The Best Seafood Restaurants in Toronto

The best seafood restaurants in Toronto are selling a luxury product, one whose relative scarcity can be explained just by answering one simple question: When's the last time you ate anything caught in Lake Ontario?

There's not a lot of food that invites carnivore guilt quite as readily as seafood - just try googling "Chilean sea bass," or "Atlantic cod fisheries." While there was a day when lobster was food for the poor and oysters were cheap bar snacks whose shells made for landfill that changed shorelines, that day seems over now, and good seafood comes at a premium, especially if you're living inland, on a body of water whose purity has been in doubt for generations.

Most of the restaurants here make a point of stressing the sustainability of their main ingredient, which goes a long way to assuaging that nagging guilt. Most of them also offer non-seafood options on their menu - a steak here, a pasta dish there - but they've made it here because they've excited the taste buds, and likely overcome the ethical misgivings, of many Toronto diners.

Here is a list of the best seafood restaurants in Toronto.

See also:

The best oysters in Toronto
The best fish and chips in Toronto
The best fish stores in Toronto
The best steakhouses in Toronto

Rodney's Oyster House / Rodney's By Bay

Now with two downtown locations (and a third in Vancouver,) Rodney Clark’s empire has grown from its beginnings in a basement at Jarvis and Wellington. Featuring an oyster bar filled with bivalves from the East Coast (and elsewhere) and a relentlessly casual atmosphere, it’s the sort of joint that would become a regular pretty quickly. More »

Starfish

The oyster bar at this Old Town restaurant is as likely to feature catch from the U.K. and Ireland as more “local” east and west coast oysters. It’s a busy, business suit crowd on weekdays, but the vibe is more relaxed come the weekend and a leisurely afternoon can be spent at the bar. More »

Chiado

Portugal is a seafaring country, so Portuguese food goes heavy on the fish, but there’s a big difference between a bowl of caldo verde and the high-end haute Portuguese cuisine featured at this College Street fixture. The fish is flown in fresh from Portugal and prepared with updated twists on traditional recipes and the wine list is peerless, but all this care comes at a price. More »

Malena

This relatively new spot at Av & Dav (a sister restaurant to nearby L’Unita) features a Mediterranean menu with an emphasis on Greece. Dark and cozy when the nights get longer, the menu features a sausage and clams appetizer – a nice spin on the traditional Portuguese cataplana – and a squid ink pasta that has a fan club. More »

Oyster Boy

A former diner on the far side of Trinity Bellwoods Park, Oyster Boy is the home base of a catering operation that’s ubiquitous at parties and corporate events. There’s seafood pasta, fish and chips and catch of the day, but the mission statement here is all about the mollusks – oysters, clams and mussels – so order accordingly. More »

Joso's

This busy, funky joint at Av & Dav, with its walls covered in idiosyncratic art, is a holdover from what chef-owner restaurants used to be like, before minimalism uncluttered the walls. The menu is Mediterranean, with an emphasis on Italy and the Dalmatian coast, and the seafood is cooked with veteran skill. More »

Zee Grill

The name is Dutch and the menu is eclectic, with everything from crab cakes and moules frites to Asian-style ahi tuna and a big-ticket iced seafood platter for sharing. The interior is dim and cozy and there’s an oyster bar, just in case you thought they’d forgotten. More »

Pangaea

This big, airy space at Bay and Bloor has the top notch wine cellar you’d expect and an international menu featuring rigorously sustainable seafood. The fish can get a bit lost in the menu, which chef Martin Kouprie uses to feature artisanal specialties, but when items like the Dungeness crab rotate through, be sure to pounce. More »

Fishbar

Ossington is still bustling, and Fishbar’s menu is just as energetic, featuring everything from brandades and rilletes to beer-battered fish and chips, oysters (fresh shucked and deep fried in a pogo-on-a-stick) and mussels with sausage. The seafood selection is sustainable and – at least in Canadian terms – local, and the mackerel sashimi is a testament to that. More »