I’m having a Mitch Albom moment, I want to hug this restaurant as I would a mother. It’s called Sidecar and its in one of those negligible shoeboxes in the Portugese section of College which is still called Little Italy in honour of the late Johnny Lombardi.

Sidecar is a cocktail and I’ve been mulling over when I should confront cocktail creep. Wouldn’t you know it just as we get some good Canadian wines,the cocktail becomes the slug de jour. After all, gin can’t be corky and I know sadly whereof I speak - having just visited a new wine bar where I was served not one but two glasses of different corky wine in a row.

But something else catches my eye. Sidecar offers a $20 prix fixe on Tuesdays, why that’s tonight, then heart sinking a little, I see that its demo is 20s to 40s. What the heck. I slap on my blue mirrors hoping they’ll disguise the laugh lines and make tracks.

The moment I step inside the restaurant, I feel at home. Just as some people are easy in their skin, so Sidecar is happy to be just slightly off kilter. Start with the welcome, often a barbed first contact. Most times you’re led to your seat. There are those who say you must never accept the first seat offered but insist on another, just to show who’s boss. But Casey Bee, the co-owner, is a person whisperer: he disarms us immediately. He says “sit wherever you like.” Funny what a difference that makes. We have time to scan the room. Décor is millennial neutral, brick walls, wood floors, soft lights but the space is interestingly carved up. Tables in the window, a banquette, on the right a bar runs kittycorner. We pick a table in the back opposite the tiny open kitchen so we can see Sidecar’s other owner, the chef Bill Sweete,formerly of N44 and Bymark. He and his sous chef are amazingly laid back, the plates come out with calm precision.

But first the signature cocktails. Who can resist the titles, Jiggy Jiggy ( Appleton rum, lime and ginger beer) or Thai ginger lemonade lemongrass rum). I order a Tangerine sidecar ($10): lime juice, tangerine, cointreau and brandy. As I raise my glass, one of those oldfashioned champagne bowls modeled on the breasts of Diane de Poitiers, I feel the brakes come off. Ah, now I remember my Ogden Nash - “Wine’s fine, likker’s quicker.”

So twenties, I can almost hear Ella Logan’s laconic pennywhistle piping up and down and all around It Had to Be You with Benny Goodman chirping in the background. I sip the Sidecar in homage to the inimitable Jeff Healey with whom I bonded about twenties/thirties jazz. Each week I wrote my review to the beat of Jeff’s My Kinda Jazz on JazzFM91 until on March 2, Jeff died. Jeffheads out there, I’m tuning in your pain. And how to connect the dots without him?

Now to the food. I’ve brought along a skeptic who says Delia Smith’s new book How To Cheat At Food has gone to my head – a 20 buck prix fixe is pie in the sky. However, Margaret can’t but approve the homemade soda bread. The simple menu lets the food speak for itself. Intense, creamy shrimp bisque. Tomato and bean soup is terrific with its undercurrent of a hottish spice and a rumour of cinnamon – spice of the year - and I eat all my roasted beet salad because for once it’s just the right size. Restaurants aren’t very good on vegetable sides because, I’ve been told, no one orders them! Instead they proffer salads which meet the food police’s requirement of five helpings of greens a day. Eat it all and you end up feeling like a giant radish.

But chef Sweete has made a delicate manageable salad of roast beets, crackly frisee, dill sour cream, red wine vinaigrette green beans.

The four entrees are taken from Sidecar’s regular menu which is standard bistro fare. The salmon is grilled perfectly with a raw slice through the middle and bathed in a limey buerre blanc, accompanied by a few swiss chard leaves. The 8-ounce chunk of sirloin grilled to a perfect medium rare with small slim bronze frites. The oven-roasted chicken is a well judged circle of juicy breast on the leg bone with lots of dark meat which is my favourite. Asparagus is the snappy accompaniment along with jus-flavoured mashed potatoes. No sides are listed but I ask for a few green beans. They come sautéed, taste good but as Margaret says, they need another minute.

Two excellent deserts, Arborio rice pudding with cherries and a milk chocolate mousse with orange marmelade. In the line of duty,
I finish with another cocktail. The Painless Brazilian ($8)is made from strawberry cachaca, lime and eggwhites. Much more of a challenge than the deceptive Side Car. Cachaca (Ka Sha Sa) is distilled from sugar cane and assaults the tastebuds with grappa-like ferocity.

Sidecar now has the satisfied hum of a full house. There’s a table of six beside us, but we can easily chat even though music is playing. Muted Mel Torme. Another surprise in this suprising restaurant. I tot up the cost of an a la carte dinner - $60-$80 for two. Perfect for a place which has an atmosphere hard to leave.

How to rate Sidecar? A chef once described home cooking as “Oh good tasting food.” That’s my new mantra. Good tasting food.

**Sidecar577 College St 416-536-7000. No wheelchair. Not Noisy but there is Live Jazz on Fridays. Modest wines by glass up to a $75 bottle of Brunello de Montalcini. Dinner for two plus tax: $46