THE CITY`S Drinking in ToronTo has become a dignified pursuit

BEST BARS
T H E CI T Y ’ S
D
has become a dignified pursuit. Over the past
year, we visited the city’s newest and greatest bars, and we noticed
a conspicuous dearth of appletinis and Jägermeister shots. Instead, we
discovered premium cocktails crafted by inventive bartenders obsessed
with Prohibition-era recipes, house-made bitters and obscure Italian aperitivi.
We also found Ontario microbrews galore (and beer geeks who debate them hotly
while playing Ping Pong), and wine lists flush with offbeat bottles never seen at
the LCBO. Here, the fruits of our not entirely sober research—40 outstanding
places to warm up this winter.
r i n k i n g i n T oron t o
By Denise Balkissoon, Ariel Brewster, Andrew D’Cruz, Matthew Hague, Malcolm Johnston, Emily Landau,
Jason McBride, Alexandra Molotkow, Mark Pupo, Peter Saltsman, Courtney Shea and Eric Vellend
THE CITY’S BEST BARS
COCKTAILS
THE BEST LOUNGES, DIVES AND SPE AKE ASIES FOR ARTISANAL CONCOCTIONS OF THE KNEE-SHAKING PERSUASION
D e a f e n i n g ly
loud
Ja mpac k ed
Pic k u p
p o te n ti a l
H i g h hi p ste r
Quo tie n t
Couga rs on
the pr ow l
L o th a r i o s
i n s u its
Photographs by Jess Baumung, Emma McIntyre, Liam Mogan,
Sean J. Sprague and Christopher Stevenson
best rooftop tipples
Classiest drinks in a dive
Nowhere in Toronto can our world-class status be more easily
confirmed than from a perch at the Thompson’s rooftop bar.
Even in winter, the view is really that impressive, and it’s best
enjoyed with a sophisticated drink. The Millionaire #3 ($15)—with
Belvedere vodka, Cointreau, grenadine and raspberry syrup—is sweet but not cloying,
thanks to whipped egg white. A pub grub–style menu (spring rolls, calamari) is adequate
if uninspired, but, hey, that’s what the view is for.
Hidden in a Kensington Market shopping centre, Cold Tea
resembles a musty storage room and a squatters’ refuge, but
it has excellent DJs (spinning electro-funk and psych-rock)
and artisanal cocktails. Our favourites: the Buk Chai ($8) with
Goslings rum, ginger beer, chai syrup and lime, and the Apple
Pie ($8), made from Zubrowka, apple cider and honey-chai syrup. Sipping one on the
concrete patio out back feels illicit, like getting drunk in a parking lot in high school,
only with way better booze.
The Thompson Rooftop, 550 Wellington St. W.,
416-601-3595
A brief history
of hooch in
Toronto
Cold Tea, 60 Kensington Ave., 416-546-4536
1837
1876
1880 to 1893
Gooderham and
Worts opens. Within
40 years, it becomes
the largest distillery
in the world.
George Davis builds a
stage coach stop that
will become the frat
boy–filled Brunswick
House 80 years hence.
Half of Torontonians
thrown in jail are
there for drunk and
disorderly behaviour.
30 toronto life February 2012
1916
Prohibition
begins in
Ontario.
best drinks after
a 12-hour day
The Gabardine,
372 Bay St., 647-352-3211
Amid the Financial District’s
hustle, The Gabardine takes great
pains to be relaxed: deep, plush leather booths, clapboard
walls, sepia-toned pictures of cows and cottages. But it’s
unavoidably frenetic, as harried servers rush to seat
thirsty post-work stockbrokers. To alleviate all that
tension, the first round of cocktails comes fast and
strong—gin-soaked negronis ($10), horseradish-spiked
caesars ($8), dirty martinis ($10)—and the snacks, like
the extra-corny deep-fried hush puppies, encourage
lingering.
trendiest cocktails in a
portuguese sports bar
Churchill, 1212 Dundas St. W.,
416-588-4900
Churchill is a mishmash of unpretentious watering hole and Portuguese sports bar (it used to be one). Chatty bartenders
serve Prohibition-era cocktails like the Last Word ($14),
made with gin, green chartreuse, Luxardo Maraschino
and lime, and trendy Italian drinks like the Paper Plane
($14), made with bourbon, Aperol and Amaro Nonino.
