(upbeat music)
- Hey everybody, it's gunnarolla.
I'm here today at Assembly Chef's Hall in Toronto, Canada.
It's a brand new dining experience
and pretty unique in North America.
It's perfect if you're like me
and you just wanna eat all the things.
You'll find them here.
Let's check it out.
Assembly Chef's Hall is a new concept in Downtown Toronto
where you can experience global cuisine
from 17 of Toronto's top chefs.
So I'm here with Andreas,
the mastermind behind Assembly Chef's Hall.
I'm walking into this space.
It's unlike anything I've experienced in Toronto.
It's not a food court, it's not a market.
What is this?
- So the Chef's Hall is a chef service restaurant
where you transact directly with best-in-class chefs
from across the city in each of their categories.
So from barbecue to Thai,
to standing omakase to vegan.
There's something for everyone within the space
and you as a customer can engage,
interact directly with 17 of Toronto's best chefs,
who've each designed and built their own restaurants
within the incubator space.
- [Gunnarolla] For someone like me
who can be very indecisive when it comes to what to eat,
I can just walk around-- - Totally.
- And get inspired. - You can do that.
And sometimes you're dining out with someone else
that you can never agree on on what to have
and the beauty is you can come here,
neither of you can agree but you can agree on the fact
that there's something for both of you here,
even though each of you may end up
having something different that night.
- [Gunnarolla] Well if there's one person
I know I can agree with,
it's Chef Nick Liu, the genius behind DaiLo
and now Little DaiLo.
- Dude, you know what, come back here.
I'm gonna feed you some stuff.
- [Gunnarolla] So how would you describe
the food that you serve at DaiLo, Little DaiLo.
- We like to call it new Asian cuisine.
We take some of the things
that I was taught by my grandmother
and kind of switch them around a little bit.
It is really kind of a big cross
between French techniques and French plating
with Asian techniques and Asian flavors.
So little DaiLo is, some of our greatest hits
like the sweet and sour pork,
truffle fried rice, the Asian slaw.
Now we have some peking duck
wnich is confit duck first
and then we deep-fry them
so it's nice and crispy on the outside,
really soft kind of confit meat on the inside.
Look at those (bleep). - It's (bleep).
- And massive. - It's (bleep) beautiful.
(laughing)
So this is what you call the DaiLo platter.
It's everything that we do here at Little DaiLo.
- This is my lunch and my dinner.
- DaiLo.
(laughing)
- [Gunnarolla] Okay, so many different scents.
I can smell the truffle, the sweet and sour.
We got this deep-fried amazingness.
Where do you begin eating this?
- I would probably start
with taking the meat off the duck.
- [Gunnarolla] Oh, it just peels right off.
- [Chef Nick] It just pulls right off.
- [Gunnarolla] So you get your pancake.
- [Chef Nick] We'll take some of the cucumber salad.
- I'm gonna go ahead, first bite.
Mmm!
- The thing is, the reason why I came up
with this style of Peking duck
is 'cause whenever I'm in Chinatown or a Chinese restaurant
and I'm eating these, the first course,
I'm always like,
"You know what'd be really great in this,
like confit duck.
- I so agree. - 'Cause--
(laughing)
- Chopsticks agree.
- You got those nice kind of salty, the fatty.
- Yeah. - Right?
And then you still get that crispy from the outside
from frying it.
So we call this sweet and sour pork hocks.
(upbeat music)
- I love the combination of textures.
Outside it's crispy.
Love the crispy but inside it's so tender
compared to food court spring salad.
This is not overbearing.
- [Chef Nick] And it's made with all-natural ingredients.
- It's a color you'd find in nature.
It's not a radioactive red.
Next to Little DaiLo,
you'll find Boemo by Chef Ivana Raca
and Chopped Canada's Brad Smith.
- Boemo, we just thought bohemian vibes, free spirit,
that's what we are.
We don't wanna put ourselves in a box
and say we do Italian or French food or this and that.
We say our motto is we cook whatever the (bleep) we want.
- Essentially that's what made me fall in love
with Ivana's food was,
you can ask her to do anything
and the first time she's gonna make it, it's gonna be epic.
And when I came to her I said,
"This is gonna be a really tough task,
what I'm gonna ask you to do.
I'm gonna give you 400 square feet of a brand new kitchen,
I'm gonna put a thousand people a week in front of you.
I wanna do a small menu
and I wanna execute it to the highest level
but I want it the fastest possible.
And so what we've done now
is we've taken her gnocchi,
which is top 10 three years in a row in Toronto.
