Sure, the fact that Bell Canada and Rogers have teamed up to purchase Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment is old news now, but the full implications of the deal remain to be seen. For our part, we’re wondering if the Toronto Maple Leafs will be slapped with absurd roaming charges on the road, or whether fans will have to purchase beer by following a series of annoying prompts on their cellphones. Of course, there’s also the tricky matter of whether or not the $1.32-billion purchase will turn out to be a good thing or a bad thing for Toronto sports teams—and, by extension, their fans—when it comes to the business of winning and losing. We round up what the city’s sportswriter corps is saying on the matter, after the jump.

1. What will happen to Hockey Night in Canada?
The Grid’s Rob Duffy highlights the impact of the deal on you and your smart phone, writing that fans should expect more MLSE content delivered to their mobile devices. Oh, and apparently the Leafs’ new owners will eventually try to steal NHL broadcasting rights away from the CBC, “which will, of course, kill Hockey Night in Canada and dramatically reshape Canadian media as we know it.” So there’s that.

2. The largest purchase in Canadian sports history had a cool code name
Four Globe and Mail reporters went full-Woodstein on the story, providing a behind-the-scenes look at the deal. According to the paper, MLSE chairman and billionaire Larry Tanenbaum played kingmaker, granting competitors Bell and Rogers the chance for joint ownership—as long as they gave him a 25 per cent share of the company. The deal even had a code name. The folks at Bell called it Midnight: “a dark reference to two rivals coming together.”

3. What’s winning got to do, got to do with it?
The Sun’s Steve Simmons writes that Rogers’ and Bell’s primary interest is delivering as much content as possible on as many different platforms as possible (the Star’s Damien Cox echoed a similar concern). Simmons points out the telecom giants likely aren’t overly concerned with the Leafs’ penalty killing or the Raptors defence. The Globe’s Eric Duhatschek, on the other hand, begs to differ: he counters that winning is, and always will be, good business.

4. Another reason to hate Bell: they own part of the Habs
In addition to now owning part of the Leafs, Bell already has a minority stake in the Montreal Canadiens. (Bell president and CEO George Cope already stated that the company will maintain that stake.)

5. At this rate, Rogers and Bell will soon own your child’s little league team
The Globe and Mail’s Bruce Dowbiggin thinks the deal, which saw two competing corporations reach a compromise, is quintessentially Canadian. (There’s some truth to that, but a more fitting resolution given the circumstances might have been for the companies to drop the gloves and wail on each other.) Dowbiggin’s main concern, though, is journalistic. With Rogers and Bell owning both the city’s sports teams and the reporters that cover them, can we really expect untainted journalism?

6. The Competition Bureau is on the case
Always looking to rain on a billionaire’s parade, the federal competition watchdog is set to investigate the MLSE deal, the Canadian Press reports. The Competition Bureau, which stays on the lookout for anti-competitive behaviour by large corporations, hasn’t released the specifics of its investigation. Still, the purchase seems like an obvious target for at least a little scrutiny.

• What does the MLSE sales mean for TSN and Sportsnet [The Grid]
• How the MLSE deal was done [Globe and Mail]
• Nothing in MLSE deal for Toronto fans [Toronto Sun]
• Cox: What would Conn Smyth think of the Maple Leafs now [Toronto Star]
• Despite MLSE deal, on-ice fortunes of Leafs will remain the same [Globe and Mail]
• MLSE deal: What Rogers and Bell buyout means for fans [National Post]
• MLSE deal: A typical Canadian compromise [Globe and Mail]
• Toronto Maple Leafs sold, but Competition Bureau will investigate [Canadian Press]

Captain Fantastic: Peter Munk on his 40-metre yacht, the Golden Eagle, which has a full-time staff of five. (Image: Jim Ross)

There are birthday parties, and then there was Nathaniel Rothschild’s party this past July. The financier, scion of the prominent banking family and future baron was turning 40 and spent £1 million on the weekend-long extravaganza. The venue: Porto Montenegro, a newly developed luxury resort and marina in the Montenegrin coastal town of Tivat, on the southeast side of the Adriatic Sea. It was the sort of gathering that marks the end of an era or the birth of an empire—and in a way, for Europe’s youngest and smallest democracy, it was both.

