Local Kitchen & Winebar

Everything I hoped for and more! Great vibe, helpful staff and the food was delicious.
We had the fresh pulled mozzarella and the Fazzoletti pasta — both great choices.

Had an incredible dinner tonight. The wait staff are a bit abrupt but this is probably due to being overwhelmed at times. I had the capellaci (squash and cheese) with chanterelles and pancetta and rosemary — one of the best pastas I have eaten. A nice glass of wine and panna cotta to end a perfect (US) Thanksgiving Day meal in Toronto.

This place is AMAZING!!! The staff here are so nice and you can really tell the the owners are loved by their customers and take pride in what they do. They truly capture the essence of farm to table, serving only what’s in season and in really unique ways! You may pay a little extra to eat here but why would you scoff at paying for good quality food that nourishes your body? Think about it. Cozy, tasteful, unique, neighborhood restaurant. Can’t beat it.

Love love love this place. Food is always consistently amazing (go for Ass In Seat). Servers and manager are just the friendliest people. They have a brand of soap in the bathroom I love (everything in the restaurant is Italian, including the soap), so I asked the manager Mike where I can get it. He mentioned somewhere in Woodbridge. The next time I was there, mike bought me a bag full of products from the brand! Now that’s service! Waitress Alex is my all time favorite. She brings a smile to everybody’s face.

The service and food were great but the portion sizes are very small. Service was attentive and the waitresses were friendly with good knowledge of the menu.
Corkage for $ 30 is on the high side of things but this is a small place so I understand.

Amazing authentic Italian at its best! Love that the food uses real, seasonal ingredients. Their dessert cannoli is beyond amazing!

Mon night 4 course prix fixe dinner was fantastic. The pomodoro sauce with the ziti had a nice zip to it. Perch was perfectly cooked. Finished with awesome apple fritters. Ate alone on a business trip but was very comfortable with excellent service from my waitress as well as the chef. Will definitely go back.

Wow, this place is awesome! Small and intimate like many a Toronto restaurant but not cramped or too loud. Beautifully lit with warm wood décor. The chairs could use an update but its a small complaint for an otherwise lovely experience.
My bff and I rolled in for a late dinner about 9ish on a Wednesday so we had no trouble getting a table. My vegetarian friend had recommended this place to me because they not only have vegetarian options but they aren’t afterthoughts, they are made with love and thought and intent. But first the wine…
Only local or Italian wines are available but they have a great booklet of wine describing each type and region for anyone not sure about either local or Italian wines. Our server let me try a couple as well when picking my second glass which I always appreciate. We had 3 different ones between us and I thought they were all quite nice. A bit on the pricey side $ 12 – 15 per glass but bottles seemed better priced if you’re up for it.
For dinner the menu is traditional Italian style as other reviewers have mentioned. I picked a warm dish to start — cannelini beans with artichoke and parmesean and I know it doesn’t sound like much but it was freaking delicious! So much so I’m hoping to make it myself when I’m off to Spain next week as all those ingredients are readily available there. They were happy to tell me how they made it too which I also appreciated. My bff was equally thrilled with her ceasar salad with pancetta — she was glowing about the dressing — I’d be happy to try that next time (sans pancetta of course).
For mains, I picked the pasta that was hand rolled trofie in a zucchini crème sauce. My only complaint about the meal was here — the trofie was a touch too al dente for my taste but that zucchini crème sauce was so amazing I ate the whole thing anyway. My bff had the special of the day which was a ravioli stuffed with sweet potato and lamb I think in a red sauce that she loved as well.
For dessert we tried two different ones — a fritter dish with three small fritters with a bit of sauce I can’t remember exactly and a canoli. Have to be honest here, we didn’t love either. The fritters were a bit bland as was the sauce (although cooked perfectly) and the canoli was really hard with a very meh-​tasting filling. We should have had the panna cotta. Next time!
I like that they use ingredients from their own garden, source locally and seem to really care about what they are serving. This also means they change their menu frequently which should keep returning customers happy over time.
We paid by debit if that’s useful.
A truly winning dinner, I can’t wait to go back.

Great service, great food, small and cozy restaurant. Follows Italian dining traditions. Order an app, order a pasta and then order a main! The pasta portion alone isn’t suppose to fill you up.
The restaurant being so compact means the menu has to be concise so if you want choice and big plates — this is not the place for you.
Will be back. Our server was attentive, energetic and friendly. No complaints.

