In the pre-TIFF weeks, everyone (ourselves included) wondered whether the new Bell Lightbox Theatre and a few shiny King Street hot spots would result in a mass uptown exodus. But now that the fest is in full swing, it’s obvious we underestimated the familiarity factor. Apparently there really is no place like Yorkville, or at least that’s what we’re left to conclude after spotting an arsenal of A-listers at the dustiest of de rigueur dwellings, the Four Seasons. Here, a rundown of the evening’s encounters.
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Spotted! Woody Harrelson, Ryan Phillippe, Harvey Weinstein and Bruce Springsteen
In rant at the Four Seasons, Peter Fonda proves that he’s mad as hell about something
Peter Fonda poses with a fan at the Four Seasons (Image: Ryan Porter)
Hollywood is fraught with uncertainty, but one thing we can all count on is that somewhere in Tinseltown, a Fonda has an opinion on politics. On Sunday, Peter Fonda, the 70-year-old star of Easy Rider, showed he’s still as passionate about protecting the world’s oceans as he was in his radical Greenpeace days. The actor was on hand at the Four Seasons to accept the Legacy Leadership Award from charity group Best Buddies. When we asked what moment stands out from his work with charities, this was his response:
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Guests ogle Anthony Hopkins at the George Christy luncheon
Anthony Hopkins was the talk of the luncheon (Image: George Pimentel/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images)
The luncheon and reception at the Four Seasons hosted by famed Hollywood columnist George Christy is always one of the hottest TIFF tickets. At Saturday’s reception, mega-stars mingled with the genteel set—including Galen and Hilary Weston, Kim Newport-Mimran and Joe Mimran (looking regal in plush blue and gold slippers) and Ben Mulroney—in the Avenue Bar before proceeding to a sumptuous lunch upstairs.
Anthony Hopkins, in town to promote his film, the Woody Allen-directed You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, had the ladies a-twitter (“He looks so good. How old is he?”) and brought the inevitable fava bean and chianti jokes as he offered one-word answers to our questions. Yes, he does like Toronto, and yes, it was good working with Allen. Roger Ebert chatted with Norman Jewison and took pictures of actor Dominic Cooper. As hotel staffers tried to wrap the party and usher guests out, they were stopped by one who insisted, “It’s George’s decision. Let it go on as long as he likes.”
= Find this story on our Celebrity Sightings Map, where we plot the locations of stars spotted throughout Toronto
Oh boy, George: Toronto society types head to the Four Seasons to toast George Pimentel
One of Pimentel's festival snaps (Image: George Pimentel)
The city might not be in the full throes of TIFF just yet (official celebrations begin tomorrow), but that didn’t stop the society types from fêting noted celeb photographer George Pimentel with a lavish party at the Four Seasons’ Avenue Bar. The room, though festooned with shots of such bigwigs as Robert De Niro and Scarlett Johansson, wasn’t packed with the Hollywood crowd, but Toronto royalty—Stacey Kimmel, Hello! magazine’s outgoing editor Ciara Hunt, Food TV’s Rocco DiSpirito, ASC PR honcho Alexandra Weston (preggers again) and Canada AM’s Seamus O’Regan—congregated to congratulate Pimentel on the exhibition of some of his most memorable festival photographs (see a slide show of the works here).
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Are the doomsayers right? Is it the end for Yorkville as TIFF epicentre?
The mean streets of King West (Image: Google Maps)
With the Bell Lightbox TIFF headquarters at King and John finished, doomsayers have begun predicting the demise of Yorkville as the festival epicentre. The new Lightbox—with its five screening rooms, festival programming and trendy new restaurants—is obviously going to provide Yorkville’s facilities with some competition. It’s also across from the Hyatt Regency, the official host hotel, and very close to the Thompson Hotel, where Shenae Grimes, Adrian Grenier and Enrique Iglesias have been spotted recently.