Four hundred guests arrived at the village airport on private jets or stepped off the fleet of super-yachts that washed ashore from the world’s most glamorous tax havens—the Grenadines, Gibraltar, Grand Cayman. The attendees were described in the Guardian society pages as “200 ugly rich people and their poorer but more attractive partners,” or, as one guest more generously put it, “plutocrats and the women who love them.” A number of the partiers were so fantastically rich they could bankroll whole armies (which the birthday boy’s family, in its heyday, once did): Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska (who arrived on his £70-million yacht, the Queen K); the wealthy Egyptian Sawiris family (who have embarked on their own Montenegrin development nearby); King Leruo Molotlegi, ruler of a tiny, platinum-rich part of South Africa, who hit the dance floor in a fabulous dashiki; British politician Lord Peter Mandelson; Jimmy Choo honcho Tamara Mellon; the historian Niall Ferguson and his Dutch-Somali partner, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a feminist critic of Islam. There was a healthy smattering of European royalty, as well as members of the Guinness and Goldsmith clans.

Munk bought the Port of Tivat for €155 million. His co-investors include two Rothschilds and the Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska

While the guests swallowed gallons of Taittinger around Porto Montenegro’s 215-foot-long infinity pool (decorated with floating disco balls imported specially from London), the actress-turned-DJ Michelle Rodriguez presided over the turntables. The dancing continued until the early morning hours.

Surveying the scene with a paternal pride was Peter Munk, the billionaire octogenarian, Holocaust escapee, philanthropist and chairman of the world’s largest gold mining company. Munk is the leader of a small but significant exodus of Torontonians to the rapidly expanding Porto Montenegro. This tribe, who have affectionately dubbed themselves Munkistanis, either went there to work for Porto Montenegro or have started side businesses (restaurants, interior design, wine distribution, banks) to cater to the growing numbers of yacht tourists that Porto Montenegro is drawing. The resort is Munk’s vision, and he’s the main investor. A slice of Yorkville on the Adriatic.

The Candy Man

Tim English, 46
Then: Bay Street lawyer
Now: owner of Chocolateria

I started my Bay Street career as a labour and employment lawyer at Filion Wakele Thorup Angeletti in 1991. Then I moved to Ontario Power Gener­ation for eight years, and after that to Direct Energy for about a year and a half. I had a high salary, about $250,000, and was on the cusp of moving up into the executive ranks, but in the back of my head, I’d always wanted to run my own business and work for myself. In the summer of 2009, when I turned 45, I decided it was time.

My first step was to study every shopping district in the city, to figure out what kind of business appealed to me and which neighbourhood was booming. I realized chocolate is really hot right now. I had taken baking classes at George Brown College for fun and enjoyed it. So I set up a production kitchen in my house and rented a candy kiosk at the Downsview farmers’ market for three months last summer. I wouldn’t call it a hugely successful apprenticeship: the chocolate melted in the summer heat, and I ended up giving most of it away. Also, Downsview doesn’t attract a demographic that buys quality chocolate and pastries.

At the end of the summer, I opened a storefront on Roncesvalles because it has a burgeoning food culture and a kind of bohemian affluence. The space I rented used to be a restaurant. That really cut down on the need for permits and major renovations. I had budgeted $40,000 but spent only $25,000, mostly on equipment and ingredients and packaging for my products.

It’s been a challenge to find my niche in the chocolate-making world. I’ve hired some counter staff but make all the products myself. My chocolate-dipped chips are popular, and I’ve had a lot of success with bacon dipped in peanut butter and chocolate. My plan is to turn the store into a café and chocolate salon by adding pastries, house-made ice cream and an espresso machine. At this point, every penny I make gets plowed back into the business. I pay to work.

