Hawker Restaurant

SUMMERLICIOUS IS BACK JULY 3-19 and as of RIGHT NOW reservations are live for lunch and dinner on our site!

Menus are revealed on the city website if you cant wait another moment, but we’ll announce them here next week ;)

Featured: our eggplant dish, sweet fern smoked eggplant, chaga and oyster mushroom sauce, broccoli, broccolini and pickled eggplant skin.

Photo: ally

We’re going where the BEES are! We are super excited to be a Food Vendor at the upcoming ROM AFTER DARK Royal Ontario Museum, their “Locally Crafted” event.

We’ll be serving variations of our Mole, Papadam, Grapes, and Perilla Leaf dishes. Come find us in the DINO HALL!!

Have you ever been to a ROM After Dark? What was your favourite part?


Photo by ally

I am deeply infatuated with endive. It is so elegant, bitter, yet tender. I wanted to create a dish where the endive was braised rather than raw. Cutting the endive in half exposes all of the gorgeous layers, making it perfect to absorb a braising liquid composed of fermented tomato brine and smoked corn broth. After a gentle and quick cook, I allow it to cool, then serve it in a bright cucumber and sweet pea broth. Dressing it up in a pea cream with chilis and pickled pioppino mushrooms creates incredible flavours and textures. This dish tastes like spring.

- chef leah :)

Have you tried our endive yet?
Endive is newly launched at Hawker as part of our Spring menu. It grows similarly to forced rhubarb, ie, completely in the dark once it sprouts.

It was discovered by fluke- when a farmer returned from war and found their stored chicory roots had sprouted into something edible and yummy.

Here at Hawker, Leah is braising them, reducing a bit of their inherent bitterness, and serving up a delicious cold fresh bite with pickled pioppino mushrooms, pea and cucumber broth, and chili + sweet pea cream.

Enjoy the next piece in our aRt&D series!
Photos and design

We at Hawker are so excited to be participating in the inaugural Sustainalicious!

While one could argue that everything served at a vegan restaurant is climate-smart, we’ve curated a three course tasting menu to highlight some of our most ✨Sustainalicious✨ options. 😉

Introducing asparagus, eggplant, and rhubarb - all featured in our new spring menu rolling out this week, and available as a three course dinner until June 14.

Why these dishes? Because right now, here in Ontario, these are grown fresh, foraged nearby or transported from local farms, and turned into something new and exciting.

We hope to see you for dinner soon :)
Kiss kiss

Photos by

rhubarb

When you grow rhubarb in darkness, you get something very special. The bright and sour ingredient becomes more delicate and sweet in flavour. We call this “forced” rhubarb. For this dessert, I fermented the forced rhubarb under layers of sugar to create a sweet, candy-like ferment. This also leaves us with a super useful syrup for other dishes. This fermented rhubarb becomes the star of our dessert, served on a cedar whipped cream with sumac sprinkled on top to accent its acidity. We also decorate the top with chamomile pearls; rhubarb and flowers are a perfect combination.

This all gets nested into a super thin buckwheat pastry ring. The idea is that you can crack the pastry with your spoon and scoop up the components with it. Rhubarb and buckwheat is an ode to spring. Come try it for yourself.

Spring is upon us! As we’re playing with R&D for our new dishes and menus, I wanted to bring you along and share more about our ingredients, our farms, our local partners. We want to let you in to our play and process a little too.

This week we’re experimenting with forced rhubarb from . Chef Leah fermented and stewed it, creating a new dessert you might just find on special this week.

We had such a great time on Monday with all of you. A big thanks to Morgan for sharing knowledge and wine with us. It was an evening full of tastings, delicious bites and laughter.

We hope to see you at our next one.

Join us on March 23rd at 6pm for another (Vegan) Wine with Friends!!

CRU Wine Merchant & Founder of A Little Drink Wine Club, Morgan Rock, will be guiding us through the evening alongside your favourite Sommelier Abi and Chef Leah. This evening will explore the question of “what makes a wine vegan?”!

Six courses paired with curated small bites from Leah, this intimate event is not one to miss. Limited seating remains, grab a ticket while you can!

More about Morgan: Morgan began her wine career working in several exceptional Italian restaurants in Toronto, where she honed her skills. Driven by her passion, she pursued wine courses to further her career. In 2018, she relocated to London, England, to join the wine industry. While completing her WSET Level Three exams, Morgan spent three years managing a wine bar in London. This international experience enriched her understanding and appreciation of wine. Upon her return to Toronto, she contributed to the establishment of a wine bar and bottleshop with a London-inspired concept. Morgan also worked in various wine-focused bars and bottle shops. Eventually, she transitioned into the wine sales industry, currently working for Cru Wine Merchants and hosting regular wine clubs throughout the city.

Link in our bio. “wine with friends”

Winterlicious is going strong at Hawker! Come join us until Feb 12th Wednesday to Sunday. We have a lunch/brunch menu and a dinner menu. Our dinner menu highlights our new seasonal menu, including Chef Leah’s new mole dish.