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Sad Songs Cantina
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It says a lot that in their first-ever Instagram post for Sad Songs Cantina, friends and co-owners Christine Pountney and Miguel Arguello welcomed customers to their new restaurant by declaring it to be “Mexican as f*ck”.
As soon as you walk into Sad Songs, you realize that “Mexican as f*ck” sums up Sad Songs Cantina to a T (as in tequila).
Gazing onto Bloor West, the windows are framed with velvet curtains evoking a toreador’s red cape. The wooden tables, chairs and bar possess the worn patina of an old school saloon. Then there’s the lighting: dim and dusky as the bottom of a mezcal bottle.
Sad Songs is Pountney’s first excursion into the restaurant industry. However, as an artist (not to mention novelist and therapist) with a love of Mexico – particularly the colonial town and artist’s mecca of San Miguel de Allende – she determined to bring the space to life. She dug deep into Farrow & Ball’s paint archives, selecting colours that conjure the weathered tropical hues of Mexican architecture.
Against these backdrops of cactus green and hibiscus coral hang black-and-white photos of revolutionaries, (one-armed) generals and Adelitas along with an engraving advertising a rural cock fight. Cementing the vibe is Sad Songs’ tongue-in-cheek logo: a violin case stuffed with mysterious white packages and a stack of dollar bills.
“For us, Sad Songs is about the paradox of Mexico,” explains Pountney. “You think about Mexico and especially around here it’s about fiestas and taco joints and a certain type of music. But there’s so much more. There’s beauty, crime, ingenuity, industriousness – and music. There’s a whole tradition of sad songs in Mexico that deal with revolution, heartbreak, romance…”
Arguello who was raised in Mexico’s Guanajuato region, where his family owns a market stall, echoes the sentiment. “All Mexican music sounds happy, but if you listen to the lyrics, they’re kind of intense. In Mexico, bars are cheerful, but cantinas are different, more sordid. Cantinas are about sad songs, about people sitting alone, getting drunk, wallowing in their sorrows…”
This isn’t to say that the owners want customers crying into their margaritas. Although Sad Songs captures the authentic, “Old Worldy, hole-in-the-wall” cantina atmosphere, it’s a decidedly warm and cozy place, particularly at night when candles glow on the tables while Latin American tunes play – many of them actually quite uplifting.
Equally uplifting is the food. As chef, Arguello – who’s also co-owner of DAM Sandwiches – draws on his extensive culinary and cultural background, using traditional flavours and techniques, with an emphasis on recipes and influences from his native Guanajuato. Forced to categorize the menu, he sums it up as “elevated street food.”
To start, you’ll really go loco over the taquita de papa, the insanely delicious lovechild of tortillas and french fries that’s understandably a big favourite throughout Mexico. Buttery, garlicky mashed Yukon Golds are stuffed into tortillas and deep-fried, then topped with lettuce, onion, tomato, avocado, cilantro, crema and a smoky salsa made with tomatillos and sweet, hot morita chilies. Crisp on the outside, creamy on the inside, once you’ve demolished a plate, you’ll be hard-pressed to find satisfaction in a mere order of fries.
All of Sad Songs’ dishes are healthy and quite a few are gluten-free and vegetarian to boot. Ticking all the aforementioned boxes are the stuffed poblanos. Grilled until tender, their skins lightly charred, the peppers are stuffed with mozzarella, then tossed on the flat top so that the cheese, melty inside, acquires a delicate crust. Dotted with crema and morita-tomatillo salsa, it’s a luscious and earthy dish, tinged with sweetness and smoke.
Prominent on the menu are tacos, which is where the street food and elevated aspects of Arguello’s cuisine deliciously intersect. While a lot of tacos in Toronto make use of stewed meat, Sad Songs recreates the traditional outdoor cooking process found in Mexican street and market stalls. The meat is cooked throughout (often sous-vide), sealing in the flavour through condensation, then fried on the flat top, adding caramelisation and a bit of crunch.
One of the restaurant’s best-sellers is a classic brisket taco. Slow-cooked for 36 hours until achingly tender, the brisket is then seared on the flat top where it releases, and fries in, its own fat, alongside a heap of caramelizing onions. Piled onto warm, hand-made corn tortillas, it’s topped with shishito peppers and a fresh salad of radish, cilantro and microgreens. And of course, there’s salsa – in this case, made from roasted tomatoes and jalapenos.
As Arguello explains, for all the layers of complexity (and heat) they bestow, traditional salsas are disarmingly simple. Consisting of four ingredients – two of which are salt and water – they start with a base of tomato or tomatillo to which chilis are added. The chef’s choice of chili dictates the flavour and heat level (although it’s not always about the heat) as well as the colour: red (sun-dried chilis) or green (fresh chilis). Notes Arguello: “Because it’s so simple, the ingredients have to be very good. You have to know what goes with what, and in what proportions. It’s a science.”
