7 of the best restaurants in Toronto that locals (me) like to gatekeep, Life in canada

#1. Bodega Henriette

Price: 💸💸

Cuisine: Brunch

Address: 1801 Gerrard St E, Toronto, ON

Why You Need To Go: Breakfast in Toronto is a fight to the death. Half of the places I actually want to eat at don’t take reservations, and I’m sorry, but in a city like Toronto, how am I supposed to turn down a Saturday night out just so I can wake up early enough to beat the Sunday brunch rush?

It’s why I have a particular appreciation for neighbourhood breakfast spots like Bodega Henriette.

The small independent restaurant and café is already a bit of a journey for me to get to, tucked away in the east-end Beach Hill neighbourhood, but it has exactly the kind of breakfast menu that makes me willing to travel across the city.

Instead of another eggs-Benedict-and-avocado-toast situation, the menu takes familiar breakfast foods and makes them far more interesting. There’s a BBQ peameal sandwich, a falafel sandwich for vegans and classics like a BLT and bacon breakfast sandwich served with crispy potatoes.

Even the French toast tempts me; both the sweet and savoury varieties. The classic version has berries, Chantilly cream and maple syrup, while the savoury version comes with crispy bacon and cinnamon-dusted pork belly.

What I like most about Bodega Henriette, though, is that it still feels like a neighbourhood spot. It’s casual, affordable and vegan-friendly, and you can even get natural wine if breakfast accidentally turns into the rest of your afternoon.

Bodega Henriette Menu

#2. One2Snacks

Price: 💸

Cuisine: Malaysian

Address: Glen Watford Dr #26, Scarborough, ON

Why You Need To Go: If I’m going to give you my best-kept secrets, I’m going to make you work for them.

One2Snacks is one of my favourite examples of just how deceptive Toronto restaurants can be. Hidden inside Scarborough’s Dynasty Center off Midland Avenue, this family-run Malaysian spot is somewhere you could drive past 100 times without realizing what’s waiting inside.

That’s exactly the kind of restaurant discovery I love.

There are only a handful of seats in front of the cooking station, which means you can sit there listening to the wok roar while your food is being made. There’s nothing particularly elaborate about the space, but that’s part of what I like about it. You come here to eat.

The move is the char kway teow, a stir-fried noodle dish loaded with fillings. I love the chewy noodles and that combination of sweet, salty, spicy and savoury flavours you get in so many Southeast Asian dishes, and this is exactly the kind of meal that reminds me why I need to venture outside the cuisines I order all the time.

The portions are generous, the atmosphere is extremely simple and the food is top tier.

You do need to plan accordingly. One2Snacks has limited opening days and is famously cash-only, which somehow makes the whole thing feel even more like a secret someone has passed along to you.

One2Snacks Menu

#3. Mrakovic Deli

Price: 💸

Cuisine: Eastern European

Address: 44 Wellesworth Dr, Etobicoke, ON

Why You Need To Go: This is possibly my favourite genre of restaurant discovery: walk into a grocery store and keep going.

Hidden in a residential pocket of Etobicoke, Mrakovic looks like an old-school Eastern European grocery store from the outside, complete with a red-and-yellow sign that gives you absolutely no indication of what awaits.

The first time you walk in, it would be very easy to assume you’ve come to the wrong place. You haven’t.

Head past the grocery shelves toward the back of the store, near the dairy section, and you’ll find a simple dining area with booths and a hot table. I love restaurants like this because there is absolutely no performance involved. Nobody is trying to convince you that the restaurant is a hidden gem. It just genuinely happens to be hidden.

The ćevapi are the reason to come. The little grilled sausages are cooked over an open-flame grill and can be stuffed into soft bread with raw white onion for one of those wonderfully simple Balkan meals that’s become increasingly rare to find.

You can also grab Eastern European staples like burek while you’re there, which makes the grocery-store location particularly dangerous because naturally I’m not leaving without taking something home too.

There are no elaborate interiors or plates designed for an Instagram carousel. You’re eating grilled meat in the back of a grocery store, and I mean that as the highest possible compliment.

Mrakovic Deli Menu

#4. Itacate

Price: 💸

Cuisine: Mexican

Address: 998 St Clair Ave W, Toronto, ON

Why You Need To Go: Itacate might not be quite as secret as it once was, but it’s still a place I get excited to tell someone about when they haven’t heard of it yet.

