For a while I have wanted to try one of Oliver & Bonacini’s (O&B) new restaurants. I’ve gone to O&B Café Grill located at Bayview Village (Sheppard Ave. East and Bayview Ave.) with family. The couple times we’ve been to this location, we’ve been served good food.
Three new restaurants have opened up in the downtown area over the last couple years:
- O&B Café Grill, located at Front Street and Yonge Street.
- Bannock, located at Queen Street West and Bay Street
- O&B Canteen, located in the TIFF Bell Lightbox at King Street West and John Street.
A friend and I were planned a get together for dinner on Thursday night. She suggested some restaurants and so did I before we settled on trying Bannock. Neither of us had been before and it was a restaurant that I wanted to try. The restaurant’s menu is rooted in “traditional Canadian comfort foods”. A small area in the basement adjacent to The Bay’s dining area sells some of the O&B featured chocolates and cookbooks, along with coffee. When checking out the dine-in menu online for the restaurant, I already had in mind a couple dishes to try.
Not only is Bannock the name of the restaurant, it is also a type of food with Celtic origins. It is a variety of flat and round quick bread which is then cut into wedges. The wedges are called scones. The Scottish brought bannock over to North America and introduced it to the indigenous people. Bannock is found throughout the native populations including the Inuit, First Nations, and Metis populations of Canada. With this in mind, the décor and menu rooted in Canadian traditions is a good fit for the restaurant.
Bannock Bread (Not on Bannock menu)
BLT Bannock (On restaurant menu)
We arrived at the restaurant and I was surprised that the take-out section used half the space. The other half of the space is used by the dine-in space. Overall, I liked the décor and it felt a little cozy. Since I had already looked at the menu beforehand, I agreed the website’s description of the space. The architecture and the décor did reflect the menu and traditional roots. It definitely was eclectic and approachable reflecting traditional Canadian features. With the comforts of Canadian living, it had, what I imagined to be, a modern cottage feel yet felt very traditional. When reading up on the restaurant, the pine and hemlock featured throughout the restaurant was “reclaimed from one of the Queen’s wharfs that sat under the waters of Lake Ontario at York Street for over a hundred years.” It was great to sit in the space and take it all in while waiting for our food.
The food was delicious. I had the Prairie Grain Salad ($9) which tasted great. There was a tahini sauce drizzled on top of the grains, greens, and beets which didn’t over power the salad. For my main, I went with the BLT Bannock ($13). The combination of the sauce with the bannock, bacon, tomatoes and arugula were amazing.
