Dear Urban Diplomat, Read the rest of this entry »
I recently got a job at a certain over-the-top sports bar that requires its female staff to wear tight tops and micro-minis. The tips are amazing, but the uniform is degrading. Can my boss force me to wear it?
—Overexposed, ENTERTAINMENT DISTRICT
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Dear Urban Diplomat: Can your boss force you to wear a degrading uniform?
Violence-crazed Toronto sells out the 55,000-seat Rogers Centre UFC event in 48 hours
Montreal may have gotten the prime-time shout-out in last night’s Grammy Awards Arcade Fire speech, but Toronto can still lord some records over our cousins in Quebec: our crowds for UFC are insanely larger than theirs. While Montreal’s record for a UFC event is a paltry 23,152, Toronto managed to sell out the 55,000-seat Rogers Centre for UFC 129 in about 48 hours.
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Home of the Week: $18.9 million for a two-storey penthouse condo at University and Adelaide
ADDRESS: 180 University Avenue, Penthouse 2
NEIGHBOURHOOD: Entertainment District
AGENT: Kristen Michelle Duern, Robbyn Hayden, Donna Brookes, all with Bayshore Realty Inc.
PRICE: $18,888,000
THE PLACE: Welcome to the high life, both literally and figuratively. This is one of the two penthouses that sit on the 65th and 66th floors of the swish new Shangri-La hotel and condo complex at Adelaide and University (presently under construction). With 6,700 square feet of space, plus another 2,900 square feet on the terrace, the unit is one of the biggest and most luxurious in all the new towers going up between Bloor and the lake.
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King and John BIA wants a new “urban ballroom” and “cultural corridor” in downtown Toronto
The southeast corner of King and John has been targeted by the local BIA for improvement. Specifically, the neighbourhood group wants to make John Street Square into something more like a hipstery hangout and less like where lonely men go for late-night rendezvous. The Entertainment District BIA held a competition, and the winner, pictured above, was announced this morning.
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The Best of Winterlicious 2011: Toronto Life’s 62 favourite restaurants
(Image: Renée Suen, from the torontolife.com Flickr pool)
January is upon us, and for many hungry Torontonians, that means one thing: Winterlicious. The menus are less predictable than previous years—crème brûlée’s out, lentils du Puy are in—so even the ’Licious haters might have a reason to take advantage of the festival this year. We’ve already named the 12 menus that we think are the best bets, but that doesn’t begin to cover it. Here, find Toronto Life’s 62 favourite Winterlicious restaurants, complete with menus, reviews and reservation numbers.
Winterlicious runs from January 28 to February 10. Reservations are accepted from January 13 onward (January 11 for American Express users).
Club-goers rejoice: Sukhothai expanding to entertainment district
Sukhothai's amazing khao soi (Image: Sukhothaifood.com)
With so many new restaurants popping up on Ossington and in Parkdale, it’s refreshing to hear of new culinary destinations making their way to the pretty much passé entertainment district. This time, it’s an upscale Thai joint known as Khao San Road, named after Bangkok’s legendary backpackers’ ghetto. It’s set to open this January, and what’s especially exciting is that the new restaurant will be helmed by Sukhothai’s chef Nuit Regular, the mastermind behind the life-altering khao soi.
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Just Opened: we review O&B Canteen and Brockton General
Brockton General 
1321 Dundas St. W., 647-342-6104
(Image: Lorne Bridgman)
The usual rules of running a restaurant don’t apply at this tiny former sports bar on Dundas West: the only decorative item of note is a decrepit poster of a Portuguese soccer team, the plates are mismatched china (the best of them are decorated with fluffy baby animals), and the daily menu of just three or four small-portioned entrées is written on butcher paper hanging from the wall.
And yet the place, which is run by plucky first-time restaurateurs Brie Read and Pam Thomson, is also one of the most enjoyable openings of this past year, in no small part because of the cooking. Chef Guy Rawlings (the former chef de cuisine at Cowbell) does country food, for lack of a better term, with urban panache: puckery pickled white turnips that show a blush of pink in their middles; beguiling anchovy- and garlic-enriched white bean mash with smoky grilled bread; house-made lamb sausage grilled to medium and topped with charred scallions.
Excellent fresh maltagliati (like pappardelle, but irregularly shaped) is tossed with chopped tomato, roasted hot and sweet peppers, mint and shiso—it’s cucina povera by way of Japan. A crostino Rawlings made this summer, with toasted walnuts, Cape Vessey cheese, tender sultanas, anchovy and walnut purée, and a soft poached egg, was so good it was impossible to stop at just one order.
