Toronto Girls’ Trip: 360 The Restaurant
March 2016
I like my dining experience to be about more than good food and wine. Does rotating through the sky while you sup on fine local cuisine qualify? I think so.
At the CN Tower’s 360 restaurant, it’s both a transcendent experience and an ascendant one. To get there, you must first go through security. Then you board a glassed elevator that takes you the equivalent of 115 floors up, or 22 kms, which you reach in 61 seconds. It’s an ear-popping affair.
Once arrived, you are shown to your table and given a section number. Why you ask? Because this restaurant completes a full rotation every one hour and 12 minutes. So if you’re there for any time, and you require a washroom, you may well need a section number to find your way back to your tablemates.
The beauty of being in a rotating restaurant is that your view constantly changes. At first, we gaze south at Toronto Island, and at Lake Ontario, a black sheet in the darkness. When we look down at the city, the Gardiner glows in long serpentine strips of moving lights, and as we later gaze north, we see tiny, twinkling white and yellow lights that represent families and single people and couples and friends in their homes throughout the city.
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But let’s turn our gaze inward. Our $79 three-course prix fixe dinner is a repast worth remembering. I start with the B.C. albacore tuna crudo, drizzled with citrus oil, and accompanied by cucumber, radish and edamame beans, and spiced with Peruvian peppers. Delicious. I then move to veal osso bucco, a rich dish slowly braised in brown ale and accompanied by caramelized onions and corn polenta. Then dessert is apple toffee pudding, in a pool of warm caramel sauce. Outstanding. Each course includes a suggested wine pairing, which comes from what is the world’s highest wine cellar – boasting more than 550 international and Canadian wines.
Afterwards, we descend one floor to their LookOut and then another to their glass floor, where 2.5 inches of glass separate you from the ground 342 metres below. It’s all included with your prix fixe menu.
