THE HUNTER CHEF

Michael Hunter Brings Backwoods Fine Dining to Canada’s Biggest City

- Gwyneth Hyndman

It’s early afternoon on a Friday at Antler Kitchen and Bar, and executive chef and owner Michael Hunter is fine-tuning a new duck dish ahead of one of the busiest nights of the week for the 45- seat restaurant in downtown Toronto.

Once perfected, this will join rabbit ravioli, wild boar ragù, and venison tartare with pickled wild mushrooms and a handmade pasta dish with peas, asparagus, and wild leek pesto, among other items on the Antler menu, which changes seasonally, always peppered with fresh additions. Hunter recently created a cedar sorbet for the dessert menu, made with cedar leaves boiled in simple syrup — also used as a base for the bar’s cedar gin sour — and he describes a mushroom consommé with venison broth, infused with pine needles.

Cooking and foraging — like hunting — is a neverending learning process, Hunter says. And as one of the first restaurants in an already flourishing foodie scene to lock onto the game concept with the opening of Antler in 2015, Hunter knows it’s his job to keep himself inspired. Just one more reason to get outside.