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The comprehensive index of every blog post, magazine story and restaurant review that appears on Torontolife.com
Charles Khabouth at his newest restaurant, La Société (Image: Gizelle Lau)
A few months back, we reported that restaurateur and nightlife impresario Charles Khabouth was planning to open two new restaurants on King Street West. Over the weekend, we found out that Khabouth has partnered with Hanif Harji to make a run on the neighbourhood with a handful of projects.
Don’t worry, Ryan Gosling is not proposing to Evan Rachel Wood (Image: Soho House)
Last night’s Ides of March cocktail party at the Grey Goose Soho House—in a yet-to-be-named lounge space on Duncan Street (owned by club king Charles Khabouth)—might have cemented the hot spot’s role as number one celeb hangout. The star-studded cast was all in attendance—George Clooney, Ryan Gosling, Evan Rachel Wood, Marisa Tomei, Paul Giamatti and Philip Seymour Hoffman—and you couldn’t swing a cat without hitting Gosling’s abs or Evan Rachel Wood’s jaunty chapeau because the party was only open to 100 people, give or take. Unsurprisingly, the ladies (and plenty of gay men) were swooning over Gosling and Clooney, and at one point it felt like the entire room had turned to face the hunky guys. (It was like we were standing in a giant elevator and everyone was facing forward.) Wood was seen in a Greta Garbo–type power suit and brought four girlfriends with her, spending most of the night chatting with them on the comfy red couches (including one talk about having Bieber Fever). Find out who Ryan Gosling went home with and a photo gallery of the party after the jump.
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It was a very relaxed party. There was a lot of vodka. (Image: Erin Simkin)
We wish every fashion party took place at an Annex mansion. Greta Constantine went back to the opulent estate of Michael Cooper and Krystal Koo for the sneak peek of the second instalment of their basics line, Primer. Longtime Greta fans Amanda Blakley and Ashleigh Dempster accessorized with enormous baby bumps that had even the iciest socialites cooing (overheard: “I’d love to look half as good as she does nine months pregnant”). Daniel Johnson of the band Stereos held court by the pool (which, thankfully sadly, no one tumbled into, although there were a few close calls due to some of the deathly high heels being sported), while Jay Levine of Fashion Television and PR maven Natasha Koifman chatted like old high school chums by the vodka bar. The CBC’s Kirstine Stewart and Maple Leaf GM honey Jennifer Burke also made cameos, along with INK honcho Charles Khabouth. Suzanne Timmins—looking fierce in animal print—made a fashionably late entrance with white tux–jacketed Ports ad campaign creative director Tu Ly in tow before navigating her way delicately across the pool to get a personal tour of the collection from co-designer Kirk Pickersgill (the unofficial star of the night was his tiny godson, who was dancing like a maniac and fending off media requests). Check out the scene and read more about the collection after the jump.
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La Société serves up social cachet wrapped in sex appeal, and some decent French food, too (Image: Eugen Sakhnenko)
Four million dollars buys a lot of restaurant, even on Bloor Street, at the heart of the city’s richest retail mile. Charles Khabouth, the nightclub impresario behind La Société, the new, two-storey, 380-seat, more or less slavish recreation of a belle époque Paris bistro, brought in 29 tile workers, many of them from Montreal, to complete the spectacularly elaborate black, white and gold mosaic floors in the restaurant’s main bar and dining room. He and Alessandro Munge, of the Munge Leung design firm, commissioned a stained-glass ceiling for the bistro’s main space (which they’ve backlit, inexcusably, with sallow fluorescent lights), purchased their zinc bar top from France, outfitted the banquettes in brass and burgundy leather, and panelled the room in enough mahogany to deforest the best-endowed of banana republics. The rent, meantime, likely adds $2 million annually to Khabouth’s overhead. He’ll need to sell a lot of steak frites to cover that, but the man isn’t afraid to go big.