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The Fixe Is In: James Chatto on Lynn Crawford’s new restaurant, Ruby Watchco
At Lynn Crawford’s new restaurant, customers eat whatever she feels like cooking that day. The concept is bold and bossy, but the celeb chef has the talent and swagger to pull it off
I had to admire their cool. With only four hours to go before the grand opening of Ruby Watchco, the restaurant’s three owners—chef Lynn Crawford, designer Cherie Stinson and her husband, front-of-house veteran Joey Skeir—were showing no sign of nerves. They were just sitting around the lunch table at the back of the restaurant, laughing and swapping renovation stories over a bottle of pinot grigio and an excellent chicken cobb salad made by head chef Lora Kirk. If this were an episode of Restaurant Makeover, the TV show that made Crawford and Stinson celebrities, there would be cussing and tears and all sorts of last-minute nail-biting melodramas to negotiate. But everything was pretty much ready, or would be once the last of the green masking tape was peeled off the front window. Even the tall boughs of quince blossom in a vase on the bar co-operated: all the buds popped open that morning, precisely on cue.
Lynn Crawford (left) and head chef Lora Kirk at their new restaurant, Ruby Watchco, on Queen East (Image: Ryan Szulc)
The inn crowd: Toronto’s five new luxury hotels
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 »
Just Opened: Ruby Watchco, Lynn Crawford’s much-anticipated restaurant
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After years of manning other people’s kitchens (the Manhattan Four Seasons), reinventing other people’s restaurants (Restaurant Makeover) and Pitchin’ In on other people’s farms, Lynn Crawford finally has a restaurant she can call her own. The venerable chef has opened Ruby Watchco in Riverdale, in the old Citizen space, with TV colleague (and Yabu Pushelberg designer) Cherie Stinson and her husband Joey Skeir as partners, and Four Seasons protégé Lora Kirk as the co–executive chef. The doors of the Queen East boîte opened last Tuesday, and it’s already booked solid.
Lynn Crawford’s Ruby Watchco opens tonight
After months of buzz on food blogs and Twitter feeds anticipating chef Lynn Crawford’s return to Toronto, her new restaurant, Ruby Watchco, will finally welcome its first diners tonight. Cherie Stinson of Restaurant Makeover, who is a partner with her husband Joey Skeir, has transformed the space formerly occupied by The Citizen into a dimly lit, autumn-toned dining room. Crawford will run the kitchen with Lora Kirk, who previously cooked at the Four Seasons.
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Elevated Oprah takes no chances with security (except sometimes)
Destination unknown: elevator numbers were switched off at the Hazelton when Oprah was changing floors (Photo by Karon Liu)
Going up? O, no you’re not.
When Oprah Winfrey rides the elevator, the numbers go black, or so claims a Yorkville insider we met at the InStyle party. The insider told us that although Oprah fans had swarmed the Four Seasons in hopes of catching their 4 p.m. saviour, the Precious producer was, in fact, staying at The Hazelton. We also learned that when Oprah wanted to go up or down the elevator, FBI tactics were in play: all the elevators went dark so no one could know which floor she was on. To further ensure her safeguard, security would block off the foyer to prevent other guests—A-listers or not—from getting to their room.
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The Oprah effect: The press conference-turned-talk show taping
Oprah ropes in her fans at the press conference for Precious
“It’s like the president is coming,” said one photographer looking back at the burly security guards at the entrance of the room.
“It’s bigger than that,” replied another. “It’s Oprah.”
With our cameras slung over our shoulders, painfully weighed down by the giant lenses and flashes attached to them, 15 or so photographers negotiated spots and angles with each other so we all would have a clear shot at the mighty O behind the table she’d be sitting at for the morning press conference of the movie she co-produced: Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire. (To see all photos from the Precious press conference, click here.)
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We don’t care about the young folks: the Park Hyatt is overrun with stargazing 20-somethings
Bored of the dance: many seemed exasperated with the deluge of short-skirted 20-somethings in Yorkville (Photo by Jen McNeely)
Did Gossip Girl put out an APB directing all 19-year-old girls from the GTA to the Park Hyatt roof? The hotel has been so inundated with stargazers that metal fences are required to block the driveway at night and elevators are crammed with intoxicated 20-somethings vying for a lewd stare from any Hollywood hunk. We managed to squeeze through the human wall (thanks to National Post’s Shinan Govani) and bypass the party crashers to get a glimpse of the hoopla at the Hyatt’s Nikki Beach. Drew Barrymore was sitting pretty on the patio, but a somewhat stunned Elijah Wood was seemingly scared off by the masses of miniskirts and lipstick-stained teeth.
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