There have been bad days when I’m so exhausted and wondering why I did this. After all, I worked hard to become a lawyer, to put myself through school. I’ve given myself a two-year trial period, though I doubt I’ll ever return to law. As a lawyer, your interactions with people aren’t always happy. Now I go home every day with a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment. Everybody loves chocolate.

2:45 a.m., Cobra

“Let’s get drunk and fuck! Let’s get drunk and fuck!”

I’m at Cobra, a King West club in a sprawling basement underneath a 19th-century warehouse. In this neighbourhood, the best parties are either deep underground or high above in a rooftop bar. Cobra is decorated like a gothic funhouse, with a wall of glowing skulls and lots of black. The get-drunk-and-fuck directive bleats from a techno remix as coloured lights, inducing a kind of electric synesthesia, pulsate on the basement ceiling. To my left, two girls make out and topple over, knocking down their bottle service glassware. Guys eagerly watch from the sidelines, plotting how to make their move. My teeth chatter from the vibrating bass. I down a shot that’s half Sour Puss and half vodka, proffered by a human Barbie doll bartender.

I’d arrived at 11:30 p.m., waited my turn to pass through the velvet rope, and carefully made my way down the steep staircase (a bitch to do when you’re wearing six-inch stilettos, like most women here, including me). At first the club was nearly empty, with men and women separated in groups as if it were a middle school dance. But as the night progressed, the room filled and the ladies began to pose and grind for an audience of ethnically diverse guys in shiny loafers. Every once in a while, a waitress walks by holding a tray laden with liquor bottles. When a patron orders a $650 bottle of Cristal, Cobra attaches a sparkler to it with an elastic, so it lights a pathway to the club’s very important patrons as the waitress carries it across the room.

One by one, the guys attack—placing clammy hands on trim waists, stubble on well-moisturized cheeks, come-ons on deaf ears. Conversation consists of “What’s up tonight?” and “I can’t hear you, the music’s too loud!” By 3 a.m., the club is nearly empty except for one or two defiant couples, courting the inevitability of what happens at the end of the night.

The opening event for the Thompson Hotel was the high point of cool for the neighbourhood and a warning of the coming deluge of weekend partiers

The entrances to many of the neighbourhood’s nightclubs are hidden in brick-paved alleys that were originally designed to ship products more efficiently to the street’s warehouses. Outside Cobra, three chicks from Western smoke on a striped chaise longue by a cluster of heat lamps, and giggle over the guys they rejected. They tell me they drove in for the weekend to celebrate a friend’s birthday. The prettiest of them, a fragile 20-year-old blonde with a passing resemblance to Kirsten Dunst, is wearing a black lace dress from Urban Behavior, rhinestone earrings from Ardene, $25 bejewelled satin pumps and no coat even though it’s zero degrees and dropping.

I turn my attention back to the street. It’s time I go home to Parkdale, but hailing a cab is a nightmare: King West is a tangle of stretch Hummers and lost packs of bachelorettes. My idea of a big night out used to consist of drinking PBR in a dingy bar in Little Portugal. But over the past few months, as I attempted to figure out why King West became one giant party, I spent nearly every weekend on the strip, dining on foie gras at Brassaii, getting my makeup retouched at C Lounge, avoiding groping guys at the Firkin. Throughout my travels, I met a concert promoter in his late 50s named Gerry, who invited me back to his multimillion-dollar house on Richmond, where we smoked pot and listened to Captain Beefheart; a cop who flashed me his badge and pretended to arrest me “for being so beautiful”; and a guy who swore he wasn’t a rapist as he begged me to join him in his limo. As I make my way home, it occurs to me that this is the only neighbourhood in Toronto where people make direct eye contact.

