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Queen West’s Brooklynn is all boarded up—because it’s expanding

(Image: Fraser Abe)

Dish readers gazing out the windows of their westbound 501 streetcar might have noticed the recent boards covering the entrance to Brooklynn at Queen and Northcote. No, the bar, co-owned by Zak Kellar and Ryan Boudah (and definitely not named after hipster ground zero), isn’t shuttering forever—in fact, it’s expanding. We spoke with Kellar, who told us that when the neighbouring Dufferin-Queen Animal Clinic moved across the street, the building’s landlord offered them the opportunity to grow. The place will now house a small art gallery, mostly featuring the work of their friend Krista MacFarlane, and the capacity will increase from slightly over 100 people to slightly over 200. So in case you ever felt there weren’t enough places on Queen West to get sloppily drunk before taking in a little art, your prayers will be answered. The renovated space is expected to open by this weekend.

The Dish

Opening

January 13, 2012 | 1:41 pm

12 Comments

Introducing: Bar Neon, a new Bloordale watering hole with some ambitious grub

Jeff Garcia’s striking mural adorns one wall at Bar Neon (Image: Gizelle Lau)

When Bar Neon opened last month, it became Bloordale’s answer to the trend embodied by places like Grand Electric and 416 Snack Bar: hip, local watering holes not afraid to serve food with a little ambition. Behind Bar Neon is Niki Tsourounakis, who grew up around the restaurant business, near Montreal. She also owns Café Neon in just outside the Junction Triangle and Amphora Products, a company that imports organic Vlatos olive oil and fleur de sel from Crete—both of which, naturally, make a few appearances on the plates at Bar Neon.

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The Dish

Bottoms Up

December 19, 2011 | 4:49 pm

7 Comments

Hoping to attract Bay Street suits, Trump Tower announces new lobby bar named Suits (get it?)

Executives who appreciate the power of a good stiff drink will soon have a new second home in the Trump International Tower: the “elegant,” “dynamic” and yes, even “bespoke” Suits Lobby Lounge. The venue, which is described in a press release as a “sophisticated and welcoming destination for those après work or as an appetizer to the evening ahead,” will be opening alongside Stock restaurant and the rest of the hotel on January 31, 2012. Master sommelier John Szabo and the mixology team are promising a roster of “exceptional libations,” including a selection of super-luxe international labels—indeed, several wines, as well as a touted cherry blossom-infused vodka, will be unique to the Trump. For those who prefer their drinks standard luxe, Suits will also offer biodynamically produced wines and local craft beers, plus some antioxidant protein shakes for, say, the corporate brand consultant on the go.

Suits Lobby Lounge, 325 Bay St.

The Goods

From the Print Edition

November 7, 2011 | 11:00 am

1 Comment

The Chase: two 30-something diehard downtowners find the perfect condo

Jennifer Zimmermann, a 30-year-old systems analyst, and Dustin Vaughan, a 32-year- old ad exec. By Monika Warzecha

The Buyers: Jennifer Zimmermann, a 30-year-old systems analyst, and Dustin Vaughan, a 32-year- old ad exec.

The Story: Vaughan and Zimmermann each owned a condo near Front and Spadina when they met online in May of 2009. Four months later, they decided to move in together. First they tried living in Zimmermann’s 600-square-foot one-bedroom, then Vaughan’s slightly larger place, but both units were too small for the two of them and their 85-pound greyhound, Jax. They loved living in a condo and wanted to stay within walking distance of their favourite hangs along King and Queen. With location in mind, they set a budget of $500,000 and embarked on a six-month search.

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The Dish

Restauran-TO

October 31, 2011 | 1:50 pm

5 Comments

Taking a cue from developers, Parts and Labour goes to the OMB to plead their patio case

(Image: Jon Sufrin)

Two weeks ago, Jesse Girard and Richard Lambert, the pair behind Parkdale’s Parts and Labour, went before the Ontario Municipal Board for the last stage of their protracted fight for a 180-person rooftop patio. We caught up Girard to find out how the hearing went and catch up on Toronto’s ongoing war on fun.

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The Dish

Opening

October 24, 2011 | 12:16 pm

Comments

Introducing: Cold Tea, a new Kensington Market bar that nods to a venerable Chinatown tradition

Theoretically, this inauspicious entrance should keep people away; in practice, the place is already packed (Image: Caroline Aksich)

Tucked into the back of the Kensington Mall, down the hallway past the knick-knack peddlers, is Cold Tea, the market’s newest watering hole. Oliver Dimapilis, who owns the bar along with Stacey Welton and Matthew LaRochelle, told us he’s convinced the “cold tea” phenomenon—post–last call beer served in tea pots at Chinese restaurants—was born in Toronto (he’s got Urban Dictionary on his side). And while the original dream was to have their new bar (open Tuesday through Sunday) tucked into a Chinatown back alley, the trio doesn’t seem too distraught to have landed a block west, scoring, as they did, a back patio to rival the front one at Ronnie’s.

