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The comprehensive index of every blog post, magazine story and restaurant review that appears on Torontolife.com

All stories relating to The Beach

The Dish

Opening
March 30, 2010 | 9:15 am

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Just Opened: What Are You Looking At, an east-end bar with a west-end vibe

(Image: Signe Langford)

Israel Sanchez and Stephan Poquet looked around Leslieville and saw a neighbourhood that has plenty of places to grab a drink, but none that were new or shiny or high-end. So they opened the standoffishly monikered  What Are You Looking At—or WAYLA, as it’s bound to be known—on Queen East, welcoming a cross-section of east enders as diverse as the area itself: ladies of a certain age, skinny boys who wear woolly hats year-round and giggly girls clustered around martinis.

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The Goods

Shop Talk
January 19, 2010 | 9:42 am

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Pier 1 to close Yonge Street location

pier1

The soon-to-close Pier 1 (Photo from Google Street View)

Pier 1 Imports at Yonge and Shuter will close its doors on March 11, with the teensy Beach store at 1986 Queen Street East left to serve the downtown core. The Yonge and Shuter location is in a state of disarray as the last items sell, most on deep discount, like Christmas decorations on sale for 75 per cent off, home furnishings 30 per cent off previously discounted prices, and, puzzlingly, elaborate Harlequin masks for $75 to $85.

Reasons abound for the closure, but Pier 1 PR rep Harriet Burrow told us the company looks at stores on a case-by-case basis, and though she could not confirm rent prices, she did tell us that rent is a factor in store closures. The location also lacks convenient parking for shoppers to load furniture into their cars, unlike the bustling store at Eglinton and Laird.

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The Dish

Deathwatch
December 2, 2009 | 2:41 pm

6 Comments

How the mighty have fallen: 24 more restaurant closures

closed-signSince our last report on restaurant closures in August, the wake of the worst economic storm in decades has forced scores of eateries to shut their doors forever. This roundup is as broad as it is long, with stalwarts falling beside start-ups, and takeout chains closing alongside legendary dining rooms. Here, our sad look back at two dozen of Toronto’s former restaurants.

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The Dish

Opening
November 27, 2009 | 11:59 am

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Just Opened: Le Papillon finally alights at Jonathan Ashbridge Park

The warm interior of the latest Papillion (Photo by Jon Sufrin)

The warm interior of the latest Papillion (Photo by Jon Sufrin)

According to Paul and Danielle Bigué, it was a sign from God that convinced them to convert a 90-year-old house on Eastern Avenue into what is now Le Papillon on the Park. The owners of what used to be Le Papillon—Church Street’s former French and Québécois mainstay—were charmed by the property’s park-side location and boat-building workshop, but the kicker came when Danielle spotted a worn, leftover sign atop a door frame that read “Montreal.” She’s only slightly sarcastic in deeming it divine intervention.

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Urban Decoder
August 7, 2008 | 3:18 pm

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Is it legal to hang out naked on your boat in Toronto Harbour?

Dear Urban Decoder: Is it legal to hang out naked on your boat in Toronto Harbour?—Marc Pettigrew, High Park

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Toronto Movie Index
June 6, 2008 | 5:04 pm

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You Don’t Mess With the Zohan (*)

Now in his 40s, Adam Sandler is in a deep, widely acknowledged creative funk (correspondingly, he’s gotten meatier and logier-looking, as if he’s been on the same diet and weightlifting regime for too long). Last year’s I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry wasn’t as execrable as fearful liberals said it was (the Alexander Payne–Jim Taylor–Barry Fanaro script actually had many bright moments), but Sandler’s performance was distinctly turgid. With You Don’t Mess With the Zohan, Sandler returns to co-writing after a hiatus (his last effort was in 2002’s animated Eight Crazy Nights, and before that 2000’s Little Nicky), and he is in poor shape. Zohan regurgitates the conceits of his ’90s comedies, complementing them with a distastefully simple-minded take on contemporary ethnic politics.

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Urban Decoder
June 5, 2008 | 10:18 am

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What’s with the City of Vancouver sign in the Rogers building?

Dear Urban Decoder: What’s with the City of Vancouver sign in the Rogers building?—Clio Watson, The Beach

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Toronto Movie Index
May 30, 2008 | 8:44 am

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Sex and the City (**)

Sex and the City used to be a good show—a fact that faded further from view during its last few seasons, and of which the movie version seems terrified to remind us too often. This goodness was not rocket science. People liked the show’s four strong female leads, their unblushing attitudes toward sex, and especially the way they talked with each other: an assortment of bons mots, ribald neologisms and frank, sisterly advice. Sex and the City was always a fantasy, but its characters had authenticity. They wanted irrational things; were driven to absurd, humiliating lengths in pursuit of them; and were usually made to face, in the series’s perpetual moral, some form of compromise.

