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GuideUpdated July 16, 2026

5 Best small plate Restaurants in Toronto

The best 5 restaurants for small plate in Toronto — curated by TastyPals editors.

The best small plate restaurants in Toronto are Antler Kitchen & Bar, Grey Gardens, Bar Raval, and more. Start with Antler Kitchen & Bar if you want the strongest overall first pick.

By Marcus Chen•5 ranked picks•Published July 16, 2026•Updated July 16, 2026
Methodology•Editorial team
Antler Kitchen & BarGrey GardensBar Raval
5 Best small plate Restaurants in Toronto
Google

Top picks at a glance

#1Antler Kitchen & BarBar • Dundas West • $$#2Grey GardensWine Bar • Kensington Market • $$#3Bar RavalSpanish • Toronto • $$

Who this guide is for

This guide covers the highest-rated restaurants for small plate in Toronto, sorted by Google rating and editorial judgment. Picks span Dundas West, Kensington Market and Toronto.

Quick picks

Antler Kitchen & Bar
Bar • Dundas West
Antler Kitchen & Bar is one of those rare Toronto restaurants where the concept feels like a conviction rather than a marketing exercise.
Grey Gardens
Wine Bar • Kensington Market
Grey Gardens occupies a particular kind of room that Kensington Market seems to produce better than anywhere else in the city — narrow, loud in the right registers, bottles moving between tables at…
Bar Raval
Spanish • Toronto
Bar Raval has been one of Toronto's most argued-about rooms since Grant van Gameren opened it on College Street in 2015, and the argument almost always starts with the architecture before it reache…
Browse all Toronto restaurantsBack to Toronto hub
Editorial details
Author: Marcus Chen
Published: July 16, 2026
Last updated: July 16, 2026

On this page

  1. 1. Antler Kitchen & BarView →
  2. 2. Grey GardensView →
  3. 3. Bar RavalView →
  4. 4. Beso by PatriaView →
  5. 5. Madrina Bar y TapasView →

How the restaurants compare

Editorial restaurant image stand-in for Antler Kitchen & Bar
Google
Antler Kitchen & Bar
Dundas West • Bar
9.9/10
TastyPals Score
Price
$$
Best for
cocktails
Mood
Dundas West
Editorial restaurant image stand-in for Grey Gardens
Google
Grey Gardens
Kensington Market • Wine Bar
9.9/10
TastyPals Score
Price
$$
Best for
natural wine
Mood
Kensington Market
Editorial restaurant image stand-in for Bar Raval
Google
Bar Raval
Toronto • Spanish
9.9/10
TastyPals Score
Price
$$
Best for
small plates
Mood
Easygoing
Editorial restaurant image stand-in for Beso by Patria
Google
Beso by Patria
Toronto • Spanish
9.9/10
TastyPals Score
Price
$$$
Best for
small plates
Mood
Upscale

How we chose

We looked for restaurants that feel like a strong fit for the guide topic, not just the most obvious names in the city. The shortlist favors rooms with clear mood, dependable pacing, and enough distinction to help someone decide faster. Read our full methodology →

Room tone

Lighting, pace, and general energy all need to support the reason someone clicked this guide.

Food fit

We favored restaurants that feel best suited for the moment, not just restaurants with broad reputation.

Useful range

The final list tries to give readers enough variation in neighborhood, price, and style to compare real options.