It’s a cozy place to drink before heading across the street
for a concert at The Garrison—or home to relieve the
babysitter. Bonus: the doors on the washroom stalls
reach all the way to the ground.
Gayest cocktails
booziest brunch
Bars in the village don’t usually
put much effort into the drinks
list—not when there’s a drag
revue desperate to meet Liza’s standards. It’s different
at Smith, a comparatively sedate resto-bar with a tiny
lounge upstairs for weekend DJ nights. The cocktail list
is short and perfect. At the outset of winter, it included
a seemingly innocent smash ($12) of whole cranberries,
lime juice and ginger spiked with shots of apple-flavoured
schnapps and gin. The Millionaire’s Cocktail ($13) is a
fancy froth of bourbon, Grand Marnier, pastis, citrus,
egg white and a dash of nutmeg.
Brunch is a religion in Leslie­ville,
and every weekend the faithful
gather at Table 17, as often as not
with children in tow, for cocktails with their Neapolitan
eggs and farmer’s breakfasts. Mikey Morrow, the east
end’s most creative bartender and a dapper neighbourhood icon, makes classic eye-openers like mimosas
and caesars that are only $5 each, encouraging repeat
orders. For his breakfast version of a Pimm’s cup, Morrow
blends the fruity, gin-based spirit with orange juice and
soda and serves it in a champagne flute with a cucumber
slice.
best tequileria
best rum and bourbon
Smith, 553 Church St.,
416-926-2501
Table 17, 782 Queen St. E.,
416-519-1851
Reposado, 136 Ossington
Ave., 416-532-6474
The County General,
936 Queen St. W.,
416-531-4447
A good tequila stupor is lucid
rather than sloppy, which makes
this purist-run bar, specializing
in quality goods rather than body shots, a godsend on
the sloppy-drunk Ossington strip. Tequila flights ($18–$45)
are served with homemade sangrita (Clamato’s tangy
cousin) rather than lime and salt. A Hot Ruby ($11.50),
with habanero- and strawberry-infused tequilas and
grapefruit soda, is the ideal winter warmer. The heated
back patio offers an excellent view of neighbourhood
fire escapes, which you don’t see very often in this city.
A good drink is in the details,
and Aja Sax’s devotion to the
little things borders on OCD. A simple garnish is weeks
in the making: an Ontario cherry ferments in a mixture
of brandy, orange zest, lemon juice and sugar before
fulfilling its destiny in a drink. Bourbon and rum have
their own menu—25 kinds of bourbon, 33 kinds of
rum—and provide the base for most cocktails. A Flip
the Switch, made with Bulleit, Grand Marnier, chilled
Earl Grey tea and cinnamon, goes down like a comforting, but not too sweet, dessert.
1920
1927
1934
1947
Much of Toronto’s liquor
is smuggled illegally into
the U.S. by gangsters like
husband-and-wife team
Rocco and Bessi Perri.
The creation of the LCBO and the Brewer’s
Warehousing Company (later known as
The Beer Store) heralds the end of Prohibition, but booze is only available by permit
and only dispensed over the counter.
Hotels are allowed
to sell beer and wine
with meals. Business
travel becomes
bearable.
A new law allows
spirits to be sold
by the glass.
Flask sales
plummet.
February 2012 toronto life 31
THE CITY’S BEST BARS
liveliest drinks in
a stuffy hotel bar
most relaxed
whiskey bar
Open for a just a year, Toca, the
bar in the Ritz-Carlton, already
feels like an indispensable institution to suits in need
of a stiff after-work drink. The main draw is the smart
list of house cocktails. Our favourite: an ethereal frappé
($16) of egg white, thyme-infused Jamaican Wray and
Nephew rum, bitters and citrus-elderflower liquor, all
goosed by a naughty shot of absinthe. The over-styled
room will date fast—a blown-glass chandelier, enough
wood panelling to build a frigate—but the cocktails are
keepers.