The shop lights on Gerrard Street East stay on till nine—a late-night tradition that started out with the old Bollywood movie house that originally brought Indian merchants to the strip. Now sari shops, glowing neon signs for Kashmiri tea and sidewalk stands selling spiced corn on the cob keep the area filled with Pakistani Canadians from nearby Victoria Park, South Asian families in from the burbs, and residents from the slowly-but-surely gentrifying side streets. The retail bustle is creeping west of Jones, where several new businesses are revitalizing a dreary stretch of empty storefronts, noodle houses, laundro­mats and hair salons. By Crystal Luxmore | Photography by Emma McIntyre

Start the Gerrard Street East tour »

Addison's (Image: Lorne Bridgman)

BATHROOMS
Addison’s
See it on Castlefield Avenue, buy it at Addison’s. The rambling, one-of-a-kind decor mecca is outstanding for bathroom, heating and plumbing goods. Among the vintage gems: deco-ish repro faucets, antique claw-foot tubs and pedestal sinks (each from $200), replacement toilet-tank lids ($25–$40), chrome towel bars (from $25) and cast iron hot water radiators ($100 and up).
41 Wabash Ave., 416-539-0612.

LIGHTING
Paul Wolf Lighting and Electric Supply
Beat big-box prices at Paul Wolf, home to all-hours service and hundreds of light fixtures, bulbs, dimmers and switches. Call the shop’s 24-hour emergency number if your lights fizzle, and they’ll get you what you need.
555 Eastern Ave., 416-466-9957; 425 Alliance Ave., 416‑504-8194.

FRAMING
Victor Gallery
Find rows of solid ash or basswood frames and shadow boxes in black, white and brown stains, as well as hard-to-find dimensions, with nothing over $120. In the rare event that you can’t find a size, a member
of the Mitic family (the owners) will customize a piece in a week.
636 Queen St. W., 416‑504-1659.

Ontario meets the subcontinent: a local fish wrapped in a banana leaf (Image: Jon Sufrin)

Set in the midst of gyro-heavy Greektown, new Indian restaurant Aravind is something of an anomaly. It stands out by serving Keralan and southern cuisine (the curry-and-cream dishes of northern India are way more common downtown) and for utilizing Ontario-sourced ingredients when possible. Aravind, which opened last month, is not a bargain joint by any means—mains here range from $14 to $21—but owners hope the local ingredients, dedication to service and the concise, VQA-heavy wine list make up for it.

Aravind Kozhikott, who co-owns the eponymous spot with his family, has been a member of Marc Thuet’s team for the past few years; he helped train ex-cons during season one of Conviction Kitchen. For the time being, Kozhikott’s parents are heading up the kitchen, giving a homemade aspect to such standard Keralan creations as masala dosas, stuffed with potato and onion masala ($14), and saag paneer, doused in a purée of spinach, kale and broccoli ($16). Aravind also does a banana leaf–wrapped Ontario whole fish (pictured, $21). With only seafood and vegetarian options on the menu, it’s a piscivore’s playground.

Formerly the site of Mong Kut Thai (don’t worry, it just moved down the street), Aravind is still getting its footing. Kozhikott says new artwork and a new sign are on the way, as are some expanded menu options. Still, attention to detail abounds: nearly everything is made in house, from the paneer to the dosa rice crêpes to the coriander-infused vodka that Kozhikott uses in his Cochin caesar. Instead of tap water, customers are given mild, cumin-infused, digestion-aiding herbal water, ubiquitous in Keralan households.

As incongruous as Aravind may seem in Greektown, it’s probably a welcome addition for fans of Indian food. The trek to find authentic South Indian in Toronto can be a long one.

Aravind, 596 Danforth Ave. (at Gough Ave.), 647-346-2766.

The latest addition to Parkdale’s caffeine scene is truly a locals’ coffee shop (and shouldn’t be confused with this Abbott or this Abbott). The owners and the manager live within walking distance, and they opened the café to give their neighbours a place to hang out in the ’hood besides the seedy bars that line King Street west of Dufferin. The space, a former dry cleaner, is tucked around a corner on Spencer Avenue. “I saw the space, and I thought it would be silly not to open something,” says co-owner Fadi Hakim.

