It had been many years since I’d visited Trios Bistro, the restaurant located off the Toronto Marriott Downtown Eaton Centre’s bustling lobby, so I thought I’d drop by, to see what the kitchen was up to.
Under the direction of executive chef Abraham Garcia, the kitchen is turning out inspired dishes incorporating Canadian and global flavours.
One night, chef Abraham and his team send out a soup built on a smooth broth infused with oodles of earthy mushroom flavour. Adding to the soup’s considerable charms are thick-sliced and perfectly cooked mushrooms delivering ‘meaty’ textural contrast to the silken soup.
Korean beef taco and crab cake.
Admirably tender slices of beef, salsa verde and chunks of buttery avocado are tucked inside soft wheat taco shells. The restaurant’s most popular appetizer, crab cakes are made with no filler, just lump crab meat seared until it’s crisp and sweet. They are among the finer crab cakes I’ve met.
Feather-light goat cheese croquettes perch atop a salad of wonderfully fresh arugula, baby spinach and green apple brightened by red wine poached pear vinaigrette.
Main courses continue the kitchen’s hot streak. Perfectly cooked moist salmon is partnered with baby kale quinoa salad, avocado and candied almonds. Enormous lamb rack arrives medium rare, as ordered, its meat juicy and mild and animated by mint jus butter and rich whipped potatoes. Black pepper crusts 6 oz. bison tenderloin sided with a power-packed chipotle coconut jus.
Ending the evening is a duo of terrific desserts — eggy crème brulee speckled with pecan and soft apples; and superbly moist, custardy orange bread pudding, a model of the genre.
Grilled salmon.
Providing an appropriate setting for chef Abraham’s cuisine is a soaring, airy room outfitted with a wall of picture windows giving a stunning view of Church of the Holy Trinity standing in the shadow of the Eaton Centre’s steel and glass towers.
Available for groups of up to 50 people, the restaurant’s lower area is separated from the upper area by a row of banquettes that frame an intimate, semi-private space. In addition, Trios often caters meetings of up to 14 people at the hotel.
— Don Douloff has been a restaurant critic for over 30 years and, during that time, has critiqued more than 1,400 eateries. In 1988, he studied the fundamentals of French cuisine at Ecole de Cuisine La Varenne in Paris, France. During his time in France, he furthered his gastronomic education by visiting the country’s bistros, brasseries and Michelin-starred temples of haute cuisine. He relishes exploring the edible universe in his native Toronto and on his travels throughout Canada and abroad.
