The new locals: the Queen and Beaver (Photo by Jessica Darmanin)
“Food and pubs go together like frogs and lawn mowers,” wrote the unswervingly provocative British restaurant critic A. A. Gill. “Pubs don’t do food; they offer internal mops and vomit decoration.” He didn’t entirely mean it, of course: the same article ends with a declaration of passionate love for a dish he had encountered in a London pub—a thick potato soup with a large island of pressed foie gras melting in the middle. But as a general observation it seems sound enough, in Canada as well as in England. Anyone who has accidentally ordered a meal in one of our fake Irish or English chain pubs knows the fried snack food and industrial meat pies are as phony and mass-produced as the pissy commercial beer and the Sherlock Holmes decor.
• Read the rest of James Chatto’s column from the November issue of Toronto Life »
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