Toronto’s top 100 restaurants under $100 — our definitive list of the most delicious meals in the city - Toronto Star

There may be no better sign you’re in a great restaurant than when you start messaging your friends before you’ve even left, “You have to eat here ASAP!”

As we reported this project, that happened time and again — we found cooking so shout-it-from-the-rooftops delicious we just couldn’t keep our fingers from hitting send.

This inaugural Top 100 Under $100 is our definitive list of the most exciting, unique and breathtakingly tasty restaurants around Toronto. (On Oct. 20, we’re hosting a food festival featuring dozens of the restaurants. More info here.)

As this project’s name implies, not a single one of these spots will break the bank. The most you’ll need for a great meal for two is $100 before tax and tip. At nearly three-quarters of them, the cheque tops out at $50 or $75. Does that make these restaurants any less incredible? Not even remotely. Exactly none of our picks are merely “good for the price.”

In a metropolis as diverse as the GTA, finding the 100 very best restaurants isn’t a simple task. It’s harder still when you’re sending readers out to spend their own money — a responsibility we will never take lightly. So, our goal throughout wasn’t just to have an opinion; opinions are cheap. We knew we had to get our list right. (For more on how we made the list — and to meet our 11 food-obsessed critics — click here.)

In the list that follows, you’ll find the city’s very best tacos, pizza and takeout sushi, its greatest dim sum (downtown and uptown), its tastiest noodles (pho, ramen, lasagna, lamian), its spiciest Bengalaru-style chicken biryani and its glowiest date-night haunts. You’ll find its best business lunches, and far-and-away the most delicious places that make an extra effort for kids.

There are full-service French and Laotian, Salvadoran and Vietnamese-ish bistros, destination brunch spots, an only-in-Toronto charcoal chicken shack and burgers aplenty — including our possibly controversial pick for the single-greatest cheeseburger in town.

You’ll find a few gaps in our list, of course, and not for lack of trying. (We’re looking at you, Southern BBQ.) If it isn’t here, we couldn’t find any place consistently great. What you also won’t find are those city “classics” that coast on empty hype or reputation. If we wouldn’t send our friends on their own dime, we’re also not going to send you.

So how’d we do? We’d love to hear your experiences, as well as your picks for the GTA’s best restaurants. Share your thoughts and recommendations in the comments below.

i The raucous room jams the best of Toronto's frenzied food scene into a single menu of snack-sized items. Nab a spot at the bar

The house specialty at this raucous room is jamming the best parts of Toronto’s frenzied food scene — Chinese-style steamed buns, steak tartare, patatas bravas, Trini doubles and jerk fish — into a single menu of snack-sized items. Loud flavours, big textures and zero cutlery. Somehow, it works, and breathtakingly well. The “general tso-fu’s” sweet, crisp-fried tofu on sticks all but explodes into your mouth. The steamed bun comes loaded with sticky, slow-roasted pork belly; it’s fluffy, fatty, five-bite heaven, licked with pickled celery and ginger and fresh watercress crunch. The brisket for the Reuben is smoked in-house, and the tempura-fried Singaporean pepper crab is so good you’re liable to finger mop its darkly fermenty sauce right off the plate. If you can, nab a spot at the horseshoe bar, staffed by elite bartenders. Most nights, it devolves into a very good time. Jake Edmiston