Cinq OHH One!

Cinq-oh-one is a playful double entendre for the address of the gorgeous new College Street restaurant from owner Toufik Sarwa, of Amber in Yorkville.  The restaurant is beautiful from the moment you set foot in it and the feel reminds you of being in a contemporary art gallery.  This is a perfect venue to catch up with my sis (check out her blog about our dinner date at Lucky Penny).  The dream team from Commute Home (Sara Parisotto, Hamid Samad, Marlo Onilla) are responsible for the design and they definitely created a great concept between modern interspersed with Sarwa's memories- most famously noted is an outline of a 1960's Citroen which was his childhood family car.  I also quite enjoyed looking over and seeing a leather-covered pommel horse in the middle of the back part of the restaurant and visualized our waiters bouncing back and forth on it.

The cuisine is rustic with a French bistro flare with the traditional croque-monseiur and steak frites but standouts included a foie gras hot dog which was definitely contemplated.  However my beautiful sister and I decided on sharing the grilled octopus with sherry vinegar and the steak tartare as our appetizers.

The octopus was so tender and perfectly down- definitely a favourite dish for us!  The tartare had an interesting herb mixture making it a very unique parsley flavour and very refreshing.  Our main we decided to try the jerk spiced sable fish which was on special.  It was paired with basmati rice, bok choy and 2 crab croquettes.  The sable fish was so tender, it melted in your mouth but I didn't really taste any kick from the spice rub and was expecting it to be a bit more punchy.  The croquettes were crunchy and didn't add too much to the dish but were just a good thing to have and may have sold the dish to us.  We also ordered the mac-and-cheese with duck, ham and black truffle for a little comfort.  This dish was good with just the right amount of salt from the duck and the big slices of ham.

We had just the right amount of food and opted out of dessert when our waiter insisted that we try the trio of tarts and so we obliged and were we glad!   They were amazing, the lemon tart which is always a favourite of mine, the coconut and banana tart- a nice treat and la piece de resistance the chocolate and caramel sea salt mousse tart - it was to die for and I'm not even a huge chocolate fan.  It was the salt mixed in with the chocolate - what an amazing combo and almost had us licking the plate off!!!

Would love to go back and try the braised shortribs with chestnut gnocchi and of course the foie hot dog!

**** stars
Cinq01- 501 College Street (At Palmerston)
416-964-1555
Hours:
Mon. - Sat. 5:30pm - 1:00am
Dinner for 2 with cocktails - $175 with gratuity