Toro is located on Belgrade’s river bank at the famous Beton Hala, a bit hipsterish, but fresh and casual. The first impression that you will harvest by visiting this place is the ambience — spacious, with cute little details that you get to notice a bit later. After you get picked up by the waiter as soon as you step into the bar, you get a short introduction about restaurant’s idea and history. How refreshing! After a short restaurant intro, the focus was switched to the cuisine and the famous chef-owner Richard Sandoval.
As someone might think judging by this place’s name, Toro doesn’t offer an authentic spanish cuisine, but instead, an exotic mixture of South and Central American ingredients. All the meals are designed to be shared, between two or more people, which gives another special note to the concept.
So, our evening started with our inspired waitress, and frozen margaritas.
As soon as crunchy shrimps with lime aioli, teriyaki, sesame, scallion and tobiko landed on our table, we realised we were in for a treat! And the taste? Inesplicable, absolutely irresistible, but still very subtle and sensible. Followed by steak anticucho skewers, which is a beef tenderloin in the Peruvian marinade with roasted corn salad and ocopa sauce, and wild mushroom flatbread with goat cheese, tartuf oil, caramelized onion and rocket salad — we just couldn’t get enough. With each new meal, our amazing waitress did her storytelling part, carefully explaining the ingredients and their origin.
Lastly, we ordered churros with hot black chocolate dip and got another one on the house, since it was PIggy’s b-day. With a candle on top of it, it was a perfect ending of the evening! Needless to say, desserts were thrilling.
One might think that this place is expensive, offering small portions, but we would argue that simply because we couldn’t bread after four shared meals and two desserts — and we can really eat a lot :)
In conclusion, if your taste is somewhat eccentric, and if you are a passionate gourmand, Toro Latin GastroBar is the right place for you!