It’s only fitting that a bar named
after Sean Penn’s hard-drinking
guitar player from Sweet and Lowdown would feature live
jazz in the back room and around 40 scotches, 25 bourbons
and 35 other assorted whiskeys from around the world.
The Ezra “B” from Kentucky ($9.50), a favourite of Andrew
Kaiser, the chatty owner and bartender, is uncommonly
smooth for a 12-year-old bourbon. The overstuffed
armchairs fill up with a crowd of floppy-toqued under30s who are more subdued than the revellers elsewhere
on the College strip.
An appreciation of Italian aperitivi and sausage are prereqs for
diners at this Parkdale gem,
where cured meat hangs from the ceiling. The brief
drinks menu is a love letter to the negroni, the Camparistrong Italian drink that’s served in pretty much every
new rustic Italian restaurant in the city. Of the six
variations, our favourite is the Sbagliato ($10), where
prosecco subs in for the standard gin. Salumi’s snack
menu demonstrates similar devotion to la dolce vita, the
best being paper-thin, house-cured prosciutto with
homemade crostini.
Most authentic
speakeasy
most exclusive
cocktail club
buzziest Bartender
hangout
With a smouldering fireplace and
a soundtrack lifted from the credits of a Woody Allen movie, Cocktail Bar is the kind of
snug salon that makes you linger all night and spend
way too much money. The owner, Jen Agg, is known for
upgrading old-timey cocktails with top-notch booze and
her own house-made bitters, which make each drink
taste befuddlingly good. Her signature manhattan ($16)
blends 10-year-old rye, Antica Formula sweet vermouth,
bitters and a macerated black cherry. It’s sweeter and
smoother than any variation we’ve tasted.
Members-only admission ensures
that everyone at the Temperance
Society takes cocktails seriously. About 350 members
pay $285 a year for access to the intimate second-floor
space. The bar serves the highest-quality booze blended
with painstakingly made garnishes. Peaty’s Muddle ($12),
a glass of mescal, lime, cilantro, jalapeño syrup and
Bitterman’s habanero shrub misted with Laphroaig Islay
single-malt scotch whiskey (dispensed from an atomizer),
is a musky sip. Live jazz bands on weekends authenticate
the Boardwalk Empire vibe.
One of few places to successfully
pull off the resto-bar hybrid, The
Harbord Room is where the cool kids of Toronto’s food
and drink industry gather on their nights off. Much of
the draw is the bearded man behind the bar, Dave Mitton,
whose charisma is matched by his cocktail creativity.
The Ronald Clayton ($15)—vanilla-infused Crown Royal
with organic maple bitters and tobacco syrup—is a smooth
and smoky elixir named after Mitton’s late grandfather.
Much of the winter drink menu is similarly inspired by
old men and dark drawing rooms.
Toca Bar, 181 Wellington
St. W., 416-585-2500
Cocktail Bar, 923 Dundas
St. W., 416-792-7511
tastiest negronis
The Emmet Ray, 924 College
St., 416-792-4497
Toronto Temperance Society,
577A College St., no phone
Bar Salumi, 1704 Queen
St. W., 416-588-0100
The Harbord Room,
89 Har­bord St., 416-962-8989
1947
1961
1969
1970
1971
The Roof Lounge opens on
the 18th floor of what is now
the Park Hyatt, bringing
back pre-Prohibition cocktails like the old-fashioned.
Liquor can
be purchased
without a
permit.
The LCBO goes self-service,
allowing Torontonians to
browse the booze aisles for
the first time.
Pubs open their menonly drinking rooms
to women; cheesy
pickup lines
flourish.
Legal drinking
age reduced
from 21 to 18.
