(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.

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.

The space, which Tsourounakis designed herself, is welcoming and unpretentious, with a mix of antique and modern touches. Like so many new restaurants, the original ceilings of the room were excavated and restored from under the drywall, and exposed brick is buffed and given pride of place. Unlike most new restaurants, Bar Neon also features a stunning mural by local artist Jeff Garcia, a friend of Tsourounakis, which helps warm up the space.

Bar Neon’s cocktail menu offers drinks at $10.50 each, including their signature: a bourbon negroni with Four Roses bourbon, sweet vermouth, Campari and West Indian orange bitters. The bar boasts a healthy selection of bourbon as well as Greek liqueurs like Metaxa, the requisite ouzo and traditional raki. On tap, there’s Beau’s and a couple Mill Street brews.

In the kitchen—with just two toaster ovens and a deep fryer—is chef Ivan Loubier, previously of Taboo in Muskoka and Didier. Loubier describes the menu as Canadian, with a dozen options that include marinated sardines on crostini ($10 for four pieces), salt cod croquettes ($9 for three pieces) and mini croque monsieurs ($10 for three pieces). Larger flatbread “tostas” ($14 each) are intended for sharing and include options like mushroom fricassee, salt-cured ham with black olives and arugula with duck confit, caramelized onion, potato and sage. Loubier also has a strong pastry background, and makes chocolate truffles (lavender on the night we visited) for $2 each. On Fridays and Saturdays starting at midnight, Loubier offers a late-night toonie bar, where small plates of oysters and other menu items are sold for $2 per plate. During the summer, the backyard patio will open up, offering outdoor seating as well as summer pig and lamb roasts. The yard is complete with a modified shipping container where they’ll serve drinks and shuck oysters.

Next up for Tsourounakis: a sit-down dinner menu at the café, where Loubier will be cooking.

Bar Neon, 1226 Bloor St. W., 647-748-6366, @Bar_Neon.

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 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.

(Image: Couple by Nikki Ormerod)

(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.

Since it opened last spring, the Queen West hotspot has fought off claims that it doesn’t jive with the rest of the block (an architect living nearby told The Grid that Parts and Labour is not a bar but “a giant entertainment venue.”) “People think we’re a nightclub; it frustrates me,” Girard told us, insisting Parts and Labour is first and foremost a restaurant. Back in March, their application for a zoning variance to allow a patio was nixed by a committee of adjustment. Since then, the city voted to repeal its new harmonized zoning bylaw, which contained restrictions on outdoor patios in the area. But the building’s roof is still too close to a neighbouring one and there’s still plenty of opposition from nearby residents afraid of hearing “Rebel Rebel” blasting at 2 a.m.

“I have owned enough places to know you have to get along with your neighbours,” says Girard, who also co-owns The Hoxton with Lambert. The pair hired acoustical engineers and architects, which mapped the bar’s sonic impact, and designed a sound-blocking wall—but their efforts seems to have fallen on deaf ears. The hearing stretched over two days, much of that taken up by unhappy residents. “It’s just unfortunate people see it with such venom, like it’s the end of the world or something,” Girard says.

The entire process has been costly—OMB appeals are usually the province of developers hoping to add a couple storeys to a condo. “Ninety-five percent of people in my position would not have the resources to go up against the OMB,” said Girard. Even with sufficient capital at his disposal, he knew the odds weren’t great from the beginning. “We were quite aware we would be shot down in front of the [city’s] committee of adjustment,” he says. Now that he’s had the opportunity to plead his case, Girard figures his odds are about 50-50. He and Lambert should receive their answer by the end of the week.

• Parkdale’s great debate [The Grid]

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.

The three partners are service industry veterans but first-time business owners. To decorate the place, they recycled some pieces from the recently closed China House on Eglinton and hit up their friends at Smash for an oversized steel arrow that doubles as an alcohol rack. They made the tables themselves from Mennonite barn wood (“It came to us with poo still stuck on the wood,” says Dimapilis, laughing). Currently, the space looks a like your standard industrial retrofit lounge bar (exposed pipes, blank walls), but a few walls have been left blank for artists to have their way with them (Dimapilis likens the intended effect to an arm full of mismatched tattoos). Indeed, this past Saturday they had Drake-approved screen printer Jeff Garcia come in to decorate one wall during an art party.