Hakim founded The Abbot with Alex Sengupta, Danny Greaves (lead singer of the 1990s rock band The Watchmen) and Evan Johnsen—the same three partners he has up at The Lakeview and once had at the Chelsea Room, a bar-lounge on Dundas West that shuttered in 2007. They gutted the space, revealing original tin moulding under a drop ceiling and mottled plaster walls behind wood panelling. The only artifact hanging around from the dry cleaner is a hand-painted sign that reads “Spencer,” now up on the wall as artwork. The name of the café, however, has its own historical significance: Anderson Ruffin Abbott, the first black doctor in Toronto, lived down the street. A collection of vintage medical equipment on display pays tribute to his memory. Black and white hex tiles, art deco blown-glass lights and an eclectic mix of tables and chairs finish off the decor.

The coffee is sourced from Canterbury, a fair-trade organic line from Vancouver. Drip coffee (small $1.75, large $2.25) and americano (single $2, double $2.50) are the hot items with morning commuters, along with muffins ($1.75) and croissants ($1.75). All of the snacks, which also include cookies ($1) and bacon-and-cheese biscuits ($2.50), are made in-house at The Lakeview.

“There are lots of moms and pops who work from home around here, or moms with babies who just want to get out of the house for a bit,” Hakim points out, “We have really good coffee and a nice space. I want people to feel comfortable here.” To that end, there’s also free Wi-Fi, and coffee cards for frequent customers.

The Abbott, 99 Spencer Ave. (at King St. W.), 416-876-3855.

Left to right: Fadi Hakim, The Abbott's medical decor, the view (Images: Lisa Paul)

The blockbuster news of the morning, broken by the Toronto Star, is that telecom goliath Rogers is looking to buy a majority share of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment for more than $1 billion. The deal would give Rogers control over the Leafs, the Marlies, the Raptors and Toronto FC, as well as MLSE’s TV channels. This is the rare kind of business deal that alters pieces of the city’s DNA—hockey and the Rogers clan—and would effectively unite the means of communication with the very things we communicate about. It would also allow Rogers to come close to cornering the market on pro sports in this town (it owns the Blue Jays, but not the Argos).

According to the Toronto Star:

“I know it’s real,” said one top sports industry executive, who requested anonymity. “I’ve heard it from Rogers at a high executive level and from MLSE at a (the highest) level.”

Sources close to the talks say the asking price for the 66 per cent stake owned by the Ontario Teacher’s Pension Plan, which has about $95 billion in assets, is in the neighbourhood of $1.3 billion.

“This would be unprecedented in a market the size of Toronto,” said Richard Powers, sports marketing professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. “They would have a stranglehold on basically the entire professional sports market in southern Ontario and control almost every single stream of sports-producing revenue in the city.”

The only thing left out of Rogers’ control would be MLSE’s real estate holdings (which will at least mean that there won’t be two different Rogers Centres). The deal could mean that Rogers is trying to head off Bell-CTV, whose TSN channel is already ahead of Rogers Sportsnet and will have a lock on things like Olympic coverage. Of course, if that’s the case, Rogers is going to have to try not to make a hash of things like it did with its Sportsnet One debacle earlier this year—Leafs fans have suffered enough without having to deal with that again.

But wait—not so fast. Despite reassurances from the Star’s anonymous exec source, the National Post is reporting that there’s nothing close to a solid deal here, and that the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan is shopping its share of MLSE around to interested buyers. Indeed, the teachers have even approached Bell, a deal for content that would basically leave Sportsnet in the dust. Nobody, apparently, denies that the teachers are looking to offload their shares, so it looks like one way or another, the Leafs will have new owners in the future.

• Rogers in $1.3B talks to buy majority stake in Leafs empire [Toronto Star]
• No deal close for Rogers to buy Maple Leafs: sources [National Post]

Crumbling empire: Salad King's old location on Gould Street suffers from partial wallessness (Image: Matthew Fox)

Hungry Ryerson students are going to have to suffer through yet another exam period without the aid of cheap yet nourishing Thai. Salad King, that improbably tasty staple of downtown cheap eats, won’t be reopening until at least the end of January 2011, according to a thorough report by the intrepid SK watchers at Torontoist. It seems owner Ernest Liu had underestimated the amount of time it would take to convert the sports bar above the Foot Locker across the street into a new palace of stainless steel and satay.