32 toronto life February 2012
Assembly Required
For booze nerds who like to contemplate their
means of intoxication, two meticulously
calibrated elixirs
Most ironic cocktails
Parts and Labour, 1566
Queen St. W., 416-588-7750
Spotting urban lumberjacks
should be a drinking game at
Parkdale’s tongue-in-cheek
hardware-store-turned-resto-bar. Cocktail auteur Rob
Turenne obviously got the gig based on more than just
the cut of his flannel. The Collins McIntosh ($12) owes its
crisp taste to Turenne’s house-made apple shrub (freshsqueezed apple juice and apple cider vinegar) combined
with Plymouth gin and yellow chartreuse. Spiced honey
and cardamom bitters add warmth, as does the bar’s
wood-burning stove. Vegetarians be warned: the carnivorous snacks involve bone marrow and pig faces.
B r a ssa ii ’ s Ca m pf i r e C of f ee
461 King St. W., 416-598-4730
Booze slinger Jordan Stacey turns the common specialty coffee into a ready-made
winter survival kit, complete with a mini bonfire. A cup of Maker’s Mark–spiked
espresso, topped with vanilla-bourbon whipped cream, arrives at the table with all the
fixings to make old-fashioned s’mores: chocolate-topped graham crackers, a skewered
Jet-Puffed marshmallow and a small pile of rum-soaked cinnamon sticks and star anise
that the server lights on fire so you can roast your marshmallow. The sweet sandwich
pairs perfectly with the bitter, bourbon-soaked coffee. $18.
Best place to
seal the deal
B a rC he f ’ s Euca ly p t us
Origin, 107 King St. E.,
416-603-8009
472 Queen St. W., 416-868-4800
At Origin, across the street from
St. James and the former Occupy
site, the dark, hard-edged room is a haven for the area’s
suits. The creative cocktail list is designed to blow expense
accounts and impress clients. The Seafarer’s Sanctum
($13)—blueberry syrup, dark rum, orange pekoe tea and
lemon juice—turns late afternoon into early evening all
too quickly. Chef Claudio Aprile’s excellent Asian fusion
food helps prevent fall-down drunkery so some work
still gets done between drinks.
If a cocktail can be elevated to the status of art, then Barchef’s Eucalyptus is like an
M. C. Escher print: mind-bending and slightly nonsensical. The drink has three main
components: 1) a flask of cocoa-infused mescal with muddled coriander, coconut and
vanilla (the actual cocktail); 2) a dish of coconut foam topped with coriander sprouts
set inside a bowl of eucalyptus mist; and 3) jelly cubes—cherry, smoked chocolate and
cucumber-vanilla–orange blossom. One by one, the jellies are meant to be dipped in
the foam, then swished around your mouth before you take a sip from the beaker.
They’re supposed to focus your palate on the flavours of the liqueur (the salted chocolate jelly, for example, brings out the smokiness of the mescal, while the cucumbervanilla-orange brings out the floral notes). Intermittent whiffs of the mist help prevent
sensory overload—which is entirely likely anyway. $35.
1981
1983
1984
1987
Drinking on patios
is legalized, leading
to The Black Bull’s
infamous lineups.
BamBoo opens on Queen
West, making umbrella
drinks and jazz-funk
dance parties popular.
Happy hours are
banned (turns out
too many people got
happy and got behind
the wheel).
Charles Khabouth opens
Stilife on Richmond,
sparking development
of the Entertainment
District.
photographs this page and opposite: salumi, parts and labour and origin by ryan szulc;
temperance society by jaime hogge; salt wine bar by vanessa heins
February 2012 toronto life 33
THE CITY’S BEST BARS
BEER
T HE TOP SP OT S TO C OMMUNE OV E R A PIN T OR T HRE E
D e a f e n i n g ly
loud
Ja mpac k ed
Pic k u p
p o te n ti a l
H i g h hi p ste r
Quo tie n t
Couga rs on
the pr ow l
L o th a r i o s
i n s u its
best pub for beer geeks
Bar Volo, 587 Yonge St., 416-928-0008
Father-and-son team Ralph and Tomas
Morana run their 23-year-old Yonge
Street bar with the zeal of new converts
to the cult of brewing. A sort of town hall
for Ontario’s earnest microbrew crowd,
Bar Volo offers a rotating array of Ontario
drafts and cask-conditioned ales, posted
daily to Twitter. Denison’s Weissbier ($7),
a hazy golden ale with spicy notes and citrusy freshness, is usually on tap, and a
safe starting point for initiates. There’s
also a staggering selection of international
bottles, and something unusual is always
emerging from the Moranas’ on-site nano
brewery. They have two or three casks at
a time; just ask for the house ale.