The bar at La Société (Image: Gizelle Lau)
La Société, Charles Khabouth and Danny Soberano’s new upscale bistro, opened last week to just the chic red-carpet reception one would expect, with guests like “jersey boys” Kirk Pickersgill and Stephen Wong of Greta Constantine, media mogul Moses Znaimer, Canadian Read the rest of this entry »musician music manager and producer Jake Gold and Food Network Canada host Kevin Brauch (no RPattz sighting, though). We first scoped out the dining room’s impressive stained-glass ceiling shortly after it was installed, and returned last week to see how everything turned out.
Charles Khabouth beneath the just-installed stained-glass ceiling at La Société (Image: Gizelle Lau)
A few months ago, we announced that Charles Khabouth of Ink Entertainment would be taking over the space formerly occupied by dim sum staple Dynasty Chinese Cuisine. After five months of renovations, the new restaurant, La Société, is set to open on June 15th, and we got a sneak peek to see what it was all about.
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Inside Briscola Trattoria (Image: Gizelle Lau)
Briscola, the new rustic Italian restaurant from Ink Entertainment’s Charles Khabouth and Amber’s Toufik Sarwa, opened last Friday to the packed crowds one would expect from a collaboration between the two nightlife vets. After taking over the space of Sarwa’s short-lived Cinq 01 restaurant, Briscola apparently saw visits from Ben Mulroney and Galen Weston Jr. on its first weekend.
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Nighttime entertainment vets Charles Khabouth of Ink Entertainment and Toufik Sarwa of Amber have announced a new collaboration that will take over the space of Sarwa’s former College Street bistro Cinq 01. The new restaurant, Briscola Trattoria, will be a casual Italian eatery, and is set to open next Friday, February 18 (Cinq 01 closed in January).
Inside the dining room of the new Dynasty
Last fall saw the quiet shuttering of a couple of downtown dim sum giants: Bright Pearl in Chinatown and Dynasty Chinese Cuisine on Bloor (in both cases, restaurant owners and property owners were butting heads over the lease). While Bright Pearl is still “closed for renovations,” tourists and dim sum lovers alike breathed a sign of relief when Dynasty reopened—just in time for the Christmas rush—at the Yorkville location where True once served up organic, local fare.
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Over the next couple of years, this city will get five new luxury hotels. It starts with the Thompson, which opens its high-concept doors this month and promises to be ground zero for the beautiful people
If you build it: the Thompson Toronto, on Wellington West, is the first international arm of the New York–based brand (Illustration: Kagan McLeod)
Lately, King West is an urban cloud nine: designer condos, old brick studio spaces, fantastic carpaccio. Only 15 years ago, no one had much reason to venture down here—not for work, not to live, not for a dining scene, because there wasn’t one. There were no ad agencies, no Susur Lee joints, no Spoke Club and certainly no boutique hotels. But now the dozen or so blocks bounded by Spadina and Bathurst, from Adelaide down to Wellington, are a humming, self-sustaining ecosystem—a model of how to retrofit a vintage downtown neighbourhood.
Real estate agents call this part of town King West Village, a handle the locals find too artificial to pass their lips, especially considering the place isn’t yet fully formed. At every turn, there’s a construction site, or a gaping hole in the ground, or a lot with a target on its back, almost all of them bearing the same signage: an artful graphic in lower case letters saying “freed.” It’s not an existentialist statement; “Freed” stands for Peter Freed, the Forest Hill–bred developer who has nine projects on the go in the area. No one has been a bigger catalyst of the evolution of King West, or capitalized on it more, than Freed. His real estate portfolio, mainly condos, is worth $1 billion, and much of it is geared to a highly specific breed: a 35-ish, design-obsessed demographic that wears Japanese denim, listens to Phoenix, works in advertising or banking or consults in high tech, travels often and widely, and stays at properties designed by Ian Schrager, the Manhattan entrepreneur often credited with founding the boutique hotel genre. In King West, Freed has prepared a landing strip for these hipster high flyers (and those who aspire to become them). They’re not rich, necessarily. Their ambition is to be tastefully in the know.
