique shops, and the menu moves with the seasons and local suppliers. The same care goes into an omelette as into steak frites, and if the floor gets busy, the chef may well deliver your plate himself.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The tiramisu lands somewhere between a soufflé and a pancake, finished with espresso maple syrup and whipped mascarpone, and it's reason enough to visit on its own. This Italian neighborhood restaurant in a handsome old building could have coasted on red sauce and called it a night, but the kitchen puts smoked pastrami on pizza and tosses tagliolini in charred octopus with smoked dashi butter instead. A garden-lit deck completes the picture.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The kaiseki dinner here ends with plain slices of Japanese crown melon from the chef's hometown, no garnish, no flourish, and that restraint tells you everything. This is a small, intimate tasting-menu restaurant where the courses before that melon are elaborate to the point of theatrics, with wagyu, Hokkaido uni, and foie gras arriving blowtorched and wrapped in shiso. The room is cozy to a fault, the bill is serious, and the whole thing feels quietly personal.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A strip mall omakase counter tucked between a Markham auto repair shop and wherever your expectations were parked. Inside, wood slats and careful lighting give the room a calming, considered feel. Fish arrives from Japan several times a week, the rice is warm and finely vinegared, and the nori is quietly serious. The chef's counter is where you want to sit, and the approach stays traditional, a clean swipe of soy doing most of the talking.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Canada's 100 Best Recommends

1. Canada's 100 Best Recommends

1. Canada's 100 Best Recommends

The marble bar top, tin ceiling, and tile floor make Geraldine feel like it's been on Queen West since long before Queen West was Queen West. It hasn't, but the New Orleans-themed cocktail bar wears the illusion well. Green walls and floor-to-ceiling windows that fold open frame a long, narrow room where the bar along the left wall is clearly where the action is. Cajun and Creole food runs in the background, but the bar stools are the point.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Canada's 100 Best Recommends

The hotel had a colorful past before its transformation into one of Queen West's anchor addresses, and the lounge bar still carries that energy: loud, packed, and moving fast. Artists in residence leave their mark on the walls, so the room always looks like something is happening, because it usually is. A cocktail bar where the drinks share equal billing with the scene, and where the crowd tends to arrive already in a good mood.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Canada's 100 Best Recommends

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin

1. Canada's 100 Best Recommends

A converted row house near U of T, with a backyard patio and ten seats at the bar, The Harbord Room is a cocktail bar that somehow manages to be a neighborhood spot and a destination at once. The staff is young and unstuffy, the room keeps its tables low and its energy lower, and the whole thing sits at the edge of a residential block like it landed there by accident and decided to stay.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide

An unmarked brown door on College Street, opened only by membership card, is all the warning you get. Inside, a narrow staircase climbs to a small, dimly lit speakeasy with dark wood, ten bar seats, and two tucked-away seating areas. It's a members-only cocktail bar, though out-of-towners willing to email ahead have been known to get in. The kind of place that makes you feel like you know something most people don't.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. AAA Approved

The original Yonge Street location is a cozy cave of a cafe where De Mello first started roasting, before the brand grew into a multi-city operation run by two Korean-born, Melbourne-educated brothers who came to Toronto and decided the coffee scene needed fixing. It's a specialty coffee shop serving the company's own blends, single origins, and seasonal drinks, with pastries alongside. Small enough to feel like a neighborhood secret, even if that ship has long since sailed.

1. Sprudge The Sprudge Guide To Coffee In Toronto

1. Spirited Awards 2024 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best New International Cocktail Bar – Canada

A turquoise bay-and-gable house in Kensington Market, Fika is a Nordic-inspired coffee shop where the owner roasts his own beans in the back room on a machine he describes as "a toy." The cardamom cinnamon buns and Dala horse ginger snaps are the kind of baking that makes you linger, and the hygge aesthetic earns its name without trying too hard.

1. Sprudge The Sprudge Guide To Coffee In Toronto

A Mavam undercounter espresso machine anchors the bar while bicycle mechanics work the wings, which tells you everything about this coffee bar and bike shop tucked into The Well. Beans rotate through a roster of Canadian roasters, snacks arrive by cargo bike from the original Little Portugal location, and the whole setup manages to take both coffee and two-wheeled transport with equal, unironic seriousness.