best locavore tap room
Smokeless Joe, 488 College St., 416-966-5050
Best Place to watch the leafs go down
Real Sports Bar and Grill, 15 York St., 416-815-7325
A sports bar on steroids, Real Sports is a 25,000-square-foot
amphitheatre of game-watching excess with 199 HD flat screens,
including one that’s two and a half storeys tall. The beer menu is
supersized, too. With more than 70 domestic and international
options, everyone from the Steam Whistle ($6.50) devotee to the
Belgian Früli Strawberry Wheat Ale ($5.75) enthusiast leaves
happy. The adventurous can try the beer blends, like Darth Maple
($7.55), which mixes Canadian, Murphy’s Irish Stout and tears
of defeat.
A recent move from the Entertainment
District to the College Street strip hasn’t
changed much about Smokeless Joe, home
to one of Toronto’s biggest beer lists. The
rota­t ion on the 20 taps is Ontario-heavy,
with brews like the fruity Hawaiian-Style
Pale Ale ($7) from Toronto’s Spearhead—
yes, it’s actually brewed with pineapple—
and the hoppy Smashbomb Atomic IPA
($6.75) from Barrie’s Flying Monkeys.
The crowd is a little older and wiser
than at Little Italy’s surrounding establishments.
1989
1992
1992
1996
1998
Woody’s opens,
becoming the hub
of the Church-andWellesley village.
Gay men rejoice.
Alcohol allowed
at Leafs and Blue
Jays games. Pricegouging pints
become the norm.
College Street takes off
with neighbourhood
hangs like College Street
Bar, The Midtown and
Ted’s Wrecking Yard.
Last call
extended
until 2 a.m.
Sex and the City ushers
in an era of sickly-sweet
concoctions: bellinis,
crantinis, and, of course,
the cosmo.
34 toronto life February 2012
purest irish pub
barrage of retro bowling paraphernalia, inappropriate dancing,
nearly naked club girls and C-list
star spotting (mostly character
actors from Being Erica). Although
the beer selection is uninspired
(Canadian, Moosehead), it’s still
novel to have it delivered right
to the lane. The overall mood is
somewhat hallucinatory—like
that gutter ball dream sequence in
The Big Lebowski—especially when
the servers tell you how much it
costs to rent a lane for an hour
(up to $65, plus shoe rental).
The Ceili Cottage, 1301 Queen St. E.,
416-406-1301
Three years ago, the oyster-shucking champ Patrick McMurray
turned a rundown auto shop on the
eastern edge of Leslieville into an
Irish local. The room smells sweet
from the Irish peat McMurray
keeps on a low burn in the fireplace
(for that authentic Irish pub scent).
Church pew seating, garrulous
staff who bark at you to close the
door, and cute couples playing
Gaelic Scrabble create a homey feel.
Thirteen kegs—no bottles—of Irish
and Canadian craft brews are
tapped at a time. The Barley Days
Loyalist ($7), a lightly floral lager
brewed in Picton, is our favourite.
Harp Lager ($7.75) is hoppy and
still sufficiently Irish to score nods
of respect from the regulars.
Best Old-World Beer Hall
Hrvati Bar, 690 Euclid Ave.,
647-350-4227
While most new bars are busy
shoring up their local microbrew
cred, this Croatian beer hall, nestled on a side street in Koreatown,
happily embraces the Old World
with an excellent selection of European brews, like Karlovačko, a popular Pilsner from Croatia that’s a
rare sight in Toronto. The small
snack menu features a greasy and
thoroughly enjoyable pljeskavica,
a Balkan-style burger on a spongy
white bun.