Salad King’s previous location, around the corner on Gould Street, shut down in April when the facade of its historic building collapsed. Construction on the new location has been held up by the usual woes of downtown renovation and restaurant creation: a new drainage system had to be routed through the Foot Locker, and it will be mid-January before hydro workers can install the required power connections. Still, Liu says the new digs will feature more tables, a more efficient kitchen (how could it be faster than the old one?) and unisex washrooms. Oh, and possibly a bar and “entertainment venue” in the space above.

• Salad King Suffers Reign Delay [Torontoist]

With new indie cafés opening in Toronto every month, it takes a lot of gumption to jump into the fray—especially if the new spot is located between java havens Lit and The Common. Yet that’s just what Roberto and Sandra Mandarino, the co-owners of The Slow Room, have done. “We want people to come for the coffee and stay for the sandwiches,” says Roberto, who hopes his menu of locally sourced food will give him an edge on java-heavy College Street.

For his all-Italian creations, Roberto applies lessons he learned from his nonna. On offer are such sandwiches as the consentino (capicollo, sopressata, provolone and red peppers) and the vegetarian “eggplant meat(less)ball” (eggplant and basil ragu). Saturday, we’re told, is porchetta day.

The Slow Room takes its espresso seriously, too. Resident barista Drew Randall is a veteran of Bulldog Coffee, who does his thing on a shiny new La Marzocco Linea espresso machine. He’s also a classically trained cellist, so it’s not unusual for him to pop in a latte-sipping soundtrack of Italian baroque.

Seating is limited in the closet-sized space, but owners are going for a friendly, cozy vibe anyway, and hoping to pull it off without depending on Wi-Fi. Accompanying the sandwiches is a modest selection of pastries, some made in-house, like the gluten-free pistachio or almond cookies ($3 and $2, respectively) and others from La Strada Bakery.

Decor is trendily vintage, with tributes to the motherland thrown in here and there (red pepper garlands and a rather ferocious boar’s head known as Hugo). With ingredients this fresh, supplies are often limited—“when we’re out, we’re out,” Roberto says—but that’s OK, because as the closed sign eloquently points out, “shut happens.”

The Slow Room, 874 College St.

(Images: Jon Sufrin)

Tu’s been holed up for the past three months becoming intimately acquainted with his new toy, which allows the barista to manually control pressure throughout the pull. He has it down to a science, and says it’s not something a barista would want to play with during the morning rush. A hand-operated paddle adjusts the pressure from one to nine (a standard espresso machine exerts level-nine pressure continuously). For a shot at Thor, Tu will typically start the extraction at a three, ramp it up to a full nine about halfway, then ease it back to three near the end.

“Starting it off low, you’re almost massaging the beans,” Tu says. “You’re giving it time to absorb the water and release the essences and play up some of those subtleties that you don’t get when you go, wham, full nine.” Easing the pressure at the end of the shot, he tells us, can help reduce bitterness. He’s as meticulous as any career barista could be: if the shot doesn’t look great coming out, the customer’s going to have to wait for a better one.

Patrons have the option of choosing between the house blend ($2.25 per shot) or the featured blend (this week, it’s the low-yielding Esmeralda Special Geisha at $4 per shot). Thor also offers 10 types of tea, as well as French press coffee ($1.75), all within a minimalist setting in which a mural of Thor wielding a tamper stands out smartly. Pastries from Circles and Squares Bakery are also available.

Owners say that customers have been ordering espresso-based drinks almost exclusively. After all, condo dwellers and young professionals in the area don’t have many coffee options—when it comes to the art of espresso, the Second Cup and King and Bathurst just doesn’t cut it.

Thor Espresso Bar, 35 Bathurst St., Unit 4, 416-451-8736, thorespressobar.com.

(Images: Jon Sufrin)

Chef Tawfik Shehata was supposed to be taking it easy after he threw in the apron at Vertical, but the ambitious owners of The Ballroom—a new leisure complex opening in mid-December in the former Montana’s space on Richmond—made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. They want him to create a menu of local, sustainable, serious and seriously whimsical bowling alley food (yes, there will be actual bowling, too). We’re talking suburban classics, like hot dogs and burgers made from cuts of local beef, all ground in-house.

