Common Eatery
380 Elgin St., second floor, 613-695-2110, commoncs.com/common-eatery/
Open: Daily, from 5 p.m. to “late”
Prices: small plates from $5 to $14, larger plates $20 to $29
Access: flight of stairs to restaurant
A few days ago, we had one of those meals that made me especially glad to do what I do. Bright-flavoured, nicely crafted appetizers elicited smiles. Then came a salmon fillet that was among the best pieces of fish I’ve eaten this year, surrounded by battered wedge fries that made us think other places were simply cooking potatoes wrong.
A few days before that fine feast, we had a dinner that left us dissatisfied and grumbling. A few small plates hit the mark. More were “meh.” Very disappointing were punishingly dry pork ribs. Seriously undercooked lamb chops were the absolute worst, and they arrived 40 minutes after the other plates.
Those night-and-day dinners were at the same restaurant — Common Eatery on Elgin Street. The evenings-only, small-plates-focused restaurant shares its space with the morning-and-afternoon business Morning Owl Coffeehouse. It shares its name, and hipness, with the neighbouring, affiliated, Common Concept Shop, a high-end street wear store. A colleague said the two youthful Common businesses feel, in a word, “Toronto.”
I’d call the ambience at the eatery, which opened in early summer, an exercise in industrial, minimalist chic. The room is roughly a big hexagon holding 60 or so people, seated either on high bar stools or Scandinavian chairs beside metal-topped tables. The colours are a little severe. There’s a white wall that sports a funky mural, a black wall beside the open kitchen, and a mirrored wall behind the bar. Overhead are grey ductwork, globe lighting fixtures and wagon wheel chandeliers. The floors are polished concrete.
Young, tattooed, attentive servers wear eatery-branded T-shirts and, if they’re men, ripped jeans. The sound system pumps out Drake and music that sounds like Drake.
At my first visit, we tried more than half of the offerings on the one-page menu, which struck us as enticing, well-written and reasonably wallet-friendly. There were vegetarian and vegan versions of pork wontons, crab cakes, bison sliders and jerk chicken wings too, which were good to see.
We went early on the Sunday of the Labour Day weekend and the place was quiet, although my colleague who lives nearby says Common Eatery can be jammed with a young, cocktail-drinking, snacking crowd much later in the evening.
Almost all of our dishes hit the table fairly quickly and at once. So, marks awarded for speed, but perhaps docked for making us fret about the best order to eat dishes and whether food might get cold too quickly. At my subsequent, mid-week visit, the dishes were staggered, and our experience was better.
Back to that first visit. Its best dishes included the Southeast-Asia-inspired toke salad of julienned jicama, mango, carrots and cabbage, dressed with a gingery vinaigrette and bettered with a squeeze of lime. Deep-fried fingerling potatoes, with not just bacon salt but a cup of flavoured mayo, were addictive and self-indulgently good.
Toke salad at Common Eatery
Fingerlings with bacon salt at Common Eatery
Then there were dishes that impressed less, or were less well-made. The charred romaine heart, with a creamy dressing, lardons and shards of pecorino cheese, wasn’t an improvement on a standard Caesar salad. A Scotch egg — deep-fried and wrapped in breaded sausage meat — was not greasy, but not a “wow,” either. A “shoulder tenderloin” steak, cooked beyond the requested medium-rare, was too tough. Linguine was cooked past al dente, and its creamy, garlicky, squid ink sauce overwhelmed the topping of mild, seemingly squandered, lobster meat.
Charred romaine at Common Eatery
Scotch egg at Common Eatery
Steak special at Common Eatery
Lobster linguine with squid ink sauce at Common Eatery
Six pork ribs were dry nearly to the point of dessication, an insult to what ribs can be.
Pork ribs at Common Eatery
Two orders of lambsicles were late to the table because our server explained the kitchen was trying to cook a partial rack rather than individual chops, and had screwed up the first time. But the second attempt, while appealingly seasoned with a warm, aromatic, Middle Eastern-influenced spice blend, was still a flop, yielding a few chops that were seriously undercooked and inedible.
One order of lambsicles at Common Eatery
We brought one such chop to our server’s attention. At least dessert, a modest rectangle of puff pastry topped with sweetened, diced peaches and candied nuts, came free as a result. Still, our overall impression of the place was not the greatest.
Peaches on puff pastry at Common Eatery
Happily, the restaurant redeemed itself, and strikingly so, a few nights later.
The toke salad was even better than previously. We were a little cynical at first about the mashed avocado appetizer and its wafery, insta-shatter crackers, but the chilled, spiced green stuff, studded with pomegranate seeds and perked with lemon, made us believers.
Avocado appetizer at Common Eatery
After those flavour and texture triumphs came jerk chicken wings that were easy to eat, if a little mild, on some intriguingly porridge-y and more significantly spiced rice and beans. Crisp wontons encased a smooth pork filling sufficiently seasoned so that the two on-the-side sauces weren’t a must.
Jerk chicken wings at Common Eatery
Pork wontons at Common Eatery
That salmon fillet, cooked in bacon fat so that its skin was crisp and its flesh was rich and succulent, and served with delicious tempura-battered potatoes and a dill-flecked aioli, was rave-worthy — the fish dish of our dreams.
Salmon and potatoes at Common Eatery
We had enough faith then in the kitchen to order the dreaded lambsicles. When they landed, each of the three of us chose a chop — the analogy that came to our minds was Russian roulette. We bit in, and were relieved. More than edible, they were pretty tasty.
Lambsicles (again) at Common Eatery
In the end, I’d like to give Common Eatery the benefit of the doubt. I can’t forget the first dinner there, but — and this is just a guess — perhaps the chef and his best lieutenants had Labour Day Sunday off, and that visit was the anomaly, not its follow-up. I wish the place many fewer off-nights like our first visit, and many more like our substantially better second.
phum@postmedia.com
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Peter Hum’s previous restaurant reviews