LaRochelle, something of a cocktail chemist, loves to play around with unexpected combinations. The Bruce Lee (or perhaps the High-Five Spice; the name hasn’t been finalized) is made with Wild Turkey, calvados, apple cider, homemade Chinese five-spice simple syrup and home-stewed cherries. While the cocktail menu is still under construction, expect some more traditional drinks, like a dark ’n’ stormy, made with ginger beer and Sailor Jerry spiced rum (garnished again with the home-stewed cherries). There’s also a healthy roster of tallboys and four beers on tap: Sapporo ($6.50), Blanche de Chambly ($6.50), Great Lakes Pumpkin Ale ($5.50) and Crazy Canuck Pale Ale ($5.50). For those seeking post-booze fortification, there’s a small dim sum booth at the bar’s entrance, which prepares MSG-free fare like shrimp, pork and vegetable shiitake dumplings (three for $5) and fresh-steamed barbecue pork buns ($3).

Cold Tea, 60 Kensington Ave.

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.”

The condo is planned at 16 stories, with 209 residential units and below-ground parking (Giannone Petricone Associates of Fabbrica is set to design the building). The new development could also mean the end for easterly location of boutique men’s clothier Nomad, which occupies the front of the house at 431 Richmond, although there are indications the new design will in fact leave room for ground-floor retail space. The area is certainly at no loss for condo development (there are similar plans in preliminary stages for spaces on Brant Street and Camden Street, with others already under construction), so we’d be sad to see Goodnight go, $14 drinks and all.

(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.

The 12,000-square-foot space was designed by Emil Teleki and Jessica Nakanishi in collaboration with Todd Oldham in New York, and it has 12 ping pong tables, a lounge and a private party room. The two bars serve a variety of beers, wines and cocktails, including the Stamos ($14), with Bacardi Gold, Amaro Montenegro, house-made tobacco tincture and maraschino. The food focuses on sharing plates, like devilled eggs ($5), a mixed taco plate ($24) and barbecue popcorn ($3). There are also sundaes ($7) in flavours like Guinness, sweet potato or cheddar, which are served with whipped cream and candied fruit. Of course, ping pong this high-class doesn’t come cheap: annual memberships can be purchased at individual ($500) or family ($750) rates; non-members can enjoy an hour of play for $20–$28 depending on the time of day.

The opening party brought out the ping pong elite, including all four founders, as well as champion table tennis players Wally Green, Kazuyuki Yokoyama and Soo Yeon Lee (who didn’t let her dress’s thigh-high slit or her six-inch Louboutins get in the way of her game). And an unexpected appearance from the Breakfast Club’s Judd Nelson confirmed for us that even tough guys aren’t too cool for ping pong.

Spin Toronto, 461 King St. W., 416-599-7746, toronto.spingalactic.com

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.

With 16 beers on tap, 11 by the bottle and a dozen wines by the glass, Williams Landing is targeted squarely at the local condo residents and office workers seeking drinks. Along with the classics, they also offer 12 signature cocktails like the Pink Tarantula ($11, tequila with pink grapefruit juice, agave nectar, lime and pink peppercorns) and the Carnival Punch ($9, spiced rum with spiced chai, lime juice, agave nectar and a sugar cane stalk).

In the kitchen, chef Marco D’Angelo (previously of E11even) and sous chef Beman Chan are all about “FLOSS”—fresh, local, organic, sustainable and seasonal—with suppliers like Beretta Organic Farms and Willowgrove Farm. On the menu, you’ll find appetizers like beef sliders ($11), Mongolian pork tacos ($12) or a house-cured charcuterie plate ($22). Mains include the Bliss BBQ Burger, a fresh-ground beef burger topped with house-smoked pulled pork ($17); pizzas like the Charcuterie Pizza, with prosciutto, bacon, salami and balsamic onions ($15); pastas like the Fettucine Forestière, with house-smoked chicken, mushrooms, sundried tomatoes and parmesan ($17); and entrees like a pork loin chop ($24) and steak frites ($22). (The menu also features something we haven’t seen before: a small “T” beside certain items, denoting dishes where tofu can be substituted for the main protein.)

Brunch is served on weekends from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and includes healthy options for Liberty Village gym nuts like protein shakes ($6) or granola ($6). There are also gluten-free buckwheat pancakes ($11), brioche French toast ($10) and an “eggs willie”: poached eggs with house-smoked pulled pork, hollandaise and greens ($10).

The large space was designed by McMillan Design, whose restaurant work includes similar large bar–lounge–restaurants like Far Niente, Canyon Creek, Jack Astor’s, Alice Fazooli’s and East Side Mario’s. Inside, wavy wood panels slope along the ceiling and down the wall, warming up the otherwise standard trendy space that’s equally suited to those hoping to be seen as they grab some drinks after work and those sitting back to watch the game.

