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JOANNE KATES

jkates@globeandmail.com

January 26, 2008

93 Harbord

93 Harbord St., Toronto. 416-922-5914. Dinner for two with wine, tax and tip, $110.

I have now watched Ratatouille twice and I continue to find more of myself in the restaurant critic character. Differences aside (gender, animated character), he and I are more similar than we are different. We're picky, we're hard to please and we like the finer things in life. My detractors, whom I read whenever possible (for their entertainment value), enjoy accusing me of classist snobbery. That might be fun, but my food values are based purely on the taste of things. If the likes of farmhouse cheeses and wild-caught salmon sold for bottom dollar, wouldn't that be grand? But unfortunately a lot of really good-tasting things cost money and/or require significant labour to produce, so they don't go cheap.

I don't need upscale to be happy, but I do need great flavours. A big bowl of pho at Golden Turtle will make me as happy as foie gras at a stuffed-shirt platinum-card kind of place - happier, on some days. Which is why 93 Harbord is turning my crank. Chef/owner Isam Kaisi's Middle Eastern cooking is about as far from the basic dip 'n' pita school of cuisine as Jamie Kennedy's frites are from McDonald's. Kaisi is self-taught and had never worked in a restaurant before he opened 93 Harbord in 2003. Then it was notable only for being Toronto's first upscale Middle Eastern restaurant. Today, Chef's toque is taller, for in the intervening years he has honed his skill dramatically, which explains the buzz about 93 Harbord. His spicing has grown more assertive and jazzy, his technique masterful. But the tone of the restaurant is charmingly informal.
Perhaps at times too informal: On one occasion, we stand beside our table feeling stupid for a good three minutes before somebody offers to take our coats, and good luck getting water and wine glasses refilled on a busy night. One evening, we ask our server what's spicing the lentil soup. He has no idea, promises to find out and never comes back with the answer.

But if I could make lentil soup like Isam Kaisi's, I might not be writing this for you. Mysterious spicing aside, this soup is astonishingly flavourful. It's deep and rich and almost too exciting for words. Chef Kaisi's other two star turns among appetizers are red and golden beet bulgur salad, and shrimp with sour grapes (not the interpersonal kind).

Beet and bulgur salad sounds like something way too healthy, and in the hands of a lesser chef it would be bland but politically correct. Chef Kaisi builds a cake of bulgur held in place with chunks of red and gold beets, all dressed in stand-up-and-take-notice spiced vinaigrette. The moat around the cake is fresh mint chutney seasoned with arak, a distilled alcohol that lends a hint of anise to the mint.

Chef's shrimp dish is equally dazzling - barely sautéed shrimps atop apple rings that have been sautéed in cumin-spiked butter and sauced with dill and sour grapes. The light dill sauce goes from pleasant to exciting thanks to the slightly citric bite of the tiny (and truly sour) grapes.

Among other apps, one might particularly skip the grilled calamari, which are texturally uninteresting (neither marks nor sizzle of the grill) and not jazzed by their too-sweet fig salsa. Diners can be forgiven for mistaking dips for Middle Eastern food, but humdrum hummus and tired tabbouleh hardly speak for the cuisine. 93 Harbord's wardrobe of dips (aside from their surprisingly banal hummus) is both varied and jazzy. The tabbouleh, composed mostly of parsley and scallions, is spiky with flavour. Red pepper dip is jumped up with garlic and walnuts. Parsley dip is a jade river of more big flavours.

Chef's mains continue down the path of big flavours. Tagine (Moroccan sweet-spiced stew) of lamb has tender lamb swimming in ginger-scented red wine. Vegetable tagine has much more flavour than expected, thanks to its harissa-tomato mint sauce. The other vegetarian main, couscous "risotto," is equally astonishing in its flavour wallop. Cardamom, cumin, garlic, ginger, tamarind, cinnamon, lemon, harissa and saffron are the taste tools that this Middle Eastern kitchen uses to such great effect.

Plump chicken breast comes with sweet/sour pomegranate and walnut sauce. Lamb shank is braised tender and sauced with apricot and ginger. Tilapia, which is normally the most boring fish in the world, outdoes itself thanks to sweet, sour and spicy benediction of ginger tamarind sauce (the sour) with mango chili relish (sweet and spicy).

In another movie about a restaurant critic, Adam Sandler of Spanglish worries that his life will be no fun if an important critic gives his restaurant a rave and that neighbourhood customers won't be able to get tables. To the Annex-oise who currently crowd 93 Harbord, I apologize, and say: Caveat emptor.
from
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080126.KATES26/TPStory/Entertainment#