For them, Freed has invested in a crowning achievement, a gleefully anticipated light box on Wellington: the 102-room Thompson Toronto, which is scheduled to open its high-concept doors this month. Read the rest of this entry »
(Photo by Jessica Darmanin)
Ten years ago, the fraternal foodies (that’s Michael, the business brain, and Guy, the chef) introduced pan-Asian glamour to the city’s restaurant scene with the clubby Rain. Now they’ve shaken things up again, partnering with party czar Charles Khabouth to give their eatery a recession-defying overhaul, a revamped menu and a new name—Ame. For Toronto Life‘s Best of Fall cover story, we sat down to interview the pair about how two Italian boys came to open a Japanese restaurant on Mercer Street.
• Read the Q&A with the Rubino brothers>>
• See the whole Best of Fall package>>
Guy Rubino mans the grill at Ame, the restaurant he and his brother, Michael, have opened in collaboration with Charles Khabouth (All photos by Davida Aronovitch)
After over six months of renovations and about two months of delay, Guy and Michael Rubino’s Rain has been reborn as Ame (Japanese for, what else, “rain”). The brothers are known for frequent reinvention (Zoom, Luce and the reality series Made to Order), and for this latest transformation, they have teamed up with the club mogul Charles Khabouth. Ame presents the chic Japanese aspects of Rain’s Asian fusion and swaps the former restaurant’s special-occasion appeal for a casual vibe.
The interior of Ame is by Khabouth’s go-to designers, Munge Leung (Ultra, Guvernment); the one-room open concept has been transformed into a seductive labyrinth of spaces. An inviting lounge of chunky low-rise furniture is flanked by a sexy backlit bar. The sashimi counter wraps around the traditional coal-burning robata grill—Guy’s culinary cornerstone, on which the Iron Chef sears Australian wagyu flatiron and strip loin steak, cut to order. The adjacent dining area is splintered into tidy nooks; a private room beckons recluses and TIFF types. The full menu is available in all spaces, to entice barflies and foodies alike.
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Halt the salt: Can science reduce the use of salt in food? (Photo by Kevin Dooley)
• A Ryerson University professor is developing a time-release salt that delivers an initial burst of flavour followed by smaller doses over time. This would trick the taste buds into thinking that a food is saltier than it is, theoretically reducing the need to add the taste booster to foods. [Daily Gleaner]
• Nightclub impresario Charles Khabouth—the man behind Tattoo Rock Parlour, Ultra and the relaunch of Rain (now Ame)—talks about surviving in a crowded and broke market. In the process, he describes the first opening he organized in Toronto: the place was decorated by Canadian Tire, and the tiger he’d rented broke a window, catching the attention of cops and the humane society. [ROB]
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Ame cometh: Guy Rubino will be cooking up authentic Japanese fare at Rain's replacement
When Rain closed its doors in early January, it was supposed to be for modest renovations. The co-owning Rubino brothers (Guy and Michael, of Zoom and Luce fame) were planning a sushi and sashimi bar to add some new flavour to the restaurant as it approached its 10th anniversary. But club king and visionary Charles Khabouth arrived on the scene with another idea. “It’s all Charles’s fault,” explains executive chef Guy Rubino. “He said, ‘It’s not enough. Come to my office.’ So I did.” Now, after massive changes to the concept, space, name and menu, the souped-up supper club Ame is slated to open at the end of June, featuring an Obama shout-out, a more relaxed ambience and a brand new menu. Says Guy, “It will be completely unrecognizable.”
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Rain, Rain: Come again some other day (Photo by Henry Faber)
In June, the redesigned Rain will be unveiled, with a new name (Ame, Japanese for “rain”), a tip-to-tail renovation and some fresh entertainment value. Club king Charles Khabouth (Tattoo Rock Parlour, Spice Route), who has been shaping the party scene since the first bodysuit trend, has teamed up with co-owners and Made to Order stars Guy and Michael Rubino to give the Mercer Street digs a new do.
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