michael murray

On Tuesday, a bunch of us took advantage of the Winterlicious Festival (where high end Toronto restaurants offer a discounted Table d’Hote menu) and went down the Bymark restaurant for dinner.

Located at the base of the Toronto Dominion Tower in the financial district, the Bymark is headed by celebrity chef Mark McEwan and is conspicuously expensive. The point of a restaurant like the Bymark, I think, is not to achieve culinary excellence, but to create an impressive ambience of elitism. To eat their predictably good, but not great food, you need money, and really, that’s all your business associates need to see. You have money, and you care enough about them, to spend it.

Like a characterless restaurant you might see in a movie or lifted from the pages of a luxury magazine, the Bymark projects an inoffensive modernity. It’s the sort of place that conceals character rather than reveals it, if that makes any sense.

At the table next to us sat a group of thick-necked businessmen. Their meal complete, they stabbed away on their Blackberry’s as they sipped their postprandial scotch. Discussing the Dion Phaneuf trade, they used the first names of the architects of the deal in such a way as to make you think that they belonged to the same golf club, which was likely the point.

Across from them sat three young women who were conspicuously overdressed. Looking nervous, as if this was their first night in Manhattan and they were hoping to see some celebrities, they kept their heads down, concentrating on their iPhones.

I’m not sure what I was expecting out of my dining experience, but as always, I was hoping for a leisurely and decadent evening that would see us charm the staff and receive free drinks. Well, nothing of the sort happened. We were seated without much warmth or competence, and then rocketed through our meal at such a reckless velocity that our appetizers appeared on the table before our wine and cutlery.

The food was good, but far from memorable. The plates felt like they’d been made to get the job done rather than wow the diner. Expedient and loveless, the whole experience was kind of disappointing, even vaguely humiliating.

I felt manipulated, like I’d been strapped onto a conveyor belt and then processed by some Winterlicious machine that couldn’t have cared less about my experience, but had an eye on the bottom line, just as you might imagine things would feel in the heart of the financial district.