With the plethora of restaurants in our neighborhood, you can buy a gift card to suit anyone’s tastes. All you have to do is stop by one of these establishments one night this week and buy a gift certificate, put it in a card, and you’re done. Maybe if you’re lucky, the recipient will take you for a meal! Bon appetit!

The gift: Restaurant gift certificate

Where to get it: Fishbar for seafood lovers, Boehmer for the traditional, Union for the meat eater, Delux for Cuban, Foxley for Asian tapas, Salt for Portuguese tapas, Pizza Libretto and Enoteca Sociale for Italian. If you want to introduce them to somewhere they haven’t tried, Yours Truly just opened, and don’t forget Beau Lieu Bistro for the Francophile.  The list goes on and on.

Price range: Up to you

Who would like it: People who like to eat out. The range of choices in our neighborhood make it easy to please the people on your list.

The evening will start at 6pm with a 5 course dinner which includes wine pairings. If you haven’t tried their food, this is the best way to learn about the great small dishes offered at Salt, a progressive version of Portuguese and Iberian tapas.  At 8pm the room will open up for The Boxcar Boys, a Flapper Dance Troupe, cocktails, silent auctions, live auctions, a 50/50 draw and a lot of fun.

The dinner is priced at $100, and tickets are in limited supply (and available here). At time of writing there were only 13 seats left so make sure you sign up soon. If you just want to come for the drinks and party after 8pm it’s only $20 – which all goes to a great cause.

The night is in support of Nazareth House, a support house for women at risk and their infants. Located at Bathurst and Bloor, for over 25 years Nazareth House has been providing support and a safe place to over 1000 women and over 160 children. If you can’t make it to the dinner, and just want to support a great cause, click here and give directly to them.

And did we taste! A 9 course menu (plus the fried oyster at the bar) provided all of us a chance to savour a variety of courses and flavours. We also had a nice selection from the drinks and wine menus.

Photos of all the dishes (except the pulled pork course – I got too excited and took a bite before taking a photo) are below, and a scan of the menu. If you want to follow Salt Wine Bar on twitter, use @SALTwinebar and definitely go in and check out their new menu, including the bar cocktails and Portuguese wines.

The good news is that most of the businesses which opened a year ago are still going strong.

Joe Fuda opened his photography studio, Oz Studios, over a year ago, and marked the anniversary by publishing his own book. LAB Consignment has been open for just over a year, sharing it’s space with Silver Falls Vintage.

Goed Eten also opened this time last summer, and has changed quite a bit from a late night spot to it’s current status as a popular brunch and lunch eatery. Telegramme Prints and Salt Wine Bar will also celebrate a year on Ossington later this summer.

So Happy Birthday, Crafted, and many more to come!

The space, at 217 Ossington, (UPDATE: phone #?647-340-0227) ? just south of Salt and Pizza Libretto, has been vastly transformed, from it’s old 70s decor to a new, modern looking and clean space, ideal for munching on mollusks and preying on prawns.

In the next few days the menu will expand to include sushi dishes, ceviches, tartare and other grilled, poached and otherwise cooked swimmers.

If you want to keep up with them their website is here, but still under construction. But who needs a website when you can follow them on twitter at @_fishbar, and Facebook.

Head on down to check them out!

Some other shots of the room and the oysters below.

The happy hour menu has some nice bar snacks as well as some drinks that are priced very competitively. (I mean, $3 beers, who can beat that?!)

The dinner menu they’ve posted offers similar smaller-item fare as Salt Wine Bar, but also includes some larger non-fish items like a skirt steak as well as leitao – a portuguese version of suckling pig.

We are excited for the opening. What will you be trying when they open?

Bunda Lounge, for one, is hosting a special night on Saturday, February 12, with DJs, bottle service and appetizers.

On the dining side, Delux Restaurant is hosting a prix fixe menu on Monday, February 14. Salt Restaurant is also offering a prix fixe menu – you can check it out online. We also called Beau Lieu Bistro, and this lovely French boite is also doing a set menu, so call now for reservations!

Paramour is also doing a special Monday opening for Valentine’s Day and will offer their regular menu and some specials, including a special cocktail menu. They are offering an early and a late seating.

Union Restaurant tweeted that they will be open for Valentine’s Day and we are waiting to see what the menu will be.

Bohmer is still working on their set menu, but rest assured, will be open. Reposado is planning some special Valentine’s “oysters, Cava and crooning,” according to their website.

If you don’t want a fancy dinner but want to throw down and have some fun with your S.O. or some friends, there are some good choices for you too! Head on over to The Painted Lady for Big Rude Jake hosting the weekly Open Mic Night. The Rattlesnake Choir will be playing at The Dakota.

And, if your Valentine’s night doesn’t turn out like you plan, check out the fun and original night planned at XPace Cultural Centre on Feb 18! Called “Heartbeats,” it’s a new, live interactive dating show. They are even looking for contestants!

These are the 10 most popular posts by site traffic over 2010.