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Toronto Movie Index
April 25, 2008 | 6:03 am

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Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay (**)

It takes Harold (John Cho) and Kumar (Kal Penn) approximately 10 minutes to escape from Guantanamo Bay, during which time they meet real terrorists in the cell beside them and fend off advances from a big, fat guard looking for a blowjob (known to Gitmo inmates as a “cockmeat sandwich”). After that, they flee with some Cuban refugees to Florida, and it’s back to the picaresque journey that defined their first film: this time, instead of White Castle, they head toward the Texas wedding of Kumar’s ex, who is marrying a “douche” with political connections that might help to acquit them.

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Toronto Movie Index
February 29, 2008 | 6:00 am

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Semi-Pro (**)

Any one of us could write a treatment for a new Will Ferrell movie: set it in the ’70s or early ’80s, give him a daggy haircut and duds, make him a big fish in a small pond who gets his comeuppance but triumphs anyway, throw in Andy Richter and some scantily clad babes (definitely an animal attack), and there you go.

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Chatto's Digest
January 7, 2008 | 12:33 pm

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A Year at Les Fougères

I lost touch with Charles Part and his wife, Jennifer Warren-Part, when they sold Loons, their restaurant on the beachy end of Queen Street East.They had opened it in 1986 and left, I think, in 1992, moving to Quebec and opening a place called Les Fougères in a rural area about 15 minutes outside Ottawa-Gatineau. By all accounts it is a delightful restaurant with an equally valuable little store where they sell the foods they prepare and give cooking lessons during the quieter months of the year. Gold Medal Plates gave me the chance to shake hands with the Parts once again after all these years by inviting them to compete at the Ottawa-Gatineau event (where they have always performed admirably well), but it isn’t the same as having dinner at Loons used to be. I was just starting out as a reviewer back then and was very taken with the restaurant and their cooking. So it was a lovely surprise when they sent me a copy of their book, A Year at Les Fougères. It’s published by Chelsea Books (out of Chelsea, Quebec—the same village ou se trouve Les Fougères) and is available in some good Ottawa bookstores, but the easiest way for most of us to get a copy is to buy it online through the restaurant’s Web site for $34.95.

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Chatto's Digest
October 29, 2007 | 10:44 am

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Coast to Coast

A huge treat this week was the world premiere of a feature-length movie, The Islands Project, written and directed by Michael Stadtländer. The great chef showed it at the Royal Cinema on College Street on Thursday evening to a large and enthusiastic crowd as part of the eco-friendly Planet in Focus film festival. First came a charming, funny and scary short documentary movie, P is for Papaya, by a young filmmaker called Aube Giroux. The story tells of her obsessive love for papayas, a passion suddenly threatened by the discovery that most of the papayas that reach us in Canada come from the U.S. and are genetically modified by the addition of a gene collected from a particular virus. Needless to say, the rest of the world shuns this Frankenfruit, but our beloved government has decided not to tell us about it, so Canadians and Americans continue to gorge. There aren’t many delightful anti-GMO films, but this is one.

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Chatto's Digest
June 26, 2007 | 3:00 pm

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Chinook thaw

Just when I thought the little single-prop Beaver sea plane was going to crash into the rocky pine forest that lined the shores, I noticed the inlet. Then we were in amongst the trees, gliding down onto water like a dark mirror, carrying on along the passage to the hidden lodge. A weekend of salmon fishing and sea kayaking had begun.

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Chatto's Digest
March 5, 2007 | 1:49 pm

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Ionian Again

On Saturday night at about 1:00 a.m., as we were leaving the excellent Maistra restaurant on the beach at Akharavi, the surf whispering in the darkness, the frogs in the ponds beside the car park croaking to wake the dead, we glanced up at the moon. It was blood red with a slender fingernail of white near the top. A lunar eclipse! Not unexpected to those who keep a proper almanac, but it took me by surprise. Spectacular! An hour earlier, the heavenly orb had been bright enough to read by. As we watched, the pale rim vanished and the moon hung there glowing a baleful crimson, as if Mars had swung closer to Earth to see what was going on.

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Chatto's Digest
October 24, 2006 | 9:59 am

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Now It Can Be Told

The third meal alluded to in last week’s post was an extraordinary progressive dinner hosted by Stephen Leckie in celebration of his 50th birthday. Stephen is the founder of Gold Medal Plates (of which more later) and draws his friends from an extraordinarily broad cross-section of life—avant-garde musicians, major political figures, Olympic athletes, filmmakers, captains of industry, the occasional ink-stained wretch. At 5:30 last Saturday evening, sixteen of us rendezvoused at Célestin, where we stood about breaking the ice, drinking gimlets and eating torchon of foie gras wrapped in prosciutto. An hour or so later we trooped out onto the sidewalk. There stood a monstrous white vehicle like some kind of stretch SUV which Stephen introduced as the Culinary Chariot. It looked as if it might be capable of flight, all gleaming and weirdly lit like a car from another dimension. We climbed in, settling onto luxurious leather sofas while a sound system regaled us with dulcet airs and various light and laser shows charmed our eyes.

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