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The Dish

Rumours & Rumblings

October 18, 2011 | 3:13 pm

1 Comment

Is it goodnight for Goodnight? A looming condo development at 431 Richmond suggests yes

Jennifer Westfeldt and Jon Hamm at Goodnight Gansevoort, the TIFF collaboration between the bar and the boutique hotel group (Image: David Lee)

Our ears on the street tell us that come spring, it may be time to say goodbye to everyone’s favourite semi-exclusive, reservations-only, back-alley nouveau speakeasy (and TIFF hotspot), Goodnight. The lot at 431 Richmond Street West has apparently been purchased by Menkes, the property powerhouse behind the Four Seasons Private Residences, the Lumiere Condos at College and Bay and 365 Church at Church and Carlton, to name a few. The location will be home to Fabrik, whose rather postmodern ad copy includes the memorable line, “Fashion industrial design heart throbbing city pulse eat my veins of passion and lust.”

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The Dish

Opening

October 13, 2011 | 5:14 pm

4 Comments

Introducing: Spin Toronto, the new King West ping pong club co-owned by Susan Sarandon (no, really)

(Image: Roxy Hunt & Tony Castle)

After a soft open a month ago, Spin, the ping pong bar and lounge, held its official launch party last night. If you thought table tennis was a nerdy game best restricted to basements and community centres, Spin’s creators, Franck Raharinosy, Andrew Gordon, Jonathan Bricklin, Toronto partner Ryan Fisher and, ahem, Academy Award–winning actress Susan Sarandon would like to change your mind. After all, table tennis became an Olympic sport in 1988 and the Spin Galactic social clubs have been popping up in North America since 2009 (there are clubs in New York and Milwaukee already, with another in St. Petersburg, Florida, on the way). Unlike the matches of your youth, however, this new ping pong culture seems to be as much about the social as much as the sport, which should explain Spin’s surprisingly large cocktail, wine and beer menu.

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The Dish

Opening

August 19, 2011 | 3:40 pm

8 Comments

Introducing: Williams Landing, a new Liberty Village spot with a prime patio

The patio bar at Williams Landing (Image: Gizelle Lau)

Although it’s only been open for two weeks, Williams Landing Bar, Grill and Hub has quickly become one of Liberty Village’s busiest spots, thanks in large part to its prime second-floor patio overlooking East Liberty Street and the Brazen Head across the road. Behind the restaurant and bar are the owners of the Financial District’s South of Temperance and Leslieville’s Joy Bistro.

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The Dish

Restauran-TO

August 2, 2011 | 12:46 pm

2 Comments

The next stage in the saga of the former Hoof Café: the Black Hoof Cocktail Bar

The once-mobbed Hoof Café is set to become the soon-to-be-mobbed Black Hoof Cocktail Bar (Image: Karon Liu)

Back in June, we reported that Jen Agg and Grant van Gameren’s ambitious plans to launch Black Hoof and Company this spring in the former Hoof Café space were being put on hold until spring 2012. Yesterday on his blog, Hoof pal Corey Mintz announced the next stage in the evolution of 923 Dundas St. W.: the Black Hoof Cocktail Bar. Starting this Thursday and running from Thursday to Monday night weekly, the new bar will serve Agg’s inventive cocktails (including, we hope, her barrel-aged manhattans) along with cheese plates for snacking. In September, the bar will be open seven nights a week and will feature guest chefs like Guy Rawlings and Colin Tooke, whose cocktails will go head-to-head against the house list. Eventually, the cocktail bar will take over the space adjacent to the Black Hoof across the street, and Black Hoof and Co., the new fine dining restaurant, will move in.

Agg has often lamented Toronto’s lacklustre cocktail scene, so we’re eager to see what she has in store. Oh, and in the spirit of her hilarious rant of a blog post in February, Agg will not be serving any vodka or vodka-based drinks at the bar.

