You can take Brad Moore out of College Street but can you take College Street out of Brad Moore?

Brad Moore: an imaginative fashionista chef who opened Indian-inspired Xacutti a few years ago. The menu read seductively with spice-lite dishes such as Indo-Thai prawns in lime-mint coconut curry spice. yam fries with soy-chili sambola, spinach kofta..But Moore’s commitment to cooking was overwhelmed by the College St aesthetic – a hip, noisy bar scene and on Sundays, the ur brunch, a meal that isn’t a meal at all but a sugar/starch blowout leading to severe carbover.

So when I heard Moore was opening a new place, Eleven at Jarvis and Front, I wondered whether he’d found the faith and was going to take spice seriously.

First impression: It’s as cold as brass monkeys outside and omg Eleven has the high tech appeal of an icebreaker – grey, silver, black with long bare windows that let the icy streets snuggle right up to you. Say isn’t this overdoing the true north bit? Every surface is hard, the chairs have stiletto edges, not a sound-deadening material to be seen. The bar is front and centre with space set aside for those aiming to drink dinner. Still, the service is prompt and friendly, and while there is muzak, it isn’t too loud but then the restaurant, which can seat 65, is only half full. A few but good wines by the glass.

Moore is a dab hand at creating menu intrigue. How can anyone turn tapioca -which we used to call fish eyes and glue at school- into a fritter? Answer: I don’t think Moore has. Five little crispy squares arrive with piquant sauces, tamarind,, tomato marmelade (ketchup consistency), green chilis but I couldn’t find a fish eye among the potatoes.

The fritters themselves tap into my growing criticism of hors d’oeuvres - and for that matter amuse-bouches which threaten to become a meal in themselves - which stun gun the rest of the meal.

A couple of fritters with spicy dips and my appestat sinks, and when I look over the menu, I suspect that such other appetizers as yam fries, honey chicken, root vegetable rice cakes with tomato-mustard sauce are competing with the entrée to come.

I call this tapas creep: a menu is no longer a dinner’s game plan but a tip sheet for assorted offerings. Seems to me that once upon a time, hors d’oeuvres prepped the palate without overwhelming it. Wasn’t that why oysters and caviare were invented, and smoked salmon, smoked eel. They got the gastro-juices going for the big event – the Djokovic-Tsongas final - of the meal, long, intense, complicated, and served with maximum drama and skill. A restaurant’s menu should be designed to guide the eater to the heights.

How much more enjoyable it would be if the duck breast was presented alone, the slices fanned out on a plain plate. It is after all the focus of my entire meal. Instead the duck breast slices are balanced on a layer of spinach over a chunk of masala mashed potatoes and then placed in a small bowl which makes it hard to get to the food!

Moreover I don’t want to eat this dog’s dinner, everything jumbled up. I remove the plate under the bowl, put three slices of the commendably rare duck on it, and add a spoonful of the spinach and Masala mash. Now it’s clear that the advertised sesame-tamarind seasoning on the duck is mia. The curry-flavoured mash helps, but not so much as the Manchego truffled Yukon mash which I’ve ordered as a side dish.

Please bring back the old way of serving entrees. The entrée itself, whether fish, meat or eggs, accompanied by side dishes picked by the customer. This notion that the chef only knows best is nannyish.

A side is meant to be a sideshow not the dinner’s star! Yet star is the only proper description for the spiced onion strings ($4) – thank you Japan for inventing the hand-held Benriner mandoline which is a great inducement to eat more vegetables. A cloud of delicately battered red onions arrive with a pepper aoli which at first doesn’t register but then – Kaboom!. This dish is a winner, and it’s light enough to be an hors d’oeuvre.

Other picks aren’t so successful – green beans with coconut and lentils are a wash, and the barbecued back ribs are a cinnamon-guava sugar rush – this is an emblematic fashionista dish, it’s exotica for its own sake rather than seriously explored fusion. But then Moore redeems himself with superb gingered beets.

And he further redeems himself with an absolutely irresistible carrot toffee pudding with strands of more toffee – toffee is much richer and more flavourful than caramel because it contains butter,

The server asks if we’d mind waiting for the dessert? Of course not. I want my dinner to be a long one, I hate the way some restos rush the courses out before I’ve had time to reflect on them. I want SLOW restaurants as well as slow food. The pay off is greater pleasure.

Eleven is an infuriating paradox. Here’s a gifted chef with some wacky ideas who appears not to take himself seriously. If only he could follow his star and just cook and then I think he would have a destination restaurant filled with fans of his unique cooking. As it is, he’s a dilettante, skating over surfaces. Nobody can be all things to all people and what artist wants to be?

**Eleven. 11 Jarvis St 416-981-1919. Dinner: food plus tax for two: $100