Alo at Home

Transforming their elegant parade of tweezer-precise tasting menus to takeaway, this oft sold-out experience from Canada’s top restaurant features five courses of daintily labelled, carefully packaged dishes. Accompanied by a personalized menu, easy-to-follow serving instructions and an ambience-setting Spotify playlist drafted by chef Patrick Kriss himself, the weekly-changing meal might start with scrumptious cheddar-jalapeño-filled, black-onion-crusted gougères, shucked oysters and lightly dressed crudo. Expect the best of the season, but not necessarily ours in Canada. White and black truffle menus were successive winter standouts. Early spring brought white asparagus from France, grill-charred and bathed in brown butter, followed by a perfectly pink rack of lamb with smoked yogurt. Close your eyes for a moment and be whisked back to Alo’s stunning third-floor dining room while savouring an elegant torched-meringue-capped lemon tart.

—Renée Suen

Aloette in the ’hood

If you live in Liberty Village or its immediate environs, and your Aloette takeout habit is curtailed only by a fear of wilted, over-travelled French fries and tepid fried chicken, be advised that things are looking up. Later this spring, the Alo Restaurant Group is opening a takeout-only satellite kitchen in a newly leased 800-square-foot space on East Liberty Street. Further takeout-only locations of the hugely successful Alo diner will be announced soon.

—Staff