YOU CAN’T JUDGE a restaurant by its bookshelves — but sometimes, it helps. And when you’re on a first visit somewhere, give the unfamiliar dining room a scan and catch that thick, consequential volume Noma 2.0 keeping company with Christian F. Puglisi’s Relæ: A Book of Ideas, among other seminal culinary tomes, and you can safely assume that the falafel you just ordered will venture beyond the ordinary.
Yes, falafel.
After the thousands of votes were assessed and tabulated for our 2025 people’s choice award, the uncontested victor proved a relatively new Middle Eastern restaurant in Roncesvalles Village, deep in Toronto’s west end. And as it turns out, its Jordanian chef- proprietor, Moeen Abuzaid, racked up a decade’s worth of cutting- edge NYC kitchen experience (WD-50, 11 Madison Park, etc.) before deciding to settle in his wife Asma’s hometown of Toronto and open a first restaurant of his own.
Arbequina is a restaurant of principles — it’s zero waste, and dry. It also has culinary ambition, with the intention of casting the traditional foods of Abuzaid’s Jordanian youth in a new light, enhanced with new technique applied to quality local ingredients (along with spices from his family’s market back home).
The room is contemporary and welcoming, its grooved green walls and polished white stone tabletops offset by warm, brown banquettes and a dark-stained wood floor. Once you get past the list of imaginative non-alcoholic cocktails (and token de-alcoholized wine), you’ll find the menu extensive and as indulgent as can be — for a kitchen that shuns butter and cream. There are short ribs and a striploin, whole chickens, even; and truffles make appearances, too.
The aforementioned falafel is unconventionally cast from potato, its shell crisp and filling smooth, nestled on a bed of tahini and tomato salsa. Hummus is made from lima beans and topped with nuggets of braised, aromatic lamb. Don’t miss the eggplant ganoush scattered with crisp-fried lentils. The brightly flavoured sea bass is succulent and crisp-skinned, and the two-way chicken (part grilled, part fried) is a success on both counts. After enjoying a sticky date cake with cinnamon ice cream, and chocolate cake with semifreddo, we all agreed: the people chose well.
—STAFF
