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Toronto Life - The Dish

The latest buzz on restaurants, chefs, bars, food shops and food events. Sign up for the Dish newsletter for weekly updates. Send tips to thedish@torontolife.com

Deathwatch

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November 18, 2011 | 5:48 pm

Rising rents on Queen East push out Red Rocket Coffee, which is moving to the Danforth instead

(Image: Amber Dawn Pullin)

Leslieville’s Red Rocket Coffee has been forced to close up shop after its landlord doubled the rent to $49 per square foot. Co-owner Liako Dertilis says the response from his regulars has been immediate. “The TTC guys across the street are livid,” he told us, referring to the workers at the nearby streetcar yard. The news, however, isn’t all bad. Along with his business partners, Dertilis signed a lease late this afternoon for a new location at 1364 Danforth Avenue, near Coxwell. Although Red Rocket’s new home will be a similar size, Dertilis says it won’t be the same. “We have to leave our extended family—that is, our customers,” he said. “These are the people who come into the store, and we hug them… We feel like we’ve been robbed of that.” The Wellesley Street location is unaffected.

Deathwatch

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August 23, 2011 | 9:14 am
Midtown’s Lai Toh Heen to close in September 

Metropolitan Hotels put out a press release yesterday afternoon announcing that Lai Toh Heen, the cheaper Davisville cousin of downtown’s acclaimed dim sum temple Lai Wah Heen, will be closing for good on Sept. 18 of this year. “Lai Toh Heen has seen many successes in the past five years and now it’s time to take what we’ve learned and apply this culinary knowledge to our other restaurants,” said Metropolitan president Henry Wu in the release. No word yet on what might replace the midtown favourite.

Deathwatch

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May 30, 2011 | 1:22 pm

City’s average burger price plummets with closure of M:brgr’s King West location

(Image: Jon Sufrin)

On Tuesday, we heard through the grapevine from Montreal food journalist Lesley Chesterman that the Toronto location of M:brgr, home of the $100 burger, had closed. At the end of last week, we received confirmation from M:brgr’s Toronto PR firm that the rumours are true, and founder and owner Jeff Dichter has confirmed that the Toronto location has “ceased operations” and will remain closed.

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Deathwatch

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April 21, 2011 | 6:12 pm

It’s official: Duggan’s Brewery has served its last pint

(Image: Danielle Scott)

Not long ago, it seemed as though brew and gastropubs were on the rise in Toronto, but a couple of recent closures are giving us pause. While My Place’s failure might be attributed to its west end location and size, many are shocked to hear that downtown brew pub Duggan’s Brewery has also shut its doors.

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Deathwatch

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March 29, 2011 | 2:33 pm

Yorkville’s redesign kicks street food vendors off the curb

A hot dog vendor at the safer location of College and St. George (Image: Alfred Ng from TorontoLife.com Flickr Pool)

The costly Bloor Street Transformation Project (BSTP) may have added flowerpots, trees and benches to the widened granite sidewalks on Bloor Street between Yonge and Avenue, but it’s also become yet another reason why Toronto’s street food industry is floundering. Apparently the Yorkville renovation left no room for several street vendors, forcing out eight hot dog stands (some of which have operated in the area for 15 to 20 years), two retailers and an ice cream truck.

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Deathwatch

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March 21, 2011 | 2:02 pm

Sick Kids dumps Burger King from food court, but Pizza Pizza and Subway remain

A minor victory for anti–junk food forces came last week as the creepy despot of the beef kingdom, Burger King, served its last meal from the Hospital for Sick Children’s food court. Some doctors at Sick Kids had been agitating to get Burger King shut down through a Facebook group suffering from severe friend anemia (seriously, 258 members?), but the process has apparently been underway for some time: Sick Kids had decided to auction off BK’s slot, and has managed the process so that something a bit healthier would win the competition.

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Deathwatch

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January 20, 2011 | 3:19 pm

Open Window may be closed for good

Challah at the Open Window Bakery (Image: grongar)

Even delivery truck drivers were surprised to find that Open Window Bakery, one of Toronto’s most venerable family-run bakeries, had suddenly closed its doors earlier this week. According to the CBC, trucks were still making their way to Open Window’s flagship on Finch Avenue Tuesday morning, but were unable to unload.

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Deathwatch

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January 14, 2011 | 5:12 pm

Hipster temple Oddfellows to close in February

Oddfellows—the only Queen West hipster hangout with a roving Winnebago—is closing. Eye Weekly reported the news earlier today, along with the fact that its building, 963 Queen Street West, is up for sale. Of course, this means the much-anticipated spring return of Oddfellows’ all-you-can-eat Sunday taco extravaganza is not to be.