Top spot for drunken
table tennis
Spin Toronto, 461 King St. W.,
416-599-7746
Entering the lower-level space—
through unmarked steel doors
down a barely marked King Street
alleyway—you feel like you’re infiltrating an illegal Ping Pong ring.
Tables are hard to come by (members, who pay $50 a month, often
book them), and drinking in a basement while half-heartedly batting
the ball is eerily reminiscent of adolescent Saturday nights. But, as they
say, it gets better. The bar snacks are
remarkably good. Grilled cheese
sandwiches are the perfect accompaniment to an Ontario craft brew
list that reads like a children’s book:
Lawn Chair, Mr. Huff and the Barking Squirrel (all $6.25). After a few
of those, you get very good at Ping
Pong.
rowdiest beer and bowling
The Ball Room, 145 John St., 416-597-2695
A Saturday night in the neon-andflat-screen-lit Ball Room brings a
2002
2002
2004
2005
Amber opens
in Yorkville,
spawns a slew
of resto-lounge
copycats.
Blowfish
opens, introduces King
West to
saketinis.
Sweaty Betty’s opens on
Ossington, spurring the strip’s
gentrification and the popularization of Pabst Blue Ribbon
as the ironic beer of choice.
College Street, its
cool phase long
over, is overrun
with lycheetini
lounges.
Trivial Pursuits
After a few drinks, everyone’s a knowit-all. Here, Toronto’s top quiz nights
T he Dr a k e Ho te l
1150 Queen St. W., 416-531-5042
Quizmaster Terrance Balazo has turned trivia into a bona
fide profession. He hosts games at Clinton’s and the Fox
and Fiddle, but The Drake’s Wednesday night tradition is
the standard-bearer, filling the lounge with 150 irony-loving
players. Balazo, an actor and stand-up comedian, cracks
wise while tossing out questions on sports, music, history and pop culture. It only costs a toonie to play, so
there’s money left over for grog.
Du k e of Yor k
39 Prince Arthur Ave., 416-964-2441
Every Tuesday, trivia buffs file up to the third floor of this
cozy U of T pub for a spirited tourney of extreme minutiae
like, “Which listed statesman never occupied the position of UN Secretary-General?” Even if you haven’t a clue,
quizmaster Luke Pettigrew entertains with his witty banter. Special prizes—a vinyl copy of Bonnie Tyler’s “Faster
Than the Speed of Night,” for example—are reserved for
that rare unicorn: a perfect round.
T he Wi l s on 9 6
615 College St., 416-516-3237
A new entrant on the city’s trivia scene, Wilson 96 models its monthly game after the Platonic ideal of trivia:
Jeopardy! On the second Tuesday of every month, teams
of up to four sprint through two rounds of questions
posed by host and Trebek wannabe James Windsor.
At the end of the night, each team sends its best player
to compete in the tension-filled Final Jeopardy round.
Daily Doubles are often celebrated with shots.
2005
2006
BYOW begins, as
does the eternal
debate over how
much is too much
for a corkage fee.
Cask-conditioned
ale takes over
C’est What,
Granite Brewery
and Bar Volo.
February 2012 toronto life 35
THE CITY’S BEST BARS
WINE
T HE C OZIE ST BAR S TO SW IRL AND SIP T HE NIGH T AWAY
D e a f e n i n g ly
loud
Ja mpac k ed
Pic k u p
p o te n ti a l
H i g h hi p ste r
Quo tie n t
Couga rs on
the pr ow l
L o th a r i o s
i n s u its
best Iberian tapas and wine
Salt, 225 Ossington Ave.,
416-533-7258 Portuguese wine remains the
poor cousin of Spanish and
Italian vintages, but it’s tasty,
cheap and full of surprisingly
good blends, many of which
can be found at this inviting
Ossington tapas bar. The long,
narrow space is often filled
with artistic types sipping
vinho verdes. Our favourite
is a pleasantly peppery 2008
Esporão, a blend of ­cabernet
sauvignon, aragonez, trincadeira and Alicante Bouschet
($14). Remove the crowdpleasing California chards
from the list and Salt would
fit right in on the Algarve.
best anti-LCBO list
Niagara Street Café, 169 Niagara
St., 416-703-4222
Although it’s known for fine
dining, Niagara Street Café
is a great place to sit at the
bar with a glass of wine.