1. Beau Lieu Bistro is now open. – This is one of the unsung stars of Ossington. A low-key French bistro, with really nice food, a good ambiance, and a staff that cares. So we are happy that, at least on our blog, they are getting the attention they deserve

2. Dinner at Salt Wine Bar. – Before this place had a license they were operating on catering certificates. We went over and tried the food and were very impressed. Soon after  we ate there they were closed for almost two months. Reader were curious on what to expect when they finally got a chance to taste the food.

3. Ward 19 Candidate’s Debate. – When we announced that we were going to have a candidate’s debate, it was a new thing for us. The debate itself was a lot of fun and there were a lot of folks that ended up watching the UStream video from this post from the night itself. Michael Sims rocked the night and shook some people up.

4. Goed Eton Gets off to a Rolling Start. – One of the quirky, but delicious places that opened on the street is Goed Eten – where the proprietor, Johan, has been putting together a menu of poutine, local fed sausage burgers and other gourmet food. This post we put up right when he open and was still working out the kinks.

5 Salt Wine Bar Looks Open. – Salt Wine Bar gets another place on our top 10 list from our post on Aug 7th when we learned it had opened – albeit without a license.

6 Karen Sun shows good knowledge of Ward 19. – We did a number of candidate profiles over the course of the election cycle, but the big hit on our site was the profile of Karen Sun. Although she didn’t beat out Mike Layton, she was the site favourite in terms of page hits.

7. Call Joe Pantalone, Open Salt Wine Bar. – Again, Salt Wine Bar hits our top 10 list – the frustration with Joe Pantalone’s decision to put a moratorium on the restaurants on the street encouraged others to check out our post.

8. Jess’s Dead Sexy bad ass, mother Fxxxing, pulled-pork Sandwich. – What can we say? The best pulled pork sandwich on Ossington, or maybe in Toronto, is in an unexpected place, The Painted Lady.

9. The Evolution of Dundas off Ossington. - This year because of the moratorium, as well as other factors, the Dundas strip to the east and west of Ossington became popular with places like Churchill, Camp 4, Red Light,  The Port, Enoteca Sociale and more. This post looked at some of the newer places that emerged.

10. Havana Cultura Starts Today. – Our 10th place post is about a festival that took place in August celebrating Cuban Culture. We have a number of places on the strip as well as just off that joined in the festivities with Cuban food and music.

This year brought a lot of new businesses and faces to Ossington, all of which we welcomed, and many of which we covered. We look forward to frequenting many new shops, galleries, restaurants and more to the strip in the year ahead.

Let’s start with February 2010 – Angell Gallery moved from Queen Street West onto Dundas. Angell took over the space of Lennox Contemporary in February 2010, and has hosted a plethora of exhibits ever since.

There was a bustle of activity and then Bohmer launched in March 2010. The beautiful space and delicious food has led more people to Toronto’s new “Restaurant Row.”  March also saw the opening of “Oz Boutique,” an art and design hub which has housed Evan Biddell’s clothing line, but focuses on photographer Joe Fuda’s work and curated exhibits.

We started April with City Store Grocery opening on Dundas, and Crepes and More on Ossington. 8 months later, both are still open and catering to the daytime crowd in our area. That month’s other opening was the weekend-only bar, OurHouse.

May brought pop-ups to Ossington with the short-lived but fun launch of 1st Run Art Gallery, which featured the work of it’s creators. In June, LAB Consignment opened with a splash, sharing space with Silver Falls Vintage on Ossington near Queen. In other just as popular fashion news, TOPSHOP came to Toronto by way of London, and opened within Jonathan + Olivia’s space.

The lazy days of summer were anything but for entrepreneurs on Ossington when several businesses opened their doors, starting with Crafted by Te Aro, a coffee shop from Leslieville branching out. Another import from within Toronto was Goed Eten, which started serving coffee, waffles, poutine and more this July.

For a very short time this summer, Salt opened, then closed. Now it is finally open again for good, serving Portuguese wines and tapas.

This fall we supported the opening of Beau Lieu Bistro at 59 Ossington and also Telegramme Prints and Framing at 194 Ossington. O’born Contemporary is also a new gallery to the strip.

We don’t want to forget all the new openings on Dundas (part of that “Ossington triangle” mentioned earlier) that we covered a couple of months ago about Dundas’ evolution: Bunda Lounge, Churchill, Brockton General, Academy of Lions, Port, and Enoteca Sociale.

Finally, let’s look forward to the continuing growth with new places set to open soon: Pasta and More, Fish Bar, Lakeview Convenience and The Saint are the ones we know about, but we’re sure there’ll be more. Here’s to a happy and healthy Ossington Village in 2011.

In addition to the restaurant reviews, there’s coverage of new crossfit gym Academy of Lions and their program with homeless youths. The Globe and Mail must be sending all their reporters to our neighborhood, because they also have a write-up on Jonathan + Olivia‘s Top Shop.

Last but not least, the city of Toronto ranks neighborhoods by the number of trees living in them, and Dundas and Ossington’s Portugal Village ranked dead last. Better start planting!