Warning: This place is not for vegetarians. Black Hoof is, however, a carnivore’s dream. A bastion of the old-school. Kind of romantic, for a certain kind of eater.

“There are places like this all over the world, but strangely not in Toronto,” says one of the owners, Jen Agg, “where you can go and eat cured meat and great cheese.” Agg is the former co-owner of Cobalt, the now-defunct College Street bar; she handles the drinks. Black Hoof’s other owner, charcutier Grant Van Gameren, has put in time at such illustrious joints as Amuse Bouche, Lucien, and Canoe.

Set up in Cocktail Molotov’s old space, on the north side of Trinity-Bellwoods Park, the small bar-like charcuterie restaurant does not have a lot of space – the tiny kitchen is cramped behind the bar – and is mostly done up in chocolate brown wood, with chocolate brown wallpaper in the back. There’s a large mirror over the bar, scrawled over in sharpie, detailing the cocktail menu. Add some leather chairs and the place could be a modern take on a smoke lounge.

While charcuterie can be eaten with your hands, and is, of course, something of a small plate, it’s not the same as tapas. The point of tapas is that it’s little tastings of different flavours, and while there are certainly a variety of flavours here, the way you consume tapas and the way you consume charcuterie is very different. With tapas, one has the freedom to jump from flavour to flavour willy-nilly; Van Gameren arranges the meats from mellow to intense, so that you can work your way up, and the sharp flavours don’t threaten to overwhelm the subtlety of the mellower meats.

There’s no charcuterie menu; you just ask for a plate and Van Gameren will give you what he is featuring that night. The meat comes laid out on a cheese board so long it looks like a flat cricket bat. I try a mellow, dense foie gras with just the right amount of salt topping it; a triangle of pheasant rillette with dried cranberries and tarragon; and to finish, a small, dark slice of pork liver salami, sharp and full. Watching Agg try the rillette, Van Gameren gets an anxious look in his eye, wondering if it is too dry. Despite our protests that it is fantastic, Van Gameren concludes that he had to throw out the whole batch.