Toronto’s Top 5 Restaurants of 2026

Toronto’s dining scene has rarely felt more varied—or more accomplished. Here are the city’s top five restaurants from our 2026 List. Quetzal’s open-fire Mexican cooking just keeps getting better and better. At Edulis, even the simplest things are a cut above (say, the crusty Red Fife bread or a finger sandwich of shaved black truffle and butter from St. Brigid’s Creamery), and impeccable seafood is the star of many plates. Alo’s new look and fresh culinary direction mean increasingly multicultural plates, like a play on chicken Kiev that swaps poultry for lobster and adds Thai saucing. At 20 Victoria, chef Rafa Covarrubias delivers robustly flavoured, ultra-contemporary Mexican cuisine of a very high order. And Linny’s chef David Schwartz’s fine-dining recreation of the classic Jewish American steakhouse features intelligently conceived dishes executed with precision. More from the List at the link in bio.

Quetzal

Everything at this sleek and attractively curvaceous restaurant points to the grill — 10 metres of open fire fuelled by wood and charcoal. Here, fire is no prop. Just about every dish is built around items cooked over flame or ember. It looks simple enough, but this level of open-fire cooking requires much discipline and experience. Fortunately, chef Steven Molnar and his team are up to the challenge. Quetzal is settling comfortably into its eighth year, its upscale Mexican cuisine seemingly getting better and better. Read the rest here.

Edulis

This destination restaurant disguised as a modest bistro is something of a time warp — and in so many delightful ways. The inspiration is a bygone era, before haste intruded on the civility of the dining experience, and when the quality of a dish was measured by its taste and respect for the best culinary traditions. So put away your mobile phone (as the menu requests), relax (the table is yours for the night) and feast, delightedly, on the experience. The warm and ultra-competent service staff led by Philip Shaw makes this easy. And the kitchen, helmed by Michael Caballo and his wife, Tobey Nemeth, guarantees it. Their guiding culinary lights are the great traditional Michelin-starred restaurants of Spain and France, whose menus adorn the walls — and that collective experience has been very successfully distilled here. Read the rest here.

Alo

You don’t stay on top by standing still. So, in January this year, with his flagship restaurant’s 10th anniversary receding in the rear-view mirror, Patrick Kriss closed Alo, had it gutted, and then relaunched in early March with a new look and fresh culinary direction. The barroom lounge is now framed with an arched silver-painted wall. The dining room has acquired an inset ceiling with diffused lighting, curvaceous walls, lush hues of beige and burgundy, and plush new carpeting. The adjoining rooms feel more in sync than previously. They also now share the same dégustation menu of six or ten courses. Read the rest here.

20 Victoria

At a small, chef-driven restaurant like this culinary oasis in the financial district — the kitchen is open, front and centre, and the cooks often deliver their plates directly to the customer — the arrival of a new executive chef inevitably means a new direction. And in the case of Rafa Covarrubias replacing Julie Hyde, the change has been dramatic. Simple, ingredient-forward Western European cooking has been swapped out for robustly flavoured, ultra-contemporary Mexican cuisine of a very high order. Covarrubias and his team cooked well enough at Oakville’s multi-menu, 70-seat Hexagon for it to earn a Michelin star. Now he and his transplanted team (duck-savant chef de cuisine Jordan Wilkinson and sous-chef Victoria Rinsma) are free to focus on a single tasting menu for a 24-seat dining room — and the results are next-level. Read the rest here.

Linny’s

After success with Chinese cuisine at Sunnys Chinese and Mimi Chinese, David Schwartz turns his attention to a fine-dining recreation of the classic Jewish American steakhouse. Linny’s is named for his mother, Linda, and her framed recipes for Rocky Road Fudgies and other treats hang in the bar. The 80-seat dining room offers nostalgia of a different kind — mid-century-modern elegance with genuinely comfortable banquettes and white linen tablecloths, all softly lit to a golden glow. Meat is central to the menu with steaks of various cuts and sizes sourced from top Ontario and P.E.I. farms, impeccably seared under an overfired broiler, then brushed with pastrami tallow butter. Read the rest here