The chef recently completed a month-long pastry stage at WD50, a cutting-edge restaurant in NYC, and his desserts—including a pear and rosemary tart made with fruit from a friend’s backyard tree and fried brioche with kefir and Rosewood Estates honey—taste like a super-sophisticated fall fair. The cocktails are good (the crabapple and Zubrówka vodka is genius), and the playlist (Coeur de Pirate, Arcade Fire, Carla Bruni) will make you want to run to Soundscapes for a nightcap. Limited wine list. Closed Monday and Tuesday. Mains $13–$19. Read the rest of this entry »
The Bell Lightbox is also a giant money box
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The numbers are in. Not surprisingly, credit card spending was up in the Entertainment District, while Yorkville saw a slight decrease during TIFF, but it doesn’t necessarily mean Yorkville is officially dead. The Globe reports (yes, the paper has a non-redesign story today) that credit card purchases at restaurants and bars went up 9.1 per cent on King West while going down 5.2 per cent in Yorkville. The same pattern applies to retail stores.
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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Assigned movie seats, capsule hotels and 23 other ways to make Toronto cooler: Star
Number 16: leave the Entertainment District alone (Image: Angie Schwendemann)
Inspired by Steve Martin’s joke (from, uh, two years ago) on 30 Rock that Toronto is like New York without all the stuff, the Star has published a 25-item wish list. Some are no brainers—elevating condo retail concourses beyond Subways and grocery chains, 24-hour TTC service on weekends—but others are head-scratchers.
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Where to eat lunch this week: Yuzu
At $31, this artful sushi platter is equal parts beautiful, original and affordable
The sushi platter for two at Yuzu (Images: Renée Suen)
The place: Tucked away in the northeast corner of the entertainment district, this slick Japanese eatery shares both its owners and its flair with the better-known Japango. The kitchen and sushi bar bustle with activity under the pretty display of the restaurant’s premium sakes.
The crowd: Aficionados park themselves at chef Bruce Bu’s sushi bar as buttoned-down business lunches take place at the tables.
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Circa nightclub is officially dead, please fist-pump elsewhere
Halloween at Circa (Image: Divya Thakur)
Circa’s doors have been shut for a month, but today the Star is officially confirming that the John Street über-club has filed for bankruptcy.
A closed sign is posted on the club’s home page along with the message “Thank you for supporting us over the years”; Nelly Furtado’s “All Good Things (Come to an End)” plays in the background. The relationship between the “good things” and Circa remain unclear, although we’re pretty sure they are not referring to the nightclub’s $2.1 million in debt.
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Peter Street Deli closes after 15 years in the entertainment district
A goodbye notice from the deli (Photo by Jon Sufrin)
Entertainment district institution Peter Street Deli has closed its doors after 15 years of operation, depriving clubland locals of its famous hybrid of Canadian and Chinese greasy spoon fare.
A sign on the door confirms that the owners have decided to retire. “Thank you for your support and patronage over the past 15 years,” it reads, adding that customers can expect a new restaurant to spring up in the near future.
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Chicken skin becoming trendy, deep-fried macaroni and cheese, Jason Alexander shills for Jenny Craig
Get the skinny: chicken skin is poised to become the new bacon (Photo by InfoMofo)
• Food and Wine’s Mouthing Off blog is predicting that chicken skin will usurp bacon as a trendy fatty food in 2010. The long-verboten food item is enjoying a resurgence in BLTs (CSLTs?), crisped and scattered like croutons. In perhaps the most telling promo for chicken skin, David Chang, a hot New York City chef, is serving it at his hugely popular eatery Momofuku Ko as a garnish with pasta. [Food and Wine] Read the rest of this entry »
• New Year’s resolutions be damned. The Globe and Mail has issued a list of the best places to get deep-fried macaroni and cheese. Reggie’s Old Fashioned Sandwiches scores for its rendition, served as sticks. Bryan Burke, co-owner of Reggie’s, bet on the restaurant’s proximity to the entertainment district drawing in drunken revellers who would love a cheesy treat. [Globe and Mail]
Prix fixe, midnight madness: where to eat on New Year’s Eve
(Photo by Sally Mahoney)
December 31st is rapidly approaching, and the pressure’s on: what to do on New Year’s Eve? For those who hate crowds, messy house parties and shivering in Nathan Phillips Square but still don’t want to feel curmudgeonly come the stroke of midnight, Toronto’s best restaurants are offering multi-course meals at bargain prices. Here, our list of nine of the best prix fixe menus throughout the city. (Looking for the guide to Toronto’s high profile NYE parties? Click here »)
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