Taking his cue from Brooklyn Bowl, where New York City darling Blue Ribbon Restaurants supplies the top-drawer food, Shehata is finding the challenge irresistibly amusing. “I’m very excited because this is a whole new direction for me. I get to make food that’s fun, bordering on silly, but from the very best local ingredients.”

The final menu is not done, but expect to find buttermilk southern fried chicken made from naturally raised heritage birds, as well as breads and flatbreads made from Red Fife wheat. So far, the bottom line hasn’t interfered with the chef’s vision. “The owners came to me. They hired me because of my philosophy. They know I’m a huge proponent of local and natural, and that’s not going to change.”

From the outside, there’s been little more inherently confusing, even maddening, in the last year than the moratorium on liquor licenses along the stretch of Ossington between Dundas and Queen. At the behest of Joe Pantalone (who proceeded to run for something, we hear) the city stopped approving liquor licenses for the strip and then passed a by-law shrinking the allowable size of restaurants and bars. For this, Pantalone was named one of Torontoist’s villains of 2009. The evolution of Ossington slowed dramatically, and at least one spot, Salt Wine Bar, was closed down for licence infractions.

Now that the ban has been lifted (Pantalone himself called over to Salt to let them know they could be open for business) we decided to talk with some of the merchants affected. Below, a run-down of the mood of what was once called Electric Avenue.

William Tavares might be one of the people with the most right to be angry, but the co-owner of Salt can’t muster up a good hate. “There’s really no use crying over spilled milk at this point,” he says. Even after months of enforced unprofitability, Tavares can see the upside to the moratorium. Concerns about large “big-box clubs,” like on Richmond Street, have been allayed, he says—they’re illegal now. “There were many negatives in our case, but there were many positives.” That said, Tavares is not ready to kiss and make up with Pantalone. Let’s just say the restaurateur doesn’t exactly weep at the fate of the failed mayoral candidate.

Pantalone’s replacement in Ward 19, Mike Layton, says that the ban exposed a larger problem: the city entirely lacks anything more sophisticated than moratoriums as legal avenues to moderate development. “The city only has certain tools in its toolbox,” says Layton. He regrets some of the downsides, but obviously wants to emphasize the positives. By his lights, Ossington is now a cultural destination that it couldn’t have been if it was the new clubland. The moratorium helped keep rents down, making it easier for different types of businesses: “Businesses lost money, but we drew in new local art galleries,” says Layton.

The galleries were actually some of the biggest beneficiaries of the moratorium, and remain its biggest fans. Dale Thompson of the AWOL Gallery talks about slowing down the rise in rents, and at least moderating the revellers puking into AWOL’s doorway. Apparently, aiming for the sewers is a trick not everyone learned in university.

As for rents going up now that the moratorium is over, Layton betrays a bit of his parents’ NDP roots: “Well, fighting capitalism is an entirely different battle. How do we change the incentives for property owners so they don’t go all bars?”

Of course, one of the big questions is whether the moratorium was really as effective as Pantalone and its other proponents hoped it would be. One major effect was to drive new money up on to Dundas Street West, where the old, predominantly Portuguese sports bars could be transformed into hip bars like Brockton General. Pam Thomson and Brie Read, the General’s co-owners, say they benefited from the moratorium because it drove new customers their way. “It’s probably part of the reason we’ve had some early success,” says Thomson. Both Thomson and Read think that, despite obvious sad cases like Salt, the moratorium was a good thing for the neighbourhood.

Love for the moratorium, however, ends there. One Ossington business owner, who asked not to be named out of fear of getting in trouble with the city, thought the moratorium “definitely affected the neighbourhood negatively” and thought the moratorium had no side benefits. The owner chalked up any positives to restraint by existing restaurants catering more to locals and less to “alcohol tourism.”

And so, the moratorium gets mixed reviews. More than anything, the neighbourhood seems most concerned with just moving on. There’s money to be made, and if the owners of Salt can’t be bothered to stay angry, nobody else seems inclined to.

