Toronto the Guu'd: the Church Street izakaya may be expanding (Image: Gabriel Li, from the torontolife.com Flickr pool)
Our appetite for Japanese food spiked today after hearing the rumour, via Chowhound, that Church Street’s Guu Izakaya is planning on opening a second location at Bloor and Spadina in the fall. Since the Vancouver import opened up in Toronto last December, it’s been packed to the rafters (a two-hour wait for a table is not uncommon). A new Annex counterpart would suit Guu’ casual-yet-authentic Japanese offerings, but Vancouver office manager Yoshi Negishi says they haven’t officially decided where they’re going to open a second location. “The first one is pretty good,” Negishi says. “In the future, if it’s possible, we would like to open up a second.”
When brothers Andrés and Arturo Anhalt opened Milagro restaurant on Mercer Street, they did it to offer authentic Mexican cuisine to a city hooked on burritos, nachos and other dishes of the Tex-Mex persuasion. Torontonians, it turned out, were receptive to their ceviches and mole sauces—so much so that a mere three years later, Milagro has opened a second location, on Yonge, north of Lawrence.