When Anton Potvin, the
owner and sommelier, sidles
up, hearts flutter. He creates
the most playful wine lists in
the city, with many of his
bottles sourced from momand-pop importers—like
Pierre Hallett, who also
owns Rotate This, the indie
record shop. You’ll find sublime, rare Zweigelts and auxerrois never seen on an
LCBO shelf.
Most intriguing wines by the glass
Enoteca Sociale, 1288 Dundas St. W., 416-534-1200
Enoteca, the Roman restaurant in an only slightly
upgraded former Portuguese sports bar, aspires
to the comfort of an Italian grandmother’s kitchen—
if Nonna was Monica Vitti. That blend of sophistication and hominess extends to a wine list that fuses
the familiar and the foreign. An Enomatic system—
which prevents oxidization—allows for experimentation with more expensive juice, like the rare 2006
sagrantino di Montefalco from Umbria—a sturdy,
chocolate-scented red.
2007
2008
2008
2008
2009
New York club king Peter
Gatien opens mega-club
Circa; vodka and Red Bull
fuel all-night dancing.
Enomatic dispensers at
restaurants like Reds
allow for wines by the
glass without turning the
bottle into vinegar.
Barchef opens;
booze scientist
Frankie Solarik crafts
$40 molecular cocktails. Jay-Z is a fan.
Bacon-washed,
pickle-topped,
salt-filled cocktails populate
menus.
Jen Agg and Grant van
Gameren open the Black
Hoof, foisting barrel aging
and artisanal bitters into
the mainstream.
36 toronto life February 2012
photographs: salt wine bar by vanessa heins; enoteca by ryan szulc
best small-batch wines
The Change-up
Mavrik, 676 Queen St. W., 416-214-9429
In May 2011, Liz Choi (a Wall Street trader)
and Joanne Park (a lawyer) ditched their
jobs and opened up a quiet wine bar in the
Queen West space that used to be a Korean
restaurant. Their list focuses on smallproduction wines you can’t get at the LCBO.
To help tipplers navigate the unfamiliar,
it includes subcategories for things like
“rich reds with great tannic backbones.”
And, if you have no idea about tannic backbones, servers will unpretentiously recommend their favourites—a glass of biodynamic syrah from Oregon called Cowhorn
($17), say, or an Italian Villa Rubini pignolo
that tastes like a rich Amarone ($15). Forgo
the standard charcuterie and indulge in the
brown-sugar doughnut holes with homemade vanilla ice cream—a hedonistic
pairing with dessert wine.
Order the same bottle
every time? Sheila
­Flaherty, the 25-year-old
wine director at Mercatto
who has won the Italian
mini-chain three Wine
Spectator awards, recommends trendy alternatives to the old standbys
I n ste a d of
m e r l o t, t ry
ca r m e n è r e
“Chilean carmenère
has a beautiful dark
colour and those
great plummy vanilla
flavours of merlot,
but it’s fruitier and
has softer tannins
and acidity.” Buy:
Casa Lapostolle
­C armenére. $16.
LCBO 168740
I n ste a d of pi no t
gr igio, t ry
grü n e r v e lt l i n e r
“Grüner veltliner is
one of my all-time
favourites, and it
often flies under the
radar. The federspiel
from Austria is light,
fun and refreshing. It
balances soft fruit
with herbal dryness,
and it has that crisp
finish of pinot grigio,
but it’s spicier.”
Buy: Rabl Reserve
Vium Optimum
Grüner Veltliner.
$20. Vintages LCBO
216473
best Grappa menu
Aria, 25 York St., 416-363-2742
best for a wine-drenched girls’ night out
Swirl Wine Bar, 946 1/2 Queen St. E., 647-351-5453
It’s fitting that the name of Queen East’s best wine
bar rhymes with girl—the second-floor nook is
done up in black and pink damask and beloved
by groups of women spending a night away from
husbands and babies and chatting about same.