Move over, sushi. Now there’s something sexier. The new Korean cuisine is exciting, modern and worth crossing town for
By Chris Nuttall-Smith

The seafood stew at Tofu Village (Image: Ryan Szulc)

National cuisines, like drunk-driving starlets, get the reputations they deserve. Korean food—dependably rough-edged, cheap and fiery in Toronto’s first-wave Korean restaurants—has suffered a serious perception problem since it first appeared near Christie Pits in the early 1970s. Korean expats ate Korean food. Starving, steel-gutted U of T students ate Korean food. The rest of humanity got along quite happily without it.

That started to change about 10 years ago, when South Korea launched a sustained and successful campaign to become a major cultural exporter. What began with film and TV—including several food-obsessed soap operas that drew massive audiences across Asia—soon trickled down to dinner, and as a new, more cosmopolitan generation of Korean chefs began to refine the cuisine, the gastro-weenies of the world took notice. In London, Korean went high-end, and in New York, David Chang, of Momofuku fame, created a hybrid Korean–French–Southeast Asian style that has become one of the most influential forces in the business. Over the past few years, this culinary renaissance set down in Toronto, too, hidden—or hidden to non-Koreans, at least—in plain sight between the all-you-can-eat bulgogi joints and bibimbap houses where serious foodies would never have dared to dine.

Tofu Village-House of Soon Tofu opened a few months ago on Bloor ’s Korea­town strip, just east of Christie, tucked innocently between a cellphone store and the Metro Theatre, the city’s crumbling home of vintage porn. The restaurant’s simple decor is cleaner and fresher than its competitors’, and its culinary aspirations are significantly higher, as well. Where much of the food on the strip caters to a quantity-focused crowd (nearly everything at a place a few doors down, for example, costs exactly $8 after tax), at Tofu Village the owners have thrown presentation and quality into the mix.

We start with thin, golden haemul pajeon—seafood and scallion pancakes stuffed with chopped octopus and shrimp—that come crisp and sizzling on a cast iron plate. The flavours and textures are exhilarating: the meaty, chewy-tender octopus, the slap of onions, the savoury depth from the seared egg and rice flour batter, the liquid-centred crunch of the just-picked watercress served with them. The kimchee is made fresh every day, so it’s gentler than the usual, and the spicing is geared more to western palates than gojujang-accustomed ones. We eat clear, nutty, refreshing chapchay—sweet potato noodles—stir-fried with vegetables and sesame oil, and an incredible cold soup served in a stainless steel bowl with buckwheat noodles. It’s the best Korean on the block.

A week later, I’m driving with a couple Korean friends up Yonge Street north of Steeles, where the strips of half-empty hookah lounges and over-illuminated kebab shops give way to ESL schools, bars filled with jet-setting Asian kids, and long stretches of tiny restaurants fronted only with blocky Hangul script. Every new immigrant community moves out to the suburbs over time, and in the case of Korean-Canadians, north Toronto and Thornhill have been the beneficiaries of the demographic rule. The GTA’s 60,000-strong Korean population is growing far faster than the overall average, and the Korean restaurant scene in the city’s north, like the people, is hybridizing and modernizing. The area is an enormous lab, with new micro-restaurants opening too quickly for even the most hard-core Korean junkies to keep up.

We pass a shop that specializes in tiny grilled squid, and another that does buckwheat soup. There’s a ginseng chicken stew joint, a hand-cut noodle shop, a seafood pancake place, a storefront advertising bacon-style grilled pork belly, a couple of shops that do only Korean bar food—izakayas, sort of—and another where people go for the tabletop charcoal grills. A few of the restaurants here serve Korean moonshine from plastic jugs, if you know how to ask (it’s called makali; best to go with a Korean). Turbo Lounge plays CFL and UFC matches and serves green tea cocktails and Chivas, creamed corn and kimchee. There’s a sports bar called Hell’s Chicken that’s known for its Korean fried wings. Most of the best places are less than two years old.