1. Sprudge The Sprudge Guide To Coffee In Toronto

1. AAA Approved

1. AAA Approved

1. Spirited Awards 2024 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best New International Cocktail Bar – Canada

1. AAA Approved

1. Spirited Awards 2024 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best International Restaurant Bar – Canada

1. AAA Approved

Lobster and prawn rolls share the menu with house-made pastas and grilled fish, which tells you most of what you need to know about the register here. The Frederick is a casual all-day restaurant on Temperance Street that slides between power lunches and low-key dinners without visibly breaking a sweat. The room runs warm and contemporary, and the soft-serve sundae at the end lands like a small, deliberate joke about how seriously everyone else takes dessert.

1. AAA Approved

1. AAA Approved

1. AAA Approved

1. AAA Approved

1. AAA Approved

1. Spirited Awards 2024 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best International Hotel Bar – Canada

The panzerotti here is a golden, deep-fried pocket that weighs close to two pounds, stuffed with mozzarella and pepperoni until it barely holds together. This no-frills Richmond Hill pizza joint has been around forever, and the regulars know to keep it simple. Wings and kitchen-sink salads round out the menu, but the panzerotti is the reason the place has a reputation that reaches well past the suburbs.

1. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Toronto, Canada

1. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Toronto, Canada

1. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Toronto, Canada

1. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Toronto, Canada

A cheese vault holding a million dollars' worth of age-ripened wheels is the main character here, and yes, you can tour it. This west-end fromagerie and gourmet grocery has grown into a sprawling emporium stocked with over 500 varieties of cheese alongside charcuterie, truffles, olive oils, and prepared foods. A wine bar sits upstairs for when the tasting gets serious. The kind of place where you arrive for one wedge and leave needing a second bag.

1. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Toronto, Canada

1. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Toronto, Canada

The croissants here leave evidence, buttery and flaky enough that you'll be picking debris off your shirt for the rest of the morning. This Harbord Street bakery has built a following around laminated pastry and long-fermented sourdough, with savory Saturday specials that rotate weekly and draw a line of regulars who planned their whole day around it.

1. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Toronto, Canada

The chef here prefers "thoughtfully remixed" to "Asian fusion," which is fair enough given that his scrambled eggs hide scallops and tiger prawns in the curds. This progressive restaurant in Thornhill runs a modernist, jade-toned room that pulls in a genuinely mixed crowd, from scruffy Gen Z to Birkin-toting regulars. The fried chicken between black sesame waffles with honey butter is the kind of dish that makes you stop mid-sentence.

1. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Toronto, Canada

1. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Toronto, Canada

1. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Toronto, Canada

A kopitiam and cheese shop sharing one address on College Street, which is either a very specific vision or a beautiful accident. The Singaporean-Malaysian menu runs deep, the kind of cooking that earns Michelle Yeoh as a fan without making a fuss about it. Roti prata comes flaky and dip-ready, and the stacked lunchbox format means you can cover a lot of ground in one sitting.

1. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Toronto, Canada

Pastel walls and squeaky vinyl banquettes set the tone at this retro Cuban diner on Ossington, where everything from the bread to the desserts comes out of the kitchen from scratch. The barbecue beef short ribs get a long braise and a guava glaze, and the Cubano runs on slow-roasted pork and house-made baguette. The kind of comfort food that doesn't apologize for being exactly what it is.

1. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Toronto, Canada

1. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Toronto, Canada

1. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Toronto, Canada

1. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Toronto, Canada

Cold noodles made from scratch with sweet potato starch imported from South Korea set the tone before the charcoal even lights. Piggy's is an a la carte Korean BBQ spot in Thornhill that leans into sourcing and culinary culture rather than the all-you-can-eat race to the bottom. The pork ribs are aged in-house and cooked over Korean oak charcoal, and the room fills quickly with people who already know what they're ordering.

1. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Toronto, Canada

A by-the-slice shop on Dovercourt where the dough gets a three-day ferment before it sees any heat, which explains the audible snap when you bite in. The crust lands somewhere between New York and Neapolitan, with a flakiness that has no business being that good in a slice shop. The roster rotates, but regulars come with a preference already locked in and argue about it on the way out.

1. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Toronto, Canada

The highest praise a plant-based restaurant can get is when carnivores leave quietly impressed, and Planta in Yorkville has built a reputation around exactly that. The chef behind it trained in Michelin-starred kitchens and applies that technique to a globe-spanning menu where cashew mozzarella goes on vodka pizza and mushroom "bacon" turns up in the carbonara. Hedonistic is the right word, not virtuous.

1. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Toronto, Canada

A slow-cooked beef broth that takes days to build is the reason chefs have been quietly directing people here for years. This tiny Vietnamese spot sits just off Leslieville's Old Chinatown, the kind of room where the pho does the talking. The broth runs earthy and aromatic, almost medicinal in the best sense, and the bowl arrives ready to customize with chiles, sprouts, and fresh lime.

1. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Toronto, Canada

1. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Toronto, Canada

1. Air Canada 2019 · Finalist · Best New Restaurants

1. Air Canada 2019 · Finalist · Best New Restaurants

A natural wine bar on Bayview with over 120 organic and low-intervention bottles, plus a bottle shop if you want to keep the evening going at home. The food runs tapas-style: shared plates, charcuterie, and seasonal small bites that skew Mediterranean. The room is quiet and minimalist, which makes the wine list feel like the main event, because it is.

1. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Toronto, Canada

Fried chicken is the whole point at this snug 26-seat comfort food spot in Kensington Market, and chef Jerome Robinson has been making that case since a 2018 pop-up built a following before there was even a proper dining room. The mac and cheese arrives buried under deep-fried thighs in Carolina butter sauce, which covers two food groups if you're generous about it. The '90s hip-hop energy from the old Dundas West location made the move intact.

1. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Toronto, Canada

1. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Toronto, Canada

1. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Toronto, Canada

1. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Toronto, Canada

1. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Toronto, Canada

Groupings of clocks, plates, mirrors, and pictures cover the walls of this lively Queen West bar, giving it the feel of a well-curated storage unit that somehow works. High ceilings and a wall of windows that open when the weather cooperates keep things from getting claustrophobic, even when the room fills up and the noise climbs. The cocktail menu holds its own, and the kitchen out back means you can actually eat.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

A garage-door window folds open along Queen West when the weather cooperates, turning this narrow cocktail bar into something between a room and a street corner. Grey-and-green walls, yellow chairs, and a small raised library nook with a sofa and an aquarium give it the feel of a well-curated living room. The bar industry tends to hold its parties here, which tells you something about the drinks program without requiring further argument.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

Leather banquettes, brass fixtures, and a room full of people who clearly planned their outfit around the reservation: La Banane is a French bistro on Ossington that leans into the romance of it all without apology. The kitchen plays with classic French forms, pairing one of the city's more ambitious raw bars with a cooking style that wanders toward yuzu and other detours. The banana cake with salted caramel ice cream has its own cult following.

1. Air Canada 2017 · Finalist · Best New Restaurants
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

1. Air Canada 2017 · Finalist · Best New Restaurants

Absinthe comes out the traditional way here, slow drip and all, which tells you where this New Orleans-inspired bar's priorities lie. The cocktail list splits into classics and signatures, and the Louisiana-comfort food is priced like the neighbourhood actually lives here, because it does. Live blues on weekends keeps things from getting too precious. The kind of bar that already has regulars who know the staff by name.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Air Canada 2016 · Top 10 · Best New Restaurants

1. Foodism Rising Star Icon · ICON Awards · Eva Chin

1. Foodism DEI Icon · ICON Awards · Mohamad Fakih

1. Foodism DEI Icon · ICON Awards · Mohamad Fakih

1. Foodism DEI Icon · ICON Awards · Mohamad Fakih

1. Foodism Legendary Icon · ICON Awards · Jen Agg

1. Air Canada 2014 · Top 10 · Best New Restaurants
2. Air Canada 2015 · Finalist · Best New Restaurants

1. Air Canada 2015 · Finalist · Best New Restaurants

1. Air Canada 2015 · Finalist · Best New Restaurants

1. Air Canada 2015 · Top 10 · Best New Restaurants

1. Air Canada 2014 · Finalist · Best New Restaurants

1. Air Canada 2014 · Finalist · Best New Restaurants

1. Air Canada 2013 · Finalist · Best New Restaurants

1. Air Canada 2013 · Finalist · Best New Restaurants

1. Foodism Culinary Icon · ICON Awards · Iván Castro

1. Foodism Legendary Icon · ICON Awards · Donna Dooher

1. Air Canada 2012 · Finalist · Best New Restaurants

1. Air Canada 2011 · Finalist · Best New Restaurants

1. Air Canada 2011 · Finalist · Best New Restaurants

1. Air Canada 2011 · Finalist · Best New Restaurants

1. Air Canada 2011 · Finalist · Best New Restaurants