Toronto restauranteurs often spend an inordinant amount of time & money trying to make new restaurants feel like places people have been going to forever. Gharoaa has the advantage of actually being one.
This BanglaTown institution in East York feels like the neighbourhood’s communal kitchen. People come to eat, catch up and carry on. The ladies behind the hot table make us feel welcome every time we walk in… even when our ordering strategy consists of pointing at several Bangladeshi staples and hoping they understand that we want all of them. They usually do.
We typically grab a seat in the dining room and settle into the bustle. The meal is only part of the reason we’re here.
The goat curry (Kosha mangsho) comes bone-in, generously coated in thick gravy, over rice that catches everything worth catching. This is lunch that requires a little participation. Work around the bones, get some sauce into the rice, take a bite of cucumber and red onion, repeat. Nobody needs to invent a better system.
The burgundy heap of greens is lal shaak: red amaranth cooked with onions and green chilli. Leaves, stems, the whole business, staining the rice underneath. It looks like a supporting act until you find yourself building every forkful around it.
Their egg curry (Dimer dalna) makes an equally convincing case for keeping things simple: whole eggs in a generous helping of gravy. Such a sensible idea that we’re mildly annoyed by all the years we spent putting salt and pepper on an egg and considering the matter settled. We often take a couple more for the road.
Gharoaa means “home-style” in Bengali. After a few visits, you realize they’re talking about more than the cooking.
It’s a gathering place, a central hub in a ’hood with its own appetite and daily rhythm. The women behind the counter make room for us in it.
You can spend a lot on a meal in Toronto and still feel like a transaction. Here, we leave fed and feeling like we belong.
Some restaurants want to be the centre of attention. Gharoaa is the centre of the neighbourhood.
