A Hilary Duff-Approved Toronto Food Itinerary, Courtesy of Streets Of Toronto
Back in January, Hilary Duff did what basically anyone touring with a new album does now: posted a food video and asked the internet for recommendations. From London, mid-bite on a salt beef bagel at the famous Beigel Bake, she asked what she should be eating on her next stop — Toronto. A polar vortex got in the way of that first visit, but Duff has since returned to the city, giving Streets Of Toronto reason to actually build out the itinerary properly.
Rather than guess at her taste, the outlet did some digging into Duff’s public food history — her Last Meal picks, Hot Ones appearances, taste tests and mukbangs — and landed on a clear profile: she likes things salty, saucy, and specific. Her stated dream meal includes caviar-topped Ruffles chips, a mustard-fried In-N-Out cheeseburger loaded with grilled onions and extra pickles, Petit Trois fries, a fountain Diet Coke, an extra-dirty blue cheese martini, corn agnolotti, her mom’s homemade chicken and dumplings, pineapple upside-down cake, and Cadbury Mini Eggs. Add in her known loyalty to New York institutions like Russ & Daughters and Jack’s Wife Freda — heavy on smoked fish and decadent, old-world comfort food — and a picture starts to form: someone who wants nostalgia dressed up in something a little more expensive.
Here’s the itinerary Streets Of Toronto built around that profile, and it doubles nicely as a cheat sheet for anyone else visiting the city.
1. Linny’s Luncheonette (Ossington)
Given that a salt beef bagel started this whole thing, Linny’s is the obvious opener. The Ossington deli, sister spot to the steakhouse next door, built its reputation on pastrami — brisket brined, seasoned and smoked for up to 15 hours before being piled thick with mustard. Beyond the pastrami, the potato knish with puréed potato, fried onion and gravy is a quieter standout, as is the smoked sea bass sandwich and the potato-and-pickle sandwich loaded with cream cheese and a crispy latke.
2. Primrose Bagels & Schmaltz Appetizing
For Duff’s Russ & Daughters cravings — an everything bagel with whitefish, cream cheese and tomato is her usual order there — Toronto has two solid answers. Primrose Bagels brings retro New York bodega energy and hand-rolled bagels, plus a viral Tuna Melt Bagel Saturday special. For a more direct whitefish match, Schmaltz Appetizing on Dupont covers bagels, schmears, gravlax and smoked whitefish with all the traditional trimmings.
3. Rose’s Pantry (Harbord Street)
A new daytime spot from Maven chef-owner Shauna Godfrey, built around comforting, nostalgic home cooking. It’s suggested as a stand-in for the French oeuf mayo Duff name-checked in one of her Last Meal picks — specifically, a dill-forward egg salad sandwich made with both soft and hard-boiled eggs, served on Maven’s well-known challah bread.
4. Olde York Tavern
A 50-year-old neighbourhood tavern that’s recently been refreshed, splitting the difference between old-school diner and something more romantic. The French onion dip with house-made chips is the recommended starter, while the salmon tartine and black cod are pointed to as answers to Duff’s Jack’s Wife Freda order of fried eggplant, zucchini and fish a la plancha.
5. Emma’s Country Kitchen (St. Clair West)
No Toronto spot can replicate Duff’s mom’s homemade chicken and dumplings, but this longtime brunch institution gets close to the same spirit of Southern comfort — buttermilk biscuits smothered in sausage gravy, served alongside eggs, with the restaurant’s well-known cinnamon bun pancakes as an optional add-on.
6. Powder Room (Yorkville)
An upscale cocktail lounge with live music, built for the kind of high-low pairing Duff clearly loves — think caviar-topped Ruffles, but reimagined as free-range chicken nuggets served with a 30-gram tin of caviar, chives and crème fraîche, alongside champagne. It’s positioned as the post-show, late-night stop.
7. Matty’s Patty’s (Queen West)
The city’s answer to Duff’s mustard-fried In-N-Out order. Matty Matheson’s smash burger shop, which grew out of a 2018 pop-up into one of the restaurants credited with popularizing smash burgers in Toronto, serves an ultra-thin patty with a mustard-forward sauce that reads like an elevated Big Mac sauce, alongside a thicker, pink-cooked signature burger called the Matty.
8. Slice of Life (College Street)
The finale, and arguably the most tailored pick on the list: Duff’s stated go-to drink is an extra-dirty martini with Grey Goose and three blue cheese-stuffed olives. Slice of Life’s blue cheese martini takes that concept further, sous-viding gin and blue cheese together, freezing and centrifuging the mixture to concentrate the flavour, then finishing the drink with shiitake oil, caramelized onion oil and an olive.
Whether or not Duff ever makes it through all eight stops, it’s a genuinely useful cross-section of the city’s food scene — deli classics, bagel culture, comfort food, and a couple of the more inventive newer openings, all in one list built for someone who wants a good meal without doing the legwork themselves.