Left: Robber’s shirt-dress, Chasse Gardée’s sandal, Ella and Elliot’s dishware for kids, Harry Rosen’s cufflinks; Right: Canuck kitsch at the Drake General Store (Image: photographs by Jay Shuster; cufflinks courtesy of Harry Rosen)
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The Dundas West Guide: our 21 favourite places between Ossington and Lansdowne
The strip of Dundas West between Ossington and Lansdowne has not been immune to the wild gentrification going on directly south of it. New restaurants, stores and bars have been cropping up for the past couple of years (Red Canoe, a swank Canadiana shop, opened two weeks ago), but there is a hesitation in the ’hood to turn Little Portugal and Brockton Village into the next Ossington. Incoming business owners make a point of blending in with the long-standing family-owned bakeries, soccer bars and pho stops. Even in new establishments, the decor has a thrift shop feel, and the prices cater to locals rather than destination diners. From east to west, here are our 21 favourite Dundas West spots for cheap eats, good music and authentic Portuguese cuisine.
Toronto MP Joe Volpe proposes new rights for shopkeepers, including bondage
Regular Joe: Volpe stands up for the little guy (Image: ycanada_news)
One of the larger controversies in Chinatown and Kensington Market over the past year has been the case of David Chen, who is being charged with forcible confinement after he and his staff tied up a shoplifter while they waited for police to arrive. The law allows a person to use some force if someone is committing a crime on his or her property, but the problem for Chen is that the shoplifter had left the store and then returned. Not to worry, though, because someone in Ottawa is listening—Liberal MP Joe Volpe is coming to help.
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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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Introducing: Hub, Wallace-Emerson’s new indie coffee shop
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Toronto’s wealth of new indie cafés has been a boon to community life, but mostly for neighbourhoods south of Bloor. That’s not the case with Hub, which opened last weekend on a residential stretch of Shaw Street near Dupont. The spot has already gained a following from the residents of Dovercourt-Wallace-Emerson-Junction who are thankful they no longer have to hop on their bikes to find a quick lunch, a latte or a cool escape from un-air-conditioned townhouses. At midday on a Wednesday, the place is bustling with moms with strollers and dads giving their daughters piggyback rides.
The Toronto Temperance Society: College Street’s “secret” speakeasy
Members only: the interior of the Toronto Temperance Society (Image: Jon Sufrin)
There may be no decoy phone booth in the vein of New York’s secret bar, Please Don’t Tell, but a door on College Street betrays no hint of the Toronto Temperance Society (TTS), a newly renovated space above Sidecar where some of the city’s best cocktails are painstakingly crafted for members only. TTS just opened on Thursday, and it’s the kind of place where martinis are always stirred (sorry, Bond) and where bartenders—quite dapper in their suspenders and bow ties—get a kick out of procuring hard-to-find bitters.
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Bubble Trouble
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Our recovery from the Great Recession happened faster than expected, we got in the mood to buy again, and the housing market spontaneously returned to bidding wars and double-digit gains. Experts say we’re in a bubble that’s ready to pop. The question is, how bad will it be?
Christopher Wahl
We’ve seen bubbles before. The last time the market went pffft was in the spring of ’89. The country entered a deep recession, mortgage rates hit 13.5 per cent, and the market was glutted with condos that speculators couldn’t off-load. Over the next seven years, the price of resale houses downtown dropped by 28 per cent. Owning a house was a burden.
The birth of the current bubble-like conditions can be traced back to 2008, when we smugly discovered our market was safe from the financial evils that led to the housing collapse in the U.S. We were intoxicated by good news: speculative investing was comfortingly low, our interest rates dreamy. Neighbourhoods like Parkdale, the Junction and Leslieville were lusted after by young couples and families in want of $400,000 fixer-uppers. The upwardly mobile had ballooning debt and stars in their eyes. Among the singles flooding into sparkling new condominiums were women in their mid-20s to late 30s, a boom demographic. One industry source estimated that they represented 40 per cent of the market, significantly higher than a decade before.
