When I entered The Harbord Room which has just opened at 89 Harbord, I didn’t feel the tectonic plates shifting, but by the time I leave, I recognize that the city’s restaurant focus has shifted upwards from Queen and College Streets. Now Harbord Street can claim bragging rights to the title of Toronto’s top restaurant row. Don’t know anywhere else that offers such a lineup from the unctuous ***1/2 Splendido to the *** 93 Harbord, Boulevard Café, Messis, Tati, and now The Harbord Room.

THR’s got an uptown glaze on it, Brad Denton (who designed Czehoski) has made a posh ‘hood hang that is fashionable Tuscan pink, part club, part bistro with marble topped tables, studded leather chairs and only thirty seats. Great for us diners because we know chef Cory Vitiello (formerly at the Drake Hotel) is going to be personally on our case. Vitiello is a star example of the way good cooking is evolving in Toronto. He has digested the random influences that enrich the city and fused them into a deceptively simple menu which limns unfamiliar combinations along with tastes that deftly complement each other.

I’m thinking now of fragrant pink slices of olive and citrus roasted leg of lamb with braised swiss chard and what gets my personal gold medal, brown butter cauliflower in crushed potates. Salsa verde mingles ineffably with the lamb jus. The lamb is from Dingo Farms and has a slightly gamey taste which I love. I really miss the gamey mutton of my English childhood, not to mention the taste of wild game which is impossible to find here unless you’ve personally hunted it and allowed it to age uneviscerated. Yes it’s the rotting insides that impart taste, just as the bacteria eating into Brie provides the cheese with its unique flavour.

The success of this multi-taste plate shows just how well Vitiello has mastered the tricky art of marrying different flavours into an integrated whole. In this kind of cooking, just one misplaced flavour can throw the whole dish off the way flawed oboe playing can sabotage a symphony.

Our server Michael’s arms are tattoed with the Tree of Life which ripples as he downloads information in confidential style. He didn’t leave a question hanging. The menu is divided between small plates and large plates which puzzled me at first until the penny dropped. I smack my head. Of course, this is the style of the future. I think we’re going to see a lot more of this in the coming year. Customers are fretting over conventional menus, over the tyranny of the three, four, even five course dinner and the amount of food they seem expected to eat. Some just want a couple of small plates – their own plates not shared ones. Tapas is no answer. Of course we don’t eat tapas the right way. In Spain, they’re foreplay for the grand event of dinner which is hours away. Here they just don’t make the cut as a dinner replacement – too skimpy, too expensive, failing to meet the tastebud’s expectations.

Meaty Malagash oysters from N.S.suit me fine. One was sort of muddy but the mud tasted good, I hear someone or other is starting a line of mud cookies to eat with cheese. At my second dinner at THR, I ate two little chunks of seared big eye tuna with mussels, crunchy veg and a fiery saffron, chili and lime broth (a tad too salty for me) and followed up with a mellow braised duck leg, flavoursome and tender but the pumpkin risotto with shales of pecorino and an inspired touch, crispy sage, was a little on the sloppy side.

My companions gave hi fives to hot smoked organic Irish salmon with a crispy straw potato pancake. The slow cooked cabbage was enlivened by horseradish, caramelized shallot, beet and vinaigrette made with pancetta which Mario Pingue of Niagara Food Specialties has cured from the hind of Berkshire pig. It’s amazing how in a few short years, local chefs have so many good local sources to call upon. Sometimes they really make a difference as with Dingo Farms’ lamb, but I had to ask myself whether I would notice if a lesser or different pancetta was used in the vinaigrette. Naming local sources is a smart marketing move but I wonder whether this focusing on sources doesn’t sometimes detract from the chef’s skill at cooking, at transforming ingredients into something way beyond their separate parts.

Another warmer for an icy evening: braised lamb shank and Puy lentil soup with goat cheese cream stirred in, and a roasted (and moist) chicken breast with an irresistible fennel-scented chicken sausage, intense vanilla puree and foie gras sauce.

All the food is presented elegantly on plain white china and the portions are not overwhelming except for my neighbour’s steak that laps the plate – but then anyone who orders Kerr Farm’s organic,grass fed rib eye wants to be overwhelmed. It comes I see with a marrow bone.

First time I thought Vitiello wasn’t into desserts – a welder must have made the chocolate bread pudding and chocolate mousse, but next visit, he made something hot, crunchy and pineapple that was OTT, and we ended with raw milk Morbier, very good indeed.

Wine’s great. The estimable And Potvin of Niagara St. Café has put together an interesting and reasonable wine list including a $35 Corbieres, Moulin St. Jean that is food-superfriendly

THR is agreeably conversation-proof both evenings, but I must add that it’s not yet at full bar throttle for a local.

***The Harbord Room 89 Harbord, 416-962-8989. No wheelchair access.Dinner for two: food plus tax: $100

gina@ginamallet.com