Two Toronto restaurants managed the rare feat of attracting coverage from a variety of general media outlets. Of course, there was the mega-celebrity duo of Drake and Susur Lee with Fring’s, their new restaurant, but Ruthie Cummings managed nearly the same amount of coverage by promising to sign her restaurant, Das Gasthaus, over to the winner of a raffle.
Just Opened
- Restaurant news crossed into the mainstream last week as Drake and Susur Lee unveiled their new restaurant collaboration, Fring’s. The general public will have to wait another few weeks to test the food and find out what the name means — a Rihanna reference? Fries and onion rings the secret ingredients in a 21 ingredient slaw? — because they have closed to complete fine tuning.
- Not a restaurant, but Longo’s has opened a new store in the ground level of the condo conversion of the Imperial Oil building. It fits into their Market by Longo’s smaller (this one is 8,500 square feet), more urban concept. There are groceries, but the focus is slanted to prepared food — they even installed a street-side patio on the south side of St. Clair.
- Reforma 35, the new Mexican restaurant from partners Andres Marquez and Keyvan Foroughi (ex Fonda Lola and Agave y Aguacate, respectively) has opened on Baldwin.
Coming Soon
- BlogTO reports that Greg Couillard is finally making his long anticipated return to Toronto with Spiceman, a Mexican rotisserie chicken restaurant on College.
- Bloor West has a new casual and laid back bar called The End.
- The liquor license application has gone in for the Pizzeria Libretto/Porchetta collaboration at 545 King St. W., so this one should be open before too long.
Restaurant Coverage
- Those looking to wave the maple leaf via an after-hours snack, need look no further than our list of Toronto’s best poutine joints.
- Brunch or lunch — is there really that much difference? This week, Karolyne Ellacott picked the former to announce that Rob Gentile has entered the midday egg game at Buca Yorkville.
- With the high ticket price and low ridership, it's no surprise that the UP Express is trying to boost interest with bells and whistles. We had a First Look at the lounge they have collaborated with Mill Street on.
- Steakhouse customers are a particularly picky slice of the general restaurant clientele, so we put extra care into producing our best steakhouses in Toronto list.
- Our First Look at Anthony Rose’s reimagined Swan goes into some detail on his goals and methods for redoing this classic Queen West diner.
- Several Toronto restaurants are tapping the idea of a cinq-a-sept menu to capture the attention of the post-work, pre-game crowd and we have a guide to a select few of them.
Changes and Other News
- Ruthie Cummings, the owner of Das Gasthaus, was on Canada AM this morning to announce that she is giving her restaurant away to the winner of a raffle to be held in early December. You can buy your ticket here for $150 and also read more about this very unusual exit strategy.
- In an obvious ploy to grab headlines (success!) rather than convert any one, a group of disgruntled, vegan protestors showed up at The Keg Mansion for 15 minutes of placard waving and the hollering of prepared sound bites. Keg staff were surprisingly polite about giving them the boot (they really do have a service-first training mentality at The Keg).