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Buddha Dog gets put down
Auf Wiedersehen, weird weiners: Roncey loses its Dog (Image: Joey DeVilla)
Amidst all the G20 brouhaha, it was easy to forget that one Roncesvalles’s more creative fooderies, Buddha Dog, is calling it quits after three years. Fans of the tiny hot dog shop, which was recommended in our Roncesvalles Guide, can still get their fill at the Evergreen Brick Works farmers’ market on Saturdays or up at the Picton location. A post from the owners on their Web site says that they’re focusing on “building more rural locations and developing our Buddha Foodha at Home line of products.” We’re not sure what to make of the rural locations part, but selling bottles of their Indian butter and red pepper jelly sounds like a good business plan to us.
Bill could end automatic tipping in restaurants
Tipping point: some customers have different standards than others (Image: passiveaggressivenotes.com)
Restaurants may have to cross out the “20 per cent gratuity will be added to parties of six or more” line on their menus if a bill proposing the elimination of automatic tips gets passed at Queen’s Park. As Spacing points out, Bill 81 or the “Elimination of Automatic Tips Act, 2010” was brought forth by Liberal MPP David Caplan. A transcript of parliamentary proceedings had Caplan introducing the bill on May 20 (there’s also a YouTube video that had been viewed exactly nine times when we clicked on it).
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Just Opened: Beast. Scott and Rachelle Vivian take over the Amuse-Bouche space
Beastly setting: the dining room at Beast (Image: Lisa Paul)
“I don’t dislike vegetarians, but my style of cooking is heavy on meat,” says chef Scott Vivian. It’s more of a warning than a defence: the Montreal-born chef has just opened a new restaurant with his wife, Rachelle, and it more than lives up to its name, Beast.
The carnivore theme is evident in the changing weekly dinner menus prepared by Scott and Luca Gatti, the sous-chef who came along when Scott and Rachelle left Wine Bar. Starters include such seasonal items as soft shell crab with foie gras, greens and jalapeño ($19), and mains include such meat-heavy dishes as pig’s head pasta with pea shoots, yolk and spaghetti ($16).
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Salt Wine Bar finally set to open on Ossington
Salt Wine Bar is the green-trimmed storefront just south of The Saint, pictured last summer (Image: Google)
The Saint is the only mystery resto left on Ossington. The much-anticipated Salt Wine Bar, which has been tantalizingly papered up since last summer, should be opening within the next few weeks. Owners say it will be a simple, competitively priced bar-eatery-store that will focus on cuisine from the Iberian peninsula, so expect Spanish and Portuguese products and dishes. Chef Dave Kemp, previously of the utterly un-Iberian Prego Della Piazza in Yorkville, will head the communal tapas-style menu. True to the bar’s name, cheeses and charcuterie—up to seven different types of prosciutto, including some house-cured meats—will be staples.
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Just Opened: Parts and Labour, Parkdale’s new bar-club-restaurant-art gallery-wine bar
Bring on the bream: Parts and Labour's tables await dinner and diners
For many residents of Parkdale, the opening of Parts and Labour at the Roncy end of Queen West means one of two things: here’s a new restaurant, or here’s a new nightclub masquerading as a restaurant. Anyone who attended last week’s official opening could be forgiven for suspecting the latter, as throngs of people crowded the P&L bar—and they weren’t ordering food.
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The Danforth Guide: our 21 favourite spots along the east end’s main avenue
The east end’s main thoroughfare has long been known for two things: Greek food and the Taste of the Danforth. Over the past many years, though, homebuyers drawn to the subway line have slowly turned the long strip of two-storey brick buildings into a bustling neighbourhood that has attracted a rich selection of fine shops, independent coffee houses, Thai joints and haute cuisine restaurants. The Danforth has reached a wonderful maturity that we think should be celebrated. Here are 21 of the best reasons to cross the viaduct.
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Summerlicious 2010: the restaurants have been announced, so let’s pick them apart
The view from Toula: be a tourist in your own city (Image: Ian Muttoo)
First things first: there’s not much change under the Summerlicious sun. All of the old favourites are here (including Canoe and Bymark, which always sell out first). Seven Numbers, which by Winter/Summerlicious rules is allowed only one location, has swapped out its Danforth location for its Eglinton one. Winterlicious participant Conviction is out for the summer edition as the second season of Conviction Kitchen films in Vancouver. The new owners of Crush Wine Bar are apparently not feeling the ’licious love—nor is Moroco. And while The Citizen’s digs are alive and kicking under new ownership, its vaunted replacement, Ruby Watchco, is opting out.
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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)
