Toronto Eats: 100 Signature Recipes from the City’s Best Restaurants

Rosen (Toronto Cooks) serves up a glorious cornucopia of recipes from top restaurants and chefs in Canada’s largest and most diverse city. Celebrating the restaurants, the chefs, and the food in equal measure, Rosen illuminates the ways that those elements come together to create a culinary story. In punchy, vivid prose, she describes people who breathe life into the restaurants and dishes, and the influence of their cultural histories, culinary passions, and eatery dreams. For instance, Rosen introduces readers to Nick Liu, who trained in some of Toronto’s best restaurants as well as in Italy, England, and Australia before he opened his new Asian restaurant DaiLo, “teeming with bold Far East flavors and Parisian flair.” His patrons enjoy original creations, such as pumpkin dumplings with soy brown butter, truffles, almond crumble, and White Rabbit candy glaze, alongside the mainstay of his grandfather’s Hakka brown wontons with house XO sauce. Recipes are clear and not overly complicated, but the book is aimed more at advanced home cooks than novices. This book satisfies as a cookbook, a tour of Toronto eateries, and a collection of magnificent food photography that would be equally at home on a coffee table and on a kitchen shelf. (Oct.)