This place is great. The food is fresh and innovative and tastes great!

Had a great evening here on Saturday, May 5^th with my husband, daughter and my daughter’s boyfriend. It was a nice way to end an exhausting day of helping my daughter and her boyfriend move into their new apartment.
The food was delicious and our server Jess did a terrific job! It was our first time, but it won’t be the last.

We had a good dinner experience here. The place was very crowded on a Saturday night but they were able to get us seated shortly after our reservation time. No big deal.
The food was very good and interesting. Complaints about serving sizes are justified, however. The prices are not cheap and the serving sizes are relatively small. I would definitely be concerned about coming here if I was starving. This is more appropriate if you want a small amount of nice food. There’s nothing wrong with that, but if you come expecting something else you’ll be disappointed.
Would also like to see a stronger beer list. But this is nit picking, they have nice wines and that’s their thing so again, it’s not really fair to complain that the wine bar doesn’t have good enough beer.
So — to enjoy, be prepared to spend, be prepared for «elegantly» sized portions, be prepared to have wine not beer.

Overrated and overpriced. Left hungry and feeling ripped off. This place has gone downhill since our prior visits– maybe their success has gotten to their head. We used to be regulars, now never going back.
The two big no no’s:
1. Service: APPALLING. As some other reviewers said, it felt like the staff were inconvenienced by us. Were made to wait 30 mins for our reserved table with ZERO apology. Also very abrupt with us when cleaning the table and retrieving our jackets later. No thank you’s, nothing.
2. Food: minuscule portions (tapas sized– for all four diner’s meals) with main pricing. Mine (trofie pasta) was $ 18 for ~four tablespoons of pasta+pesto. Another’s was $ 25 for ~2 tablespoons of shredded boar + a smearing of polenta no bigger than my palm. Expect no more than small shavings of every ingredient listed. What put us off is that our waitress didn’t bother mentioning this. I even confirmed with her that they were main dishes. As our food arrived one by one we just started laughing in disbelief.
After a $ 290 «meal» for 4 (1 app, 4 mains, 1 bottle of wine) we went down the road and got burgers.

Local Kitchen is a good spot on Queen near Roncesvalles. Here are the key points…
1. The food is very good. I had beef tongue for the first time here. It was tender and delicious. The portions were generous.
2. The service was ok, but the server really did not know the menu or wine list well.
3. The menu is very limited. In fact, there were only three main plates on the night I went, and one was beef tongue and another was vegetarian. You could get stuck not finding something that looks appealing.
4. The price falls in line with all the other small restaurants with a similar vibe… Small, old-​looking, and dark. It is not a particular value or a bank breaker.
Overall, I would give the place 3 and ½ stars. The food was good, but the overall experience did not leave me wanting to hurry back.

Enjoyed dinner at Local last Saturday evening with my wife and another couple. Food was good. I had the Bison tartar and my wife had the Passato Di Cavolfiore for starters, both were pleasantly surprising. For mains, I had the tagliatelline which was yummy but quite sparing in portion for a $ 17 pasta. There are no descriptions of what things are on the menu so unless you speak Italian or have been there before, you’re going to need to ask your server what everything is. Speaking of the server, ours was good… attentive and helpful.
The only negative came at the end of the meal. It was busy and we felt rushed. We asked for the bill and after we signed off, they came to our table with our coats. We had not asked for them and we were not ready to leave, but now they were standing there with our coats in hand. It was not like we were closing the place… it was only 8:30pm. That said, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt that perhaps they misread a cue and were sincerely thinking they were being helpful and on the ball bringing our coats.

Another stop on my Toronto wine bar and restaurant tour with Local Kitchen and Winebar. I tried 2 Ontario Wines here and 1 from BC (one of the few BC wines available by the glass that I saw at the places I visited).
The food was seriously excellent. I had the Potato gnocchi with taleggio and rapini to start, this dish was rich and satisfying with the gnocchi cooked perfectly — they were soft but had just the right amount of resistance to the bite.
For the main, I had the Lake Erie Bass with turnips, spring onion and fern fronds — this was a great example of a dish with a small number of ingredients done well — I wasn’t totally sold on the fern fronds, having a odd texture, but otherwise it was great.
My brother had the Ziti pasta and a spatchcock special for his main and was very complimentary towards both.
The service from the waitress was very friendly and we appreciated the attention that she gave us.
Overall, we had a great meal here and I hope to come back in the not too distant future.

