ity the suburb kid manque who arrives in Toronto only to find that the legendary after-hours café, Futures on Queen Street, is now a sexy resto-lounge where the kids are more likely to be discussing 401Ks than K holes.

Yet, the new Habitat still honours its Queen Street roots. The food is competent and occasionally clever, though it's never really stellar. Try the smaller, inexpensive tasting apps so you can dig the menu without breaking the bank or your belly. A strong point is the wine list (believe it or not). Uniformly priced so to encourage sampling that new grape. And who knows. Now that the 90's club kids all have nice banking jobs and book deals, maybe they'll make this their new clubhouse.

Let's call this new Zeitgeist "sylvan chic." Post–September 11, fashionable restaurateurs seem to be crowding their menus with comforting free-range foods (XXX, Musa, Aunties & Uncles ll) indulging in earthy, orange-hued lighting schemes (Crush, Toba, Crush), these trends converge on an almost alarming scale. The walls of the re-worked room are clad in sleek paneling. At the front is a swank bar, and at the back is the open kitchen, and in between is pure dining and schmoozing utopia. The intent would be to dine, only at Habitat, there's also a frenetic after-hours region, replete with all the accruements the average hipster should need.

Predictably, when we asked our waiter about the derivation of the restaurant's name, he said, "To be honest, I think it just sounded cool." The coolest of the appetizers was a sizable portion of pan seared calamari with roasted garlic. There was a parade of demure salads, the best of which was a rare flanked steak on Julienne Vegetables, dripped with a mushroom-based sauce.
Popular excesses are mostly absent from the dinner menu, which is almost chaste by the standards of the city's other trendy dining establishments. A roasted breast of chicken served with mashed potatoes shot through with roasted red pepper and goat cheese (paired with a surprisingly nonsticky lemon risotto) reigned supreme. The Striploin was passable, but other entrées some were better than that, particularly the salmon which had a tender texture and was tinged with a yellow pepper coulis. A tidy, little roundup, for a shiny, new venue,

Part restaurant, part nightclub, this wood-paneled new hot spot tries to please both foodies and scenesters. It's so ambitious that it just might work. - D.E.


Review this Place

Read Reader Reviews on Habitat