We've taken a burger
that's gonna be on everyone's top 10 list this year
and we've done everything fresh to order,
that day in under four minutes.
- [Chef Ivana] So today we're gonna be sampling
the white truffle cream gnocchi,
roasted mushrooms, shaved black truffle right on top,
and just finished with a little bit of parmesano.
- [Gunnarolla] All right, gnocchi,
my favorite of the pastas.
- Yeah, this one's gonna be great
'cause it's truffle gnocchi with ricotta,
some of my favorite two combinations.
That's good, eh?
Soft, just melts in your mouth.
- That truffle.
- [Chef Nick] I'm telling you truffle
is one of my all-time favorite things.
- [Gunnarolla] You can make any ordinary dish
super fancy with truffle.
- [Chef Nick] You really can.
(laughing)
- That's love.
That's love.
Our next stop is Tachi,
Canada's first stand-up sushi shop
specializing in an omakase experience
that's limited to eight spots and 30 minutes.
For this traditional experience,
the sushi chef decides which items you eat.
- Omakase basically is trust.
You trust the chef
whatever that he gives out to you to eat.
Seeing the customer eating the sushi right away
and enjoying it,
having a smile on their face,
I think it's the most satisfying thing for a chef.
I believe we are different
because we really really emphasize
on how we season and cook the rice.
The rice is very important.
It's kinda like,
no one really wants to eat some soggy pasta.
It doesn't matter how good the sauce is.
I'll leave it there.
- Yeah, so in my opinion,
Jackie does some of the best rice in Toronto
and that's why his sushi is so good
'cause it's really all about the rice.
And isn't that beautiful?
I mean it's like our rice is-- - Yeah.
- It's glistening, it's beautiful.
I mean the way he makes it as well.
I think anybody can enjoy this, right?
You put it in your mouth,
everything kind of speaks for itself.
- Well I think too in North America
we're so used to all-you-can-eat sushi
and I just need to cram
all this stuff in my mouth. - Yeah.
- [Gunnarolla] Which is, I mean, which is ridiculous
'cause they're not using good quality products
and I think people that come here,
well actually don't know the difference automatically.
- [Gunnarolla and Chef Nick] Cheers.
- Mmm!
(laughing)
I haven't had real sushi in Toronto 'til today.
I've never had-- - It's so good.
(laughing)
- [Gunnarolla] Next on today's menu
is Cherry Street Bar-B-Que
specializing in pit-smoked meats,
drawing on a variety of regional styles and influences
and they've perfected their techniques,
so don't expect to need a lot of extra sauce.
- We do traditional Texas style, southern-style barbecue,
all cooked on wood.
No gas, no electric.
Today we're gonna taste the menu.
I'm not gonna cheat you.
(laughing)
I want you guys to eat it all.
So we'll put a nice little platter together for you.
It'll consist of our baby backs, our sides,
some turkey brisket, a little pulled pork,
and you definitely gotta try the beans
'cause people can't stop talking about it.
- Oh god, it's so good.
Jesus Christ.
(laughing)
- [Gunnarolla] It's perfect.
The texture, the tenderness is perfect,
the taste is perfect.
It's not too messy.
I hate when you got meat
and it's just covered in sauce.
- Eat some of that right there.
Right?
- That rub, what the hell?
(laughing)
These beans though.
(laughing)
Alright, I think that means it's time for dessert.
We're heading over to Short and Sweet BakeShop
where you'll find delicious takes
on your favorite homemade classics
baked from scratch every morning
using only the finest ingredients.
We are a nut-free bakeshop.
So no nut products, peanuts, tree nuts all that stuff.
We bake from scratch fresh everyday.
For this location, we deliver here multiple times a day.
We are the only bakeshop at Assembly.
We're for the most part, the only dessert spot here.
So yeah, you can expect
some really really fun cool stuff from us.
Today we're gonna try two different Sammies
and the cupcake flavors.
- Okay, love s'mores.
Cheers. - Cheers, man.
Yeah, nothing wrong with that.
(laughing)
- Alright, there's a lot going on here.
We got chocolate, we got marshmallow,
we got a cookie, we got cupcakes.
We got explosions, we got a mess.
That's a sign of a good meal though.
Thanks so much for watching.
We'll see you next time.
A la prochaine.
That's just a first taste
of some of the many different options
you can try at Assembly Chef's Hall.
Thanks for watching.
Don't forget to subscribe and ‘like’ gunnarolla
for more food and travel recommendations.
A la prochaine!