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Deathwatch

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December 16, 2010 | 10:44 am

Ed Ho pulls out of plans to open an Earth 2 restaurant in Mississauga

The 'Sauga continues: Mississauga will have to live without a Ho-McKenna restaurant—for now (Image: Seekdes, from the torontolife.com Flickr pool)

After many months of demolition and construction, and many dollars spent, restaurateur Ed Ho (of Globe Bistro and Earth) is walking away from his ambitious Earth 2 project in Mississauga. For now, Ho isn’t saying much, lest the lawyers become involved, but it seems he and his financiers could not see eye to eye, disagreeing on the direction of the project, and other deal-breaking details. “I can’t compromise to make a new partner happy,” Ho explained. “And I am not in this for the money. I left Bay Street for the love of this.”

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Deathwatch

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December 8, 2010 | 4:33 pm

Start canning: world to run out of food around 2050

Preserves for preservation (Image: thebittenworld.com)

Here we were thinking that the coming century would herald nothing but flying cars, weird haircuts and sweet video games, but the reality sounds much more dismal. New environmental studies have predicted future food catastrophe. At the forefront is Julian Cribb, a distinguished science writer, who foresees Earth beginning to run out of food by 2050.

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Deathwatch

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November 18, 2010 | 3:33 pm

La Palette shuttering its Kensington location this weekend

When Shamez Amlani muses about this coming Sunday, it’s not without a little sentimentality. Three days from now, the restaurant he co-owns in Kensington Market, La Palette, will shut its doors for good so that he and his team can concentrate on the Queen West location. Ten years ago, Amlani and his associates applied a meagre $18,000 to a grungy Chinese joint and turned it into an edgy French bistro. They never imagined that it would have taken off the way it did. “It’s a miracle,” Amlani tell us. “We shot at the moon, and we actually hit it.”

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Deathwatch

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September 20, 2010 | 3:06 pm

Toronto Star confirms what we already know: A la Cart has been a total fiasco

A cartful of issues (Image: Anthony Easton)

When the city and provincial governments got together so that people could buy food that wasn’t a hot dog from street vendors, the program was supposed to be a big deal. George Smitherman, back then a cabinet minister at Queen’s Park, declared, “Goodbye to the sausage, hello to the samosa.”

Not so much, actually. The Toronto Star just ran a weekend series detailing how badly the city’s A la Cart program has failed. Of the eight vendors who got licences, only one is committed to being on the streets in 2011. The failures are numerous, including mismanagement and too much red tape, but the most face-palmingly bad decision seems to have been the carts themselves.

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Deathwatch

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August 16, 2010 | 12:57 pm

Ten signs of the death of the Entertainment District

The canary in clubland: Circa closed earlier this year (Image: Divya Thakur)

The condo invasion is old news to all of Toronto. Except clubland. The point of packing dozens of nightclubs into one area was to contain the noise and stumbling Paris Hilton wannabes, hence the lack of pricey real estate in the Entertainment District. But, as the Toronto Star reports, only about 30 clubs are open for business today in the area between Richmond and Wellington around John Street, down from almost 90 five years ago. With city proposals to build more condos and other developments, the end of clubland as we know it is near. Here, 10 reasons why the fist-pumping hub is on its last legs.

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Deathwatch

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July 5, 2010 | 4:33 pm

Buddha Dog gets put down

Auf Wiedersehen, weird weiners: Roncey loses its Dog (Image: Joey DeVilla)

Amidst all the G20 brouhaha, it was easy to forget that one Roncesvalles’s more creative fooderies, Buddha Dog, is calling it quits after three years. Fans of the tiny hot dog shop, which was recommended in our Roncesvalles Guide, can still get their fill at the Evergreen Brick Works farmers’ market on Saturdays or up at the Picton location. A post from the owners on their Web site says that they’re focusing on “building more rural locations and developing our Buddha Foodha at Home line of products.” We’re not sure what to make of the rural locations part, but selling bottles of their Indian butter and red pepper jelly sounds like a good business plan to us.

Deathwatch

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July 5, 2010 | 2:34 pm

Weekend fire takes down Dundas West’s Musa

This room's on fire: Dundas West's Musa on Sunday, July 4 (Image: Aaron Leaf)

By the time we arrived at 847 Dundas Street West yesterday there was already a crowd of neighbours and passersby scanning the apocalyptic scene: 22 fire trucks, blocked streets and up to 100 firefighters scurrying around in the heat, pouring vast amounts of water onto what used to be Musa restaurant. Eventually the roof seemed to cave, sending the chimney plunging into the street and bricks flying everywhere.

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