Located west of Oakwood on St. Clair Avenue West, the family-run Mexican spot was once especially easy to miss because the sign labelled it as a butcher shop instead of a taco joint. Unless you noticed the little signs advertising food, you might never have known there was Mexican street food waiting inside.

That kind of accidental restaurant disguise is basically catnip to me.

And this is not the Americanized version of tacos I can find almost anywhere in the city.

The menu includes tacos, chilaquiles and massive quesadillas, with meats prepared using techniques that I could never recreate in my own kitchen. It’s the kind of place I want when I’m craving something that’s worth leaving the house for.

More than anything, I like that Itacate is completely uninterested in being anything other than what it is. It’s family-owned, unpretentious and focused on food that reflects where the people making it actually come from.

Those are usually the restaurants I end up wanting to tell everyone about — while simultaneously hoping nobody else finds them.

Itacate Menu

#5. Cascabel BBQ

Price: 💸

Cuisine: Mexican Street Food

Address: 218 Geary Ave., Toronto, ON

Why You Need To Go: Everything on this list is supposed to make you work a little for your dinner, but Cascabel BBQ takes that mission seriously.

First, you have to find it inside Paradise Grapevine on Geary Avenue. Then you have to catch it while it’s actually open.

I love the idea of a restaurant that makes you coordinate your weekend around eating there.

If you happen to make it out at the right time, remember this: Do. Not. Forget. The. Shrimp.

The camarones zarandeados are cooked over charcoal and coated in a special marinade, resulting in a dish I want from a place like this: something I’m not going to find anywhere else in the city.

Then there are the beef cheek tacos. The meat is cooked low and slow for hours until tender, then piled onto corn tortillas with grilled onions, escabeche, salsa verde and house-made components.

I’ve eaten a lot of Mexican food in Toronto, and I’ve eaten a lot of barbecue, but Cascabel reminds me how much more there is to both when you stop treating either cuisine like a fixed category.

It requires some planning, it requires some directions, and you can’t necessarily go whenever you feel like it. In my book, that only makes finally getting your food more satisfying.

Cascabel BBQ Menu

#6. Manzou Bakery

Price: 💸💸

Cuisine: Bakery

Address: 2370 Midland Ave. Unit C9, Scarborough, ON

Why You Need To Go: I hope you wore comfortable shoes because this one requires directions.

Make your way to 2370 Midland Ave. in Scarborough and look for the commercial-industrial units. Head down the long driveway into what looks like a collection of completely random businesses, navigate through the units and keep going until you finally reach Manzou Bakery.

Congratulations. You found cake.

I have a soft spot for bakeries where the desserts aren’t overwhelmingly sweet, and that’s part of what makes Manzou stand out to me. The mom-and-pop bakery specializes in incredibly light, fluffy cakes, including adorable cake cups that are basically designed for someone like me who would rather sample multiple flavours than commit to one.

And I definitely don’t want to commit to one here.

The flavours go far beyond standard chocolate and vanilla, with options like matcha, black sesame, mango, Earl Grey and jasmine oolong.

Manzou Bakery Menu

#8. Heavenly Perogy

Price: 💸💸

Cuisine: Ukrainian

Address: 400 Bathurst St., Toronto, ON

Why You Need To Go: We’re ending with perhaps the most literal hidden restaurant on the list.

Heavenly Perogy is hidden inside a Ukrainian church.

This is the restaurant I love describing to people because simply saying “it’s in a church” doesn’t adequately prepare you for how far into the church you’re actually going.

There is a sign outside to tip you off, but otherwise you need to enter the building, take the stairs down, turn and descend even farther into the basement until you reach an old-school church hall.

And I know exactly how to describe this room because I swear every person who grew up going to school or church in Ontario has been inside some version of it. It has the energy of an elementary school gym or high school cafeteria, complete with a stage you vaguely remember standing on during Christmas concerts.

Except now you’re here for pierogies.

The menu is packed with Ukrainian comfort food, including pierogies, borscht, cabbage rolls, and sausage, along with vegan options (and you better believe I’m here to sample it all on a platter with a little bit of each). And despite the fact that you’ve essentially followed a treasure map into a church basement, you can actually sit down and have a proper meal.

Of all the restaurants on this list, this might best explain what I mean when I say “hidden gem.”

Heavenly Perogy Menu