Toronto fine dining restaurants participating in Stop For Food will donate a portion
of their prix fixe menus to The Stop Community Food Centre, pictured above.

You don't get to be one of Toronto's consistently ranked top 10 (top five?) restaurants for more than 25 years by ignoring the zeitgeist. As careful as owners Chef Keith Froggett and General Manager Carl Korte are about extending the rich seam of gastronomic success that launched the careers of Jamie Kennedy, Michael Stadtlander, Joanne Yolles, Tawfik Shehata and Christine Cushing (to name only a few bright lights), they are not above adapting to the times. And adapt they do, albeit in a luxe way that makes the restaurant on top of the Avenue Road hill a local for the city's elite. Korte and Frogett led the wave of 'Credit Crunch Prix Fixe' this winter with their lobster themed set course menu. As if lobster, prepared by one of the city's best kitchens (if you're a young ambitious cook, you will kill to peel potatoes at One Benvenuto Place) wasn't enticement enough, diners were further comforted by the fact that Korte and Froggett's foray into prix fixe was actually motivated by a desire to keep the lobster fishery in Nova Scotia going after the collapse of the economy last October. They did it by buyinig up 1,000 pounds of crustacean, and Toronto ate well for it.

Now, Scaramouche is offering a 'Sparkling Menu' prix fixe. This does not appear to be in solidarity with LVMH, but rather a pleasant way to ease us all back into the idea of dining for pleasure without absolutely putting one's finances into sub-prime. Good Food Revelation expects to see more high-end Prix Fixe as the recession lingers.

On the other side of town, Mildred's Temple Kitchen is pushing prix fixe to the extreme with their "Quickie" which promises soup, a sandwich and a cookie for $15. If you're not in and out of the restaurant in 45 minutes, you get a free cookbook. As Donna Dooher explained in an email to GFR:

"As restaurateurs we struggle to satisfy both eaters and diners. Our “quickie” initiative is a bit of an experiment on our part – we have discovered that our guests want to eat local, seasonal ingredients and with some flare but they’re not ready to make the commitment of time. Particularly at lunch. By eliminating one aspect of the equation, choice, we are able to deliver fresher, faster and keep the price in line. As my mother used to say when her children complained about pork chops every Thursday night: "what do you think this is a restaurant"."

The elimination of choice means streamlining costs, as well as time. Those saving are passed onto the customer, or in the case of Stop For Food, passed onto those in society for whom a meal at any restaurant is well beyond reach. The brainchild of the Crosstown Kitchens chef collective (with help from some other friendly establishments). Restaurants participating in this summer's Stop for Food include Amuse-Bouche, C5, Cowbell, Crush, Delux, Food Studio, Frank, Grano, The Harbord Room, Kaiseki Sakura, Marben, Niagara Street Café, Torito, Universal Grill, Vertical and Zucca. ), Stop For Food guarantees between $5 and $10 from prix fixe menus of $35 to $50 will go to The Stop Community Food Centre.

"We’re thrilled to have the support of this stellar group of chefs," said Nick Saul, Executive Director of The Stop. "It takes a large, caring community to enable us to carry out our mission. The commitment shown by this community of chefs to ensuring that everyone has a place at the table makes our work possible, especially this year, when numbers in our programs are up so dramatically." For Saul, of course, numbers up means more hungry people to feed. The icing on the cake of the program, so to speak, is the commitment of the participating restaurants to offer an all-local menu, so the portion of the prix fixe assigned to food costs supports Ontario farmers. A great idee fixe.