The best new restaurants to open in Toronto in 2011 are a varied lot to be sure with
everything from tacos to Thai, 'cue to Guu making an appearance. Since timing is everything in these kinds of end-of-year things, some places made it in by the skin of their teeth to qualify for this year's list (I'm lookin' at you Grand Electric & Yours Truly).

Low-key appears to still be the flavour of the moment as diners flock en masse to neighbourhood joints offering up tasty grub at a reasonable price-point in relaxed digs. Jen Agg's ears must be burning with the constant mention several of these restaurants as the next Black Hoof. Time will tell, but for now we've got some eating to do.

Rocco Agostino and Max Rimaldi have made the pilgrimage east, opening their second Libretto outpost at Carlaw and Danforth. More space, two ovens, but the same solid VPN pizza already have customers lining up out the door.

Read my review of Pizzeria Libretto Danforth in the restaurant section.

Still wondering what to get the food-obsessed person in your life this holiday season? I asked some local authorities on food and drink to give me their wish lists as to what locally produced or locally available gifts they'd be thrilled to receive this year. Here are ten ideas.

Jennifer McLagan is a woman with a lot of guts. In town supporting her latest work Odd Bits at the Cookbook Store at Yonge & Bloor on Tuesday night she stood behind several trays of it. Flanked by Kensington Market butcher extrordinaire Pete Sanagan, the affable Aussie ex-pat and local author known in food circles for her previous culinary works Fat and Bones took the audience through a fun, hour long tour of the fifth quarter in an attempt to demystify the often intimidating world of offal.

The Best Thai restaurants in Toronto all conjure memories of backpacks and reclining Buddhas, beaches and the banana pancake trail. Some pull of the trick with ambience. Cribbed signifiers are borrowed from the wats and night markets that litter the land of smiles from Koh Lanta to Chiang Mai, elephants and old gods hanging from exposed brick walls suffuse rooms with shorthand orientalism or opium den shadows evoking a more sultry landscape than our own.

Fiddlehead season will be indefinitely delayed. At least that's the impression I get from this crazy cold snap that's settled on the GTA recently. Normally, locavore thoughts turn this time of year to visions of gobbling up heaving plates of the local delicacy, (the young, unfurled fronds of the ostrich fern) though this year you'll be waiting a while longer yet for them to poke through the semi-frozen dirt on farms and in forests around the golden horseshoe.