Beyond brisket, the unorthodox ingredients Arguello uses for other tacos are what raise the culinary bar to “elevated.” Forsaking the usual beef, the birria is made with lamb, slow-cooked for 12 hours in its own juices, along with chilis and herbs. Outrageously succulent, it’s served in its own headily fragrant brodo alongside warm tortillas and a vibrant tomatillo basil salsa.
Although the menu changes seasonally, at 30-day intervals Arguello goes to town with the Holy Taco of the Month. In the past, such holiness has manifested itself in the guise of roasted duck tacos with salsa macha and a citrusy daikon and carrot slaw. Visions of future holiness include the likes of lobster, tuna tartare and deep-fried zucchini flowers with cheese tacos. At the time of this writing, we were blessed with an osso buco taco. Seared, then slow-cooked with mirepoix and a hint of poblano, the tender marrow was mixed with a nutty salsa macha and served with a chimichurri salad. It was pretty heavenly.
Elevation isn’t reserved solely for meat. The veggie taco features zucchini and butternut squash, dipped in a gluten-free tempura batter and fried to a delicate crisp. Piled onto warm tortilla shells slathered in creamy guacamole, it’s finished with a refreshing spray of fresh basil, microgreens, red radish and a rich, nutty mole made with pumpkin seeds, tomatillos and chilies.
Although there’s only one dessert, and a simple one at that, its near impossible not to love it: a single, serpentine churro, impressively grease-free and deliriously light, airy and fluffy. Rolled in sugar and cinnamon, it comes with a side of housemade caramel sauce whose sweetness is offset by the use of goat yogourt, adding a surprising tinge of sourness. In truth, you can savour your churros – or those of your neighbours – before they even arrive; upon emerging from the kitchen, the sweet-cinnamonny perfume permeates, and intoxicates, the entire restaurant.
“To me, that smell is so Mexican,” Pountney confesses. “But it’s also part of the theatre of the experience. You come to a restaurant and it’s about the sounds, sights, textures and tastes. Here, we’re really attentive to the whole experience.”
In keeping with its cantina status, a big part of the Sad Songs experience revolves around drinks. The bar stocks a house red and white, a handful of Mexican beers and serves a mean Michelada. However, the main draw is the carefully curated list of artisanally produced tequilas and mezcals from small distilleries, imported directly from Mexico, or via Alberta (whose liquor control board is less stringent than the LCBO).
“There’s so much more to tequila than most Canadians know,” says Pountney. “I think you get drunk off it once in high school and then you swear off it. But when people come here and try our selections, they compare them to fine whiskies. That’s one of our missions here. To educated people by providing some of the missing pieces of the Mexican experience.”
A sound spirit education at Sad Songs boasts a curriculum composed of margaritas, signature cocktails and in-house infusions.
One of a quintet of margaritas, La Mestiza is a powerful presence composed of chili-infused tequila, Banhez mezcal, Triple Sec, lime juice and agave rimmed with cricket salt (if you’re a strict vegetarian, or squeamish, you can opt out). While in Mexico, markets sell barrels of live crickets for such purposes, in Toronto the delicacy is harder to come by. For extra kick, Sad Songs add a bit of chili to the mix of salt and ground crickets, whose flavour is an unexpectedly earthy and smoky.
One of Sad Songs’ signature cocktails, the Zapata Old Fashioned features a fierce melange of Centenario anejo and Banhez mezcal, tempered with Angostura bitters and agave. A staff favourite – “they like their drinks hard,” laughs Pountney – it’s as bold and bracing as its revolutionary namesake.
Light and herbaceous, the bright orange house drink, Sad Songs, adds Aperol and Strega to a smooth base of Banhez mezcal. Fresh lime juice ups the refreshment factor considerably.
A self-described “infusion master,” Pountney, who has been “infusing things at home for years,” jumped at the chance to experiment with tequila infusions. As a consequence, Sad Songs’ bar is a veritable apothecary of small-batch labelled bottles, their gem-hued liquids infused with ingredients such as vanilla, cacau, lemongrass and mint. Several provide the base of cocktails such as the Rubi Red, which pairs a deeply floral hibiscus-infused tequila with St Germain and Kahlua. The resulting elixir is highly imbibable (and profoundly pink).
Regardless of what form it takes, as Pountney points out, additive-free tequila that’s not mass produced is a very clean alcohol. “It’s healthy for the body, or healthier than some other drinks. It’s also merciful the next day.”
With a laugh, she adds: “So you’re doing yourself a favour when you come here.”
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