5 ranked picks

Antler Kitchen & Bar — Antler Kitchen & Bar is one of those rare Toronto restaurants where the concept feels like a conviction rather than a marketing exercise. Chef Michael Hunter and collaborator Jody Shapiro built something at 1454 Dundas West that's genuinely hard to manufacture: a 40-seat room that reads like a hunting cabin your most interesting friend inherited — exposed brick, mounted antlers, mushroom photography — all of it coherent without tipping into theme-park territory. The Michelin Guide flagged it back in 2020, but the regulars were already there. The kitchen centers on Canadian terroir and wild ingredients, with a seasonal menu that has an actual point of view: foraged and hunted proteins treated with the same seriousness other kitchens reserve for French technique. The menu's three anchors tell you exactly what this place is about. The Venison Tartare — shallots, capers, egg yolk, crispy crackers — is reportedly built around restraint, letting the venison carry the weight rather than masking it under sauce; diners consistently point to it as the right way to open. The Bison Ribeye with polenta, kale, and rapini sits at the opposite end of the register: rich and hearty, a dish that makes a case for bison on its own terms. Then there's the Roasted Hen of the Woods Salad, which regulars keep coming back to specifically — a strong signal that the kitchen is treating mushrooms as a main character, not a garnish. That's the through-line here: ingredients with a story, not a supporting role. Practical notes: the 20-seat back patio fills fast on weekends in summer, so the move is showing up at the Saturday or Sunday 3pm opening and letting dinner become a long afternoon. Reservations run through Tock — walk-ins on a Friday are a gamble you'll probably lose. View restaurant →
Grey Gardens — Grey Gardens occupies a particular kind of room that Kensington Market seems to produce better than anywhere else in the city — narrow, loud in the right registers, bottles moving between tables at a pace that signals the wine program is the actual point. Jen Agg's wine bar has built a reputation as a place where the drinking and the eating pull equal weight, which is rarer than it sounds. The space is reportedly intimate in the way that makes a two-hour dinner feel like three, with tables close enough that the room has a collective mood rather than a series of separate evenings. Michelin has taken note, though by most accounts the room wears that recognition without making it the first thing you feel when you walk in. The kitchen, associated with chef Mitchell Bates, is consistently described as operating well above the register that View restaurant →
Bar Raval — Bar Raval has been one of Toronto's most argued-about rooms since Grant van Gameren opened it on College Street in 2015, and the argument almost always starts with the architecture before it reaches the food. The interior — a sinuous, Gaudí-inflected construction of curved South African mahogany — is reportedly the kind of space that makes people stop mid-sentence. Michelin has taken notice of the overall project, and the format is as deliberate as the joinery: walk-in only, standing room, no cutlery, no reservations. The room is designed to be inhabited, not merely occupied, and that posture shapes everything that follows. The menu centers on Spanish finger food built for spearing, sharing, and washing down with vermouth or cava. Boquerones over stracciatella is one of those combinations that reads as obvious only in retrospect — briny against creamy, a pairing diners consistently single out. The shrimp a la planxa is known for its smoked paprika and garlic profile, assertive enough that the bar program exists partly to answer it. Octopus pintxos arrive on dense bread with what regulars describe as a sharp citrus dressing, and the blood-sausage 'McMuffin' — finished with a quail egg — has accumulated the kind of cult reputation that means it disappears early. The kitchen's approach to Spanish flavour is, by all accounts, committed rather than approximate. This is a place that works better for two people leaning into each other over small plates than for any group expecting a conventional dinner. The room holds a particular atmosphere — unhurried but alive — that makes it more interesting as a date than its format alone might suggest. Come early or arrive late; the crush in between is real, and half the experience is the bar itself. View restaurant →

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Beso by Patria — Beso by Patria is the King West relaunch of the long-running Patria, reborn under INK Entertainment as a paella-forward Spanish room with a self-conscious sense of occasion. The design does considerable work before the kitchen gets involved: rouge curtains, a cascade of hanging lamps, and a hand-painted feature wall that positions the night as an event in itself. It is a more theatrical, design-driven proposition than the city's pintxos bars, and by most accounts it understands exactly what it is and commits to it fully. The seafood paella is the dish the room is built around, and diners consistently single it out — the rice reportedly well-executed and the seafood generous rather than decorative. The menu reads as a considered sweep of classic Spanish: jamón croquetas as a starting point, grilled octopus among the tapas, and a ribeye representing the grilled meats side of a kitchen that runs both registers. The overall judgement that emerges from those who have eaten here is that the atmosphere and the cooking pull in the same direction, which is not always a given in a room this invested in how it looks. Beso is most obviously positioned as a date night or a celebratory group dinner — the spacing, the lighting, and the general pitch of the room lean that way, and the paella format rewards sharing across a table. Weekend evenings book up, so reservations are the practical move rather than the optimistic one. The concrete advice is straightforward: secure a table, order a paella for the table as an anchor, and treat the rest of the menu as the occasion demands. This is Spanish dining framed as a proper night out, and it makes no apology for that. View restaurant →
Madrina Bar y Tapas — Madrina Bar y Tapas carries credentials that are genuinely unusual for Toronto's Spanish dining scene. It holds the distinction of being the first restaurant in Canada to receive Spain's 'Restaurants from Spain' certification — a designation tied to the authenticity of ingredients and technique rather than atmosphere — and it has maintained a presence in the Michelin Guide across multiple consecutive years. The room sits inside the Distillery District's cobblestone grid, which means the setting does a portion of the work before anyone reaches the menu: old brick, low light, the sense that the evening has somewhere to go. For a date or a celebration, the room is doing a great deal right. The menu is lengthy and leans into both the classic and the contemporary. Pan con tomate anchors the familiar end, the kind of dish that reveals whether a kitchen respects simplicity. Regulars reportedly build tables around the seafood paella — a rice-forward production with shrimp and clams that diners consistently cite as the reason to return. On the more inventive side, the steak tartare served on a roasted marrow bone under Manchego foam is the showpiece the kitchen is known for, and the tuna tartare cone represents the modern flourish that signals the kitchen is willing to move past convention. A chef's tasting menu and a serious wine list round out the offering, though the bill tends toward the higher end of what the city's tapas category typically asks. Weekend evenings book up; reservations are not optional if you have a specific night in mind. The practical approach is to share the paella as the table's centerpiece and let the more inventive tapas fill the edges of the meal — that combination is where Madrina's reputation has been built, and it is the most direct path to understanding what the place is actually doing. View restaurant →

Explore next

Kensington MarketDundas WestBarWine BarSpanishDate NightGroup Dinnerstylish

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Personalized city picksCleaner shortlistsBuilt for iPhone and Android
TastyPalsTonight
Your taste. Our picks.
Smarter follow-through after the guide: better restaurant context, quicker narrowing, less second-guessing.
For tonight
Date night spots with warm rooms and polished service
Next step
Keep exploring in the app when you want a tighter shortlist