Metro and everyone else has written endlessly about Cazador over the past few years — it was our 2021 Restaurant of the Year and routinely finds itself on best-of lists and bestowed with awards for its food, service and importance to the neighbourhood. 

With all that said, it seems a waste of ink and pixels to reiterate Cazador’s virtues here, but I would like to make special mention of something I noticed the last time I ate there. On this visit, I was seated next to a blind/low-vision couple who eat at the restaurant once a week, and couldn’t help but notice the way the Cazador staff attended to them. First, wait staff ran through the drink and food options without visual cues. Then the kitchen pre-sliced their dish of the usually-presented-whole braised wapiti venison, removing this obstruction to eating. The newest member of staff brought it to the couple and explained the contents and location of everything on the plate. All the while, staff made sure everything was where it was supposed to be on the table. Seeing this unobtrusive, thoughtful attention was a timely reminder for me of what a great restaurant is, what great service can do, and how much it means to the people who make these places a regular part of their lives.

If you haven’t been to Cazador yet, consider this your cue to go at the next opportunity. And if you’ve been put off by the game-first reputation of the place, don’t be — the skill of the kitchen here is such that if you choose to venture down a meat-less-travelled path, you can be sure the flesh will arrive on your plate in a way that will delight your palate, regardless of the species of animal and part of the beast it came from. They love what they sell here, and each and every dish comes with an interesting story about provenance. It might not seem like an immediately obvious comparison, but this sense of care and respect for ingredients ironically aligns Cazador more closely with its vegetarian neighbour down the road, Forest, than its meat-heavy menu might otherwise suggest.