Bars and restaurants
Aloette, Financial District
Canadian chef Patrick Kriss’s first fine-dining room, Alo, opened in 2015. Its sister restaurant, Aloette, came along two years later. Conceived as a less formal but by no means less elevated venue, Kriss’s upscale menu features reimagined diner classics. Aloette’s newest location, on Bay Street near Union Station, makes it a good lunch option if you’re visiting Toronto for business.
Martine’s Wine Bar, Little Italy
Tucked behind its well-known sibling, Bar Raval, Martine’s is a fine new wine bar and restaurant by chef and restaurateur Grant van Gameren. All of the dishes – which include scallop tartare, beef-cheek ragù and pouding chômeur (a sweet Québécois sponge cake) – have been designed to be shared. The wine list includes some rare finds too.
Canoe, Financial District
Perched on the 54th floor of the landmark complex of modernist skyscrapers designed for TD Bank by the German-American architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in the late 1960s, Canoe is a culinary landmark in its own right.
The Federal, Little Portugal
The Federal opened in 2012 and is a mainstay among the purveyors of Toronto’s best-loved meal: brunch. Try one of its signature burgers served with an ample helping of house-twirled curly fries. It now also houses a nicely stocked bottle shop.
Edulis, Niagara Village
Edulis’s picturesque but unassuming edifice (a converted, wood-panelled house on a quiet residential street) has been home to one of Toronto’s fine-dining staples since it was founded by restaurateurs Tobey Nemeth and Michael Caballo in 2012. Its dishes change with the seasons but seafood, vegetables and wild mushrooms foraged nearby are fixtures.
Belle Isle, Little India
A cosy new sister cocktail bar to Lake Inez, a popular neighbourhood dining room nearby in the East End. Belle Isle mixes a mean martini (the vodka is infused with coriander) and serves a playful menu of snacks and small plates. If you’re heading to History – the music venue co-conceived by Toronto-born rapper Drake – this is a fun spot nearby for pre or post-show tipples.
Milky’s, Trinity Bellwoods
Toronto boasts a wealth of good, independent coffee shops and roasteries: Pilot, Boxcar Social, Ideal and Sam James are among our regular haunts. But perhaps Milky’s is the most charming. Its cosy wood-panelled interior, stocked with ceramics and coffee-making accessories, was designed by Toronto’s Batay-Csorba Architects.
915 Dupont, Dovercourt Village
This vinyl-spinning lounge and cocktail bar opened in 2023 inside a cosily reappointed former industrial space. Owned by the team behind Rooms – Toronto’s small, independent group of Japanese-inspired coffee shops – it hosts live music as well as themed vinyl DJ-sets, which range from funk to jazz.
Bricolage Bakery, Brockton Village
This neighbourhood bakery was founded by the award-winning South Korean baker and patissier Soyoung Lee. The Korean curry-filled karepan buns and the plaited bacon and potato epi loaves are not to be missed, nor are the array of sweet treats baked fresh each morning.
Prime Seafood Palace, West Queen West
Canadian architect Omar Gandhi’s handsome interior design for Prime Seafood Palace is as much of a draw as the elevated menu of seafood, rabbit and steaks. Founded in 2022 by the well-known Canadian culinary personality, Matty Matheson, it has quickly become a staple on Queen Street West.
Barberian’s Steak House, Yonge-Dundas
Fancy dining in the same restaurant where, in 1964, Welsh film star Richard Burton proposed to Elizabeth Taylor? Well this is it, Barbarian’s Steak House, a fine-dining staple in the city since it opened in 1959. Its ample cellar of red wines is unrivalled, as are its Ontario-raised steaks.