• The Black Hoof Cocktail Bar [Porkosity]

The Dish

From the Print Edition

May 5, 2011 | 11:29 am

12 Comments

Flavour of the month: three new spots that change the game on sports bars

Sports bars in Toronto used to mean soggy nachos, face-painted guys named Big Mickey and eau de bleach mixed with stale cigarettes. Thankfully, a new era of communal fandom has arrived, with the help of three luxe lounges where discerning diehards can enjoy good food, microbrews and giant HD TVs. Here, the best places to catch the game By Courtney Shea and Lia Grainger | Photographs by Nikki Ormerod

Interior of WEGZ

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The Dish

Bottoms Up

March 14, 2011 | 12:41 pm

3 Comments

Parts and Labour patio nixed by Parkdale residents and committee of adjustment

Due to a ruling by a committee of adjustment, patrons will confined to Parts and Labour’s indoor spaces

Looks like revellers will be staying indoors this summer at Parkdale hot spot Parts and Labour. Inside Toronto is reporting that the restaurant and bar was denied a patio application at a committee of adjustment meeting on March 9. Apparently, committee members and neighbours who helped stop the application were concerned that owners Richard Lambert and Jesse Girard hadn’t done their due diligence when considering a patio’s impact on the surrounding neighbourhood.

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The Dish

Bottoms Up

March 9, 2011 | 5:24 pm

1 Comment

Want to celebrate Kate and Will’s impending nuptials in style? Go ask the attorney general

Ontario’s arbiter of fun, Chis Bentley (Image: ontla.on.ca)

Bring on the (tentative) mimosas: Attorney General Chris Bentley has said that the provincial government would consider any requests to extend bar hours for Prince William and Kate Middleton’s April 29 nuptials. Extended drinking time is sometimes granted for special events—certain Toronto establishments are open until 4 a.m. during TIFF and North By Northeast, and bar hours were extended province-wide to begin sales of alcohol at 10 a.m. for the 2010 FIFA World Cup. However, we’re curious just how early Bentley would be willing to go, considering the wedding ceremony itself is scheduled to start at 11 a.m. in London, which would be 6 a.m. Toronto time.

• A T.O. toast to royal wedding? [Toronto Sun]

The Informer

From the Print Edition

February 2, 2011 | 9:02 am

54 Comments

The unaffordable city: how did Toronto get so !@#$%&* expensive—and is it worth it?

Middle-class life isn’t what it used to be. Thanks to a heated real estate market, a strong dollar, new taxes and stagnating incomes, Toronto has become, improbably, one of the world’s most expensive cities. Is it worth it? By Jason McBride

(Illustration by Julien Pacaud; skyline photo by Brian Summers)

Today, an average Saturday, I spent the following: $6 on a round-trip TTC ride; about $17 on groceries from the Wychwood Barns farmers’ market (organic Crispin apples, an olive boule and free-range eggs); $34 on two bottles of wine (one decent, one plonk); almost $20 on the recent Superchunk CD and $11 on toiletries. Lunch was cheap and simple: a peanut butter sandwich, an apple and a few spoonfuls of raspberry yogurt. Dinner was free: homemade rice-and-bean burritos at a friend’s house. On the way home from that modest dinner party, waiting forever for the Dufferin bus, I almost splurged on a cab, but it seemed wasteful. Then I got home and booked a flight to New York on Porter for a friend’s 40th birthday: another $326. There’s also what I spend on my mortgage, property taxes, insurance, utilities, cellphone, Internet, YMCA membership, charitable donations and credit card debt. All of that adds up to roughly $65 a day. So, as a childless, home-owning, not-terribly-extravagant-but-not-entirely-miserly-either Torontonian, this one day at the tail end of 2010 cost me—not counting the airfare, which, for argument’s sake, I’m setting aside as an exceptional expense—about $153.

That doesn’t sound like a lot, but it’s about $20 more than what I make every day, after taxes. And it leaves nothing, obviously, for home repairs, clothing, vet bills, investments, medical expenses, birthday presents, savings, recreational drugs, holidays or the kid that Liz, my fiancée, and I have been talking about having this year but which, if things continue in this fashion, we’ll have to postpone having until we get jobs that net us more than $50,000 each a year.

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The Informer

The Old Normal

December 23, 2010 | 3:31 pm

2 Comments

2010 Lexicon: 11 new words that entered our vocabulary this past year

1. true belieber \troo bih-leeb-er\ n. (2010): Self-designative term adopted by mega-fans of Canadian entertainer Justin Bieber. Males identifiable by side-swept haircuts, high tops and hoodies. Females known for fierce loyalty and pathological bouts of hysteria. Natural habitat: Twitter. (See also: Bieber Fever)

2. Giambroner \jam-brohn-er\ n. (2010): Any scandal of a sexual nature that involves a couch. Named after former mayoral candidate Adam Giambrone, whose campaign for mayor of Toronto was thwarted after it was discovered that he had been engaging in horizontal activity on his office sofa with a woman who was not his live-in girlfriend. (See also: Clintonastrophe)

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