Lovage

Pork schnitzel lands at Lovage with mushrooms working in two registers: sauce chasseur for depth, a pickled mushroom salad for lift. It is a useful introduction to this small downtown Stratford bistro and wine bar, where a familiar form arrives with enough acidity and detail to resist heaviness. Chef-owner Jamie Crosby keeps the restaurant close to the relaxed Paris-bistro idea that informed its opening, while the cooking ranges across Europe without pledging itself to one national canon. The compact dining room puts an open kitchen beside the bar; exposed brick, an original tin ceiling and refinished hardwood keep the building’s character in view. One plate and a glass feel complete here, yet the same setting carries a dinner that unfolds course by course.

That range is clearest in the first courses. Mussel & Carrot Escabeche brings shellfish and carrot into a cool, vinegar-led preparation, setting brightness against the deeper cooking to follow. Fiddlehead Fritti goes in another direction: a fleeting spring ingredient fried and finished with gremolata and lemon. Neither dish reads as a passport stamp. The kitchen draws on technique to give each ingredient a sharper outline, then lets the table make the connections. A diner can follow those plates into the schnitzel, where crisp pork and sauce chasseur supply the meal’s savoury centre. The pickled mushroom salad brings the progression back to the brightness where it began.

Lunch compresses that thinking into sandwiches. Pan Bagnat layers albacore tuna, egg, olive, tomato, green beans and basil into a Provençal order that carries a meal on its own. The Paris Ham Sandwich moves through a different register, pairing leeks vinaigrette and Grand Trunk cheese with the ham. Dessert widens the vocabulary again. Sweet Corn Crème Caramel doubles down on its central ingredient with caramel corn, while Maple Walnut Tart brings Islay Scotch and charcoal cream to the plate. Chocolate malt ice cream with banana sorbet takes richness and fruit in opposite directions, then binds them with chocolate crumble. The sweet course carries the restaurant’s seasonal restlessness instead of retreating into familiar bistro comfort. The menu changes often, so these dishes describe the kitchen’s current direction rather than a permanent roster.

The permanent restaurant grew out of a temporary one. In 2022, Crosby turned the Wellington Street home of his Pretty Good Pizza pop-up into Lovage, renovating the dining room around its original brick and tin rather than erasing what came before. The shift traded a single-product project for a neighbourhood bistro and wine bar, but it kept the immediacy of a menu responsive to what is available now. Crosby’s encounters with relaxed Paris bistros supplied the model: serious cooking without stiff ceremony, wine close at hand, and a scale that keeps the chef’s decisions visible from the bar. The origin is more than biography because it still explains how Lovage behaves. The pizza project ended; the habit of letting the moment set the menu remained.

Lovage works at two tempos without treating either as the lesser visit. The bar supports a Paris Ham Sandwich with a glass of wine, while the dining room invites the longer arc from escabeche to schnitzel and dessert. The rear patio extends that flexibility in warm weather, and the open kitchen keeps the cookery present even when the evening is brief. This is the practical achievement of Crosby’s conversion: a chef-led restaurant with enough range for lunch, a spontaneous drink or a planned dinner, yet small enough for each choice to feel connected to one hand. Lovage’s permanence does not come from freezing its best ideas. The brick and tin stay put; dinner keeps moving.