Loloan Lobby Bar

The name reaches back to a bar built in Petitenget, on the Bali coast, in 2004, and the house cocktail keeps the thread alive: Ingat Loloan Bali, gin sharpened with fresh turmeric, wildflower honey, tamarind, mint, and grapefruit, poured as a remembrance of that original. Loloan Lobby Bar carries the memory into Uptown Waterloo, a few steps off the King Street spine on Princess Street West — a Southeast Asian kitchen working behind the polish of a hotel-style lobby bar. It asks to be read two ways at once: as a cocktail lounge, and as a dining room with serious intent behind the curry.

The kitchen makes its case on the à la carte mains. Bpet Massaman sets roasted Muscovy duck breast against a massaman curry with longan, crushed peanuts, an apple-pear salad, and a claypot of rice and barley. Gaeng Luang is the seafood statement: roasted black cod in a Southern Thai yellow curry with tiger shrimp, clams, yu choy, and lumpfish caviar over jasmine rice. Venison Adobo runs roasted striploin through an adobo demi-glace with a parsnip-and-pomme purée, berry compote, sweet-potato shoestrings, and coconut-vinegar pickled radishes. Even the vegetarian plate is built to hold the table: Gudeg, young jackfruit slow-cooked in coconut and dark palm sugar, arrives with an Earl Grey tea egg, sambal krecek, tempeh goreng, and bok choy. To start, Khao Soi Khun Yai folds Northern Thai curry and flat egg noodles into black cardamom, pickled mustard greens, and roasted dry-chili oil.