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Williams Landing, 120 Lynn Williams St., 647-340-8008, williamslanding.ca.

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]

I’m Italian, and there are a lot of Italians in the neighbourhood, so there are plenty of hecklers during soccer games. Actually, I’m a heckler.
— Michael Manias, Project Manager

I meet up with my old high school buddies at WEGZ (it’s our unofficial hangout).
— Jason Pittelli, Student Teacher

I’m a huge sports fan, so I’m here five to seven days a week. At the Super Bowl party this year, there were 100 guys on the dance floor with the Bud girls. I’ve never seen anything like it.
— Dean Speranza, Salesman

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.

Back in January, Lambert and Girard shared an architectural rendering of the proposed patio to a group of neighbours. “The idea of this whole thing is you will not see us and you will not hear us,” Lambert told Inside Toronto at the beginning of the year. Apparently, the engineering firm Aeroacoustics was hired to design the expansion, with noise concerns in mind.

But at the latest meeting committee members just weren’t satisfied with Girard’s answers to their queries. Girard admitted that he and Lambert hadn’t discussed potential hours of operation for the proposed patio and couldn’t give an idea of noise levels that would result from an outdoor extension. Committee member Robert Brown commented, “For an astute businessman, you should have better answers.”

Committee members weren’t the only ones voicing their concerns last Wednesday—18 residents of the Parkdale area attended the meeting, and three were given the opportunity to make a statement, bringing 68 letters opposing the development. Making the issue more complicated is the ban on back patios, as well as a bylaw prohibiting rooftop patios on Queen West. Looks like the Drake and the Rhino won’t have to worry about new competition on the patio front this summer.

• Patio application denied [Inside Toronto]
• Parts and Labour detail patio plans [Inside Toronto]

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]

(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.

Toronto Life is paying me $6,500 to write this article, which is a good chunk of change, sure, especially given how much less other magazines and newspapers are coughing up these days. But it’s also about the same amount I would have been paid if I had written the same article in 1995. And in 1995, the $420,000 that Liz and I paid last summer for a little three-bedroom semi on a somewhat glum, treeless street at Dufferin and Davenport would have bought us an enormous detached home in Trinity-Bellwoods. We would likely have a car or two and a couple of kids; our kids might even have their own cars. We wouldn’t have cared so much that our food was locally or sustainably grown, but we would also have paid less for it and been able to eat in restaurants more than, say, once a month—even if the restaurants we could choose from would be fewer and not nearly as good.

We would have grudgingly become used to paying GST, but we wouldn’t have been paying HST or two land-transfer taxes or five cents for every plastic bag, not that I’m against that particular idea. We wouldn’t have to pay anything to use public swimming pools or put out our garbage. A TTC ticket was $1.30. At bars, you could buy smuggled American cigarettes, $3 a pack, from a greasy guy who carried them around in a duffle bag. Mike Harris would have just been elected. Toronto was just Toronto, and North York was North York; Etobicoke, Etobicoke. Whenever I used an ATM, I would take out $20 at a time, instead of the $100 I take out now, and the cash would go almost as far.

In 1995, whenever I used an ATM, I took out $20 at a time, instead of the $100 I take out now, and the cash would go almost as far

But nothing goes very far now. Enough, it seems, is never enough. This isn’t exactly news. Businesses fail; money moves. Habits change; appetites evolve. What was once a movie theatre becomes a dollar store. Toronto is today coping with an unforgiving drumbeat of financial strain: a still-booming real estate market, new taxes, perilous debt, stubbornly high unemployment and the possibility of stagflation. The city, in many ways and for many more people, is much more expensive than it was 10 or 15 years ago. Growing income polarization has made the middle class a minority where once it was the majority. We’re in no danger of becoming a hollowed-out Buffalo or Detroit; in fact, we are moving in the opposite direction—our downtown increasingly resembles New York City, for better and worse. If Manhattan long ago became a playground for the rich, Toronto is becoming something like a jungle gym; plutocrats purchase $11-million penthouse suites at the new Ritz-Carlton while the rest of us nervously ponder the nutritional value of a Roasted Vegetable Ritz cracker. Smug self-congratulation has characterized our two-steps-forward-one-step-back journey through the recession—Our banks are the best! Our real estate rocks!—but now that we’ve supposedly come out the other side, unless you are a Stronach or a Rogers, things still look scary. Everyday life now means living beyond our means.