Alistair McKinnell recently exposed me to a great vegan restaurant in Toronto, and I’d like to pass the information on to my fellow road warriors looking for healthy eating while on the road. If you have a gig coming up in downtown Toronto, then I highly recommend Fressen at 478 Queen St W. I ate there with a few associates and new friends after Agile Tour Toronto this week and thoroughly enjoyed it.

They have a tapas menu, larger appetizers, main meals, soup and dessert. Like most good tapas/meze/maza, I can feel as sated sharing a half-dozen small dishes as I would with a standard, North-American-sized main dish. I especially enjoyed the sweet potato soup, tomato and cucumber salad, marinated olives, beet salad (that surprised me) and, jicama/mango salad and, of course, the chocolate terrine dessert they served Tuesday night.

Sadly, their online menu shows dinner from summer 2006, so you’ll just have to go to see the most recent menu. For a party of four, I recommend 7 to 9 tapas dishes, soup, and the four of you can probably share the dessert. I am 5’10"/235 and love to eat, so take it from me that 1/4 of that dessert satisfies!

I see from their site an address for “Urban Herbivore”, but no link, so try going there at your own risk. I’d love to try it.

A place like Fressen simply cements my new-found love affair with the Queen/Spadina area of Toronto, which we’ve got to know better as business travelers than we ever got to know as residents of Toronto. I can design an ideal business traveler’s day in the area:

• Morning espresso at Dark Horse Espresso Bar around Spadina/Sullivan
• Lunch at Fressen
• Take-back-to-the-hotel dinner at Fresh on Spadina

I could do that every day, easily.