The wines are affordable (most bottles are in the
$30 range) and fun, like one sexy syrah described
as “George Clooney and Salma Hayek in a glass.”
Rich snacks, like the duck and pork rillettes in
petite Mason jars, are justifiably popular.
Twinkling orb chandeliers dangle from the
ceiling at Aria, the new, upscale Italian restaurant classing up the scene around the
Air Canada Centre. The awesome wine
list includes 40 scrupulously sourced grappas ($10 and up) from France and Italy.
­During his teen years, co-owner Guido
Saldini would have a shot of grappa with his
morning espresso before school. At Aria,
he recommends it as a solo digestif—perhaps
a spritzy, floral gewurztraminer-based version, or a headier cabernet franc aged in port
barrels—after a sumptuous dinner.
2009
2009
2009
2010
Joe Pantalone becomes
the face of the new sobriety
movement by starting an
18-month fight against booze
on Ossington.
Toronto Temperance
Society, a membersonly cocktail lounge,
revives the oldschool speakeasy.
Ceili Cottage and
Queen and Beaver, the
city’s first real gastropubs, put Firkins
everywhere to shame.
Circa
goes
bust.
timeline photographs: istock; getstock; david laurence; a. h. hider/wikimedia commons;
rob nguyen/flickr and courtesy of barchef; park hyatt toronto; and woody’s
I n ste a d of
ch a r d on nay,
t ry a l b a r i ño
“If you love soft,
citrusy, aciddriven chardonnays, albariño
from Spain is a
great alternative.
The apple and
pear notes remind
me of a white burgundy.” Buy:
Valminor Albariño.
$16. LCBO 266924
2010
2011
2011
An onslaught of new rustic
Italian restaurants makes
medicinal-tasting aperitifs
like Aperol and Campari all
the rage.
Ontario craft
brewers like
Flying Monkeys
make beer
geekery chic.
Jen and Grant break up.
Jen opens Cocktail Bar,
the apotheosis of the
city’s new artisanal
cocktail culture.
February 2012 toronto life 37
THE CITY’S BEST BARS
HIGH-CLASS HOARDERS
Obsessive collecting and huge budgets create world-class
wine cellars. Here, three of the city’s biggest and best
Opus
37 Prince Arthur Ave.,
416-921-3105
The staggering 52,000bottle cellar at Opus, assembled over nearly two decades
by brothers Mario and Tony
Amaro, makes dignified
oenophiles scream like
Bieber fans. Winner of
The Wine Spectator’s Grand
Award for 10 years running,
it contains massive hauls
from Burgundy, Bordeaux,
California, Portugal and
Italy. The priciest bottle is
a Domaine de la RomanéeConti from 1990 that rings
in at $21,900 (Opus is one of
the fortunate few to get a tiny
annual allotment from the legendary burgundy producer).
B a r be r i a n ’ s
7 Elm St., 416-597-0335
Since taking over the venerable steak house from his
father 18 years ago, Arron
Barberian has invested millions in improving its cellar,
including with an expansion that swallowed up
the neighbouring parking
lot. The massive concrete
vault now holds almost
40,000 bottles. Barberian
is obsessed with Rhônes
and Bordeaux, and he
owns a $12,200 bottle of
1982 Château Pétrus, a
highly coveted Pomerol
from one of the greatest
French vintages of the
last century.
S pl e n did o
88 Harbord St.,
416-929-7788
Preferring breadth to
depth, the restaurant’s
owner, Carlo Catallo,
keeps a modest collection of 5,000 or so bottles chosen for their
finesse with food.
There are plenty of
Canadian wines, with
smart choices from all
the right producers,
including rare gems
from Innis­killin dating
back to the ’90s. Catallo’s prized possession
is a $525 Georges Lignier Bonnes-Mares
grand cru from 1985.
“It’s elusive and mysterious,” he says.
38 toronto life February 2012