I will admit that on my list of favourite foods, Italian is not very near the top, which is why I find this restaurant all the more remarkable. First off, in the 3 years I’ve been going, I’ve always had an exceptional meal. In fact, the menu is pretty much unchanged over that time and ordering the same dish years apart always brings back the sweet memory of the first time I had it. That kind of consistency is almost extinct in restaurants today.
The reason Local Kitchen first won me over is simply that all the food is so fresh. The pasta is made by hand, the cheese by hand, the cured meats by hand, the vegetables feel like they came out of the garden 10 minutes earlier. A tomato tastes like the tomato my mom used to grow and I’d eat off the plant after school. It’s real ingredients that make these dishes jump to life in a way that no other Italian restaurant (or nearly any other restaurant) does in Toronto.
The ambiance is nice, cocktails and wine selection are solid, the service is friendly and the price is fair. After I eat 3 courses here, I don’t feel overly full, but I feel complete. Extremely highly recommended.

Went here for an intimate dinner and had the chef’s table tasting menu. We had 4 apps to share, 2 pastas, 1 main and a dessert plate. So worth it and everything was enjoyable, including the main entrée — skirt steak. The apple pannacotta was the stand-​out dessert on the apple dessert plate and arguably, one of the best pannacottas I have ever had in this city.
The pastas were the main draw for us and I would have to agree that fresh pasta definitely tastes much more decadent. The accompanying sauces were soooo good and I had to restrain myself from licking the plate. I have tried a fair share of Massimo’s italian restaurants and a smattering of other Italian restaurants in the city and I have to say I was ultra pleased with Local’s Italian menu and I definitely felt that the meal was worth every dollar.
By the way, we picked up that most of the seasonal produce is straight from a family farm in King City — and you can definitely taste the freshness of the local produce. It’s still farm-​to-​fresh dining but not overpriced, stuffy and you don’t feel ripped off at the end of the meal (Mark McEwen, I beg you to note this for future consideration).

Amazing cocktail program.
Intriguing and tasty specials.
Dessert that kills… and I’m not one for dessert.
And an ambiance that makes it so you never want to leave… and they don’t want you to!
Ask about their pasta classes which when described sounded incredible.

There is no room in toronto for bad service anymore. with the multitude of new restaurants opening each month, chefs/​owners have to be at the top of their game from day one. some would say that my comments are unfair, but thems the breaks kids, do it right, treat your customers as guests (as if we were in your house), and demand the same of your staff.
visited local kitchen & wine bar last sunday night for dinner to celebrate drey’s departure for the ‘peg (again). it was our second visit, first time was two years (almost three) back when they had just opened. meal then was good but not terribly rememberable. Arrived with a group of seven at 6:15pm, although reservations are not taken i called ahead to let them know we were coming. a table was put together for us in the window. drinks were ordered, i stuck to my typical summer drink & ordered a negroni. wine list was perused & a bottle of gewürztraminer was ordered. upon reviewing the menu, i noticed that it seemed to have gotten much shorter than our last visit. which is not surprising seeing that they opened a second restaurant a few doors down, bar salumi (seems like they split their menu between the two restaurants).
Started with the steak tartare w crispy pigs cheeks & quail egg. the tartare was perfectly seasoned, hints of basil (i think) & the crispy pig cheeks added a much needed crunchy texture to the dish. it was a hit at the table, everyone sampled it & agreed that it was excellent. mark had the house-​cured salumi starter (see picture below) which consisted of a spicy prosciutto & three salumi’s. All were good, not as good as the tartare.
With tons of share plates making the rounds at the table (including a simple yet delicious ontario asparagus salad), i decided to order a small pasta as a main. fiddlehead season is upon us & with such as short season it was a no-​brainer that i selected the rabbit & marscapone stuffed cuscini with lemon, morels & fiddleheads. the cuscini were delicate and fluffy, ragu thick & meaty yet surprisingly light. the lemon added just enough acid. another winning dish.
Rounded out our meal with two desserts to share (between all 7 of us), a bourbon maple panna cotta & a small dome-​shaped cake with marzipan. the panna cotta was the clear winner, served in a small mason jar it was the perfect consistency, smooth & creamy with a kick of bourbon & sweetness of maple syrup. so delicious.
Its lovely when restaurants get things this right. from service to food to atmosphere, local kitchen deserves the praise & accolades they receive. can’t wait for my next visit.