Sapori curates a specialty charcuterie program of house-cured and local meats and cheeses, used to assemble what might be some of Toronto’s biggest charcuterie boards.

A list of craft beers and natural, biodynamic wines pairs exquisitely with these meat and cheese boards as well as a seasonal, rotating menu of elevated bar food.

The restaurant makes a go of it in a spot that once played host to a revolving door of restaurants including Toro Wine Bar and Cafe Bar Pasta.

A cured ham plate ($13) eats like a sketchpad for Chef Ryan Sciara’s play with ham: both house cured brown sugar and spicy ham are delicately layered on the plate with greens, croutons and a brown butter that only serves to further bring out the rich fattiness of the thinly sliced meat, which has a little chew and zing to it.

It’s recommended we pair this with a Pinot Noir from Burgundy produced using all natural farming methods: it’s got a light acidity that cuts through the ham’s richness. The bottle would be $90, but the Coravin system here allows for sampling just a glass.

House wings are $12 a pound, served whole and doused in a Vietnamese fish sauce concoction. I wish the delicate cucumber ribbon salad they’re served with weren’t squashed underneath because it’s quite lovely, but the sweet, funky, sticky wings themselves shine.

Gnudi is made fresh in house, most produce at Sapori like the Roma tomatoes and microgreens here sourced from 100km Foods. The gnudi are a simple recipe of ricotta, flour, parm and nutmeg given a hard pan sear for an exterior crunch on the pasta that’s more on the dense and crispy side than airy and fluffy.

The large cheese and charcuterie board ($75) isn’t even their largest, the biggest “extra large” board they have on offer going for a whopping $125. The plan is to have an even bigger 9”x33” board, the length of two tables in the restaurant put together.

Though the smallest option is $15, with every board the aim is to get a portion of everything. On our large board we have the house brown sugar ham, silky house chicken liver mousse, wild boar sopressata and a salami from Butcher by Nature (who supply charcuterie meats), and a Seed to Sausage speck and hunter salami.

Cheeses include Grey Owl from Quebec, Ontario goat cheese from Lindsay, taleggio, local Thunder Oak gouda, semi-soft Morbier, and a spicy, malty, rich and smooth Blu di Frabosa.

House olives, pickles, and roasted mixed nuts plus Blackbird and Tempered Room bread tie everything together.

With Sciara at the helm, who introduced nearby Archive’s legendary charcuterie program, Sapori seems positioned to stick.