This was the primary reason for us to come to Toronto. My partner saw this restaurant somewhere, and has been yearning for this for a few years. Don Alfonso 1890 is located near the top of the Westin hotel that lies next to the water. We have not been to a Michelin Star Italian based restaurant, so this was something for us to be excited about. In addition, Canada has a “100 best” restaurant list, and in 2023, they rated this restaurant 35 out of 100.

We planned to stay in Toronto for only 3 nights. On night 2, we decided to try this restaurant since it also had baked alaskas which are my favorite dessert. As mentioned previously, Toronto was a fairly dead city on December 25 and 26. We wanted to make reservations at Michelin Star restaurants, but they either were unavailable or they canceled my reservation because they wanted to give staff a break for the holidays.

For this 2023 Christmas to New Years holiday week, we spent time in downtown Toronto for the very first time. The unfortunate reality that we faced was that Toronto did not have a lot of restaurants opened on Christmas that weren’t original Chinese. So we were stuck with 3 options, and we chose this because of the dessert option. This was a special Christmas dinner at $175 CAD ($132 USD today) per guest.