Air Canada Unveils 2023 Canada’s Best New Restaurants Top 10, Celebrating the Country’s Most Exciting Culinary Talent and Showcasing Food

The Voice of Canada : The 2023 Canada’s Best New Restaurants Top 10 were unveiled today by Air Canada, with Toronto restaurant Kappo Sato taking the coveted top spot.

Led by chef Takeshi Sato, Kappo Soto is a Kappo-style Omakase restaurant where the tasting menu is prepared entirely in front of guests. In second place, the lavish steakhouse Wild Blue elevates fine dining in the mountain ski town of Whistler through its prime selection of meat and seafood. This year’s third-place winner, Marilena Café and Raw Bar, serves upscale seafood in a relaxed environment in Victoria on Vancouver Island. The full Top 10 list is featured in the November issue of Air Canada enRoute magazine and online at CanadasBestNewRestaurants.com.

“We are incredibly proud of Canada’s Best New Restaurants program, which for over 20 years has provided a platform to spotlight emerging culinary excellence across the country,” said Andy Shibata, Vice President, Brand at Air Canada. “Dining and travelling are important economic contributors within our communities, and part of our objectives every year is to help new businesses flourish and for our travellers to see the possibilities of where culinary experiences can take them.”

Canada’s Best New Restaurants 2023 highlights the top restaurants that have opened across the country between late spring 2022 and May 31, 2023, and deliver exceptional experiences through the quality of their food, level of service and commitment to culinary creativity. It is the only cross-country restaurant ranking to use a single, anonymous reviewer, and now in its 22^nd year it is also the longest running. From the culinary vision and quality of ingredients on the menu to the team spirit that surrounds it, every element factored into an equation to determine the Top 10 list.

The Top 10 were selected by food critic and author of Canada’s Best New Cookbook, Amy Rosen, who returns to the program having been the program’s first anonymous writer from 2002-2003. Over the course of a secret month-long cross-Canada journey, Amy dined anonymously at more than 30 establishments that were nominated by a panel of food industry experts.

Here is the complete list of Canada’s Best New Restaurants 2023:

1. Kappo Sato (Toronto, ON): Chef-owner Takeshi Sato, who worked at Tokyo’s Michelin-starred Ukai, conducts a two-and-a-half-hour kappo omakase in a tranquil room, where a tasting menu is prepared entirely in front of guests sitting comfortably wrapped around a smooth wooden counter.
2. Wild Blue (Whistler, BC): The luxurious steakhouse Wild Blue has elevated fine dining in the resort town Whistler. Highlights from Chefs Alex Chen and Derek Bendig include a tender pink ribeye, served with the ocean-deep umami of yakiniku sauce, and buttery pommes purées.
3. Marilena Café and Raw Bar (Victoria, BC): Chef Kristian Eligh and his team provide a new form of Vancouver Island hospitality that is upscale yet assertively unstuffy. Negroni’s on tap mix well with the Victoria restaurant’s seafood towers, plush pea agnolotti tossed with truffle butter, and ceviche mixto with pomegranate seeds.
4. Rizzo’s House of Parm (Fort Erie, ON): Chef Matty Matheson’s hometown of Fort Erie is host to his newest restaurant.  Hefty mozzarella sticks with a fresh marinara dipper are a must for the table before enjoying the name-sake saucy, cheesy, and broiled Parms, available in chicken, eggplant or veal.
5. Petit Socco (Winnipeg, MB): The intimate restaurant has 10 seats, an open kitchen and only two employees; co-owners and life partners Adam Donnelly and Courtney Molaro. The four-course dinner includes tempura shishito peppers coated in house berbere- spiced mayo sprinkled with sesame seeds and a giant tostada for two piled high with chopped poached prawns, sushi-grade tuna, Salvadoran curtido and avocado crema.
6. Bonheur D’Occasion (Montreal, QC): Chef-owner Philippe Gauthier creates one of the most generous meals of the year with a level of hospitality best described as kindness. One of the most beloved dishes is the mille feuille by pastry chef Victor Adnet made with phyllo dough, deeply caramelized with maple sugar and layered with gently whipped clover cream.
7. Folke (Vancouver, BC): In the hands of co-owner and chef Colin Uyeda, Folke’s vegan food is for anyone who enjoys gorgeous, inventive and extremely delicious food that happens to be plant-based.  Co-owner and pastry chef Pricilla Deo bakes a magnificent chocolate cake, layered with mousse, strawberry gelée, Earl Grey custard and fudge crunch.
8. Le Molière par Mousso (Montreal, QC): Chefs Antonin Mousseau-Rivard, Daniel Vézina and Samuel Sauvé-Lamothe bring the classic brasserie to life in a soaring new Quartier Latin space. Stay for dessert and order the doré meunière that usually is pan-fried in browned butter with hazelnuts and lemon, but here, uplifted with siphon sauce.
9. Espace Old Mill (Stanbridge East, QC): Jean-Martin Fortier’s inn and restaurant in Quebec’s Eastern Townships, provides visitors the most pleasant of countryside experiences. Guests will enjoy Chef Éric Gendron’s hand-chopped Legacy Speckle Park beef with sweet peppers and nasturtiums from just outside the window.
10. Darlings (Bloomfield, ON): Jesse Fader left Toronto for Prince Edward County, where he has opened this upscale pizza restaurant in Bloomfield. Dishes worth visiting include the fresh-made Stracciatella made by Fader, which is suggested as a dipping sauce, and slices of sugar pie served in crimson County cherries.