I’ve been twice now to Valdez Latin Street Food restaurant in Toronto, and I love it.
Because:
1. The menu changes just enough so that each time that I go I can always find new dishes.
2. A lot of the new dishes are variations on a theme, e.g. passionfruit sauce instead of grapefruit with the scallop ceviche, or your choice of flank steak or bone-in rib-eye with chimichurri.
3. The pitchers of margaritas are awesome. This is not from a mix. The sangria’s not bad either. The other specialty cocktails are appropriately hip and use quality alcohol.
4. The choice of filling or sauce for a dish is a great way to explore something you might not otherwise order, and it gets around the whole need to be “authentic” that you might have if you only sold, say, only one kind of ceviche.
5. The guacamole comes with homemade plantain, yucca, corn, potato and taro chips and is, thus, better.
6. Flavours are strong and there’s something for vegetarians, carnivores, heat-lovers and heat-haters alike.
7. It’s perfect for going as a group because you can order a bunch of small plates to share but still not try the whole menu – which is important when a restaurant in a city of fickle customers wants people to come back.
To give you an idea what I mean, here’s what we ate last time.
Japanese tuna ceviche with watermelon, radish, ponzu, pickled ginger, pear and sesame seeds ($22)
The watermelon was super sweet and refreshing. The radishes were crunchy, the sauce was perfectly salty and sour and the green onions and sesame seeds were the savoury balance. The only thing that was so-so was the fish, which got lost in the sauce. But no matter. You’re supposed to take a little bit of everything in one bite, and the texture was awesome – soft and crunchy and chewy and liquidy.
Tuna causa ($19), basically a layered Peruvian potato salad, here deconstructed, with mildly spicy orange pepper mayo, confit tuna, avocado, olives, tomato and hard-boiled quail eggs. The confit tuna was so much better than the traditional canned stuff most often used. This is a meal in a small plate with all those healthy and healthy-ish fats. It’s pricey, but it’s dense.
Bring on the avocado! This white fish ceviche was a special of the day and came with perfectly ripe avocado, fried yucca chips and radishes in a lime-salt traditional leche de tigre. I’m a bigger fan of orange-braised sweet potato, but this dish was refreshing and refreshingly purist.
Then, charred calamari with orange, “mojo” and arugula ($13). This was just a nicely charred, tender couple pieces of squid over peppery arugula. It’s pretty pricy for what it is, but there was nothing to complain about – except maybe that I don’t really know what they’re going for with the whole “mojo” thing. Ideas?
This was branzino (a white fish) steamed in banana leaf with rice, cilantro, green onions, yellow carrots and cherry tomatoes ($25). It was meltingly tender, but pretty mild in a comfort food kind of way. On the new menu it comes with lemon chia and pepitas.
This is a heart attack waiting to happen, in the most delicious way. Think of it as the South American version of poutine. It’s called chori papa ($15) and means potatoes, chorizo, peppers and onions slathered in chipotle mayo and goat cheese. And it comes with corn tortillas to soak it all up.
Latin fish ‘n’ chips, aka Fish Con Fritos. This is haddock with with purple and white cabbage and carrot slaw, herbed aioli and yucca and potato fries ($19). My non-gluten free friends told me it was pretty great. Those little circles of red, orange and yellow hot peppers helped.
I stole the yucca fries.
Oh! And I forgot to take photos of those empañadas ($7 – less at happy hour, along with a few other snacks and drinks) because I was busy eating them. They were awesome.
Writing this, I realized that there were a couple of dishes that really popped and couple that were just fine, but it was the whole experience – dish after dish of different flavours, great service, good drinks, a cool atmosphere – that made this dinner stand out so much for me. The best deals are the happy hour specials (especially if you go up on the rooftop terrasse), but a full dinner here is worth the splurge.
Valdez Latin Street Food
valdezrestaurant.com
606 King St West, Toronto, Ontario
416-363-8388
Hours:
DINING ROOM: MON-THURS: 5pm-10:30pm, FRI & SAT: 5pm-12am
ROOFTOP PATIO: FRI & SAT: 7pm-10.30pm
And the bar’s open late Thursday to Saturday
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