Toronto has no shortage of hidden bars these days, but Bar Bokeh takes the concept about as literally as possible: to find it, you have to walk through a working cafe first. Tucked behind the storefront, the speakeasy leans into a moody, intimate aesthetic that draws a clear line between the casual daytime cafe up […]
Some restaurant transitions come and go quietly. This one came with a punchline built right into the branding. The Yonge and Roehampton space that housed the beloved, dusty Duke of Kent pub for nearly 50 years has a new tenant: the Post-Nup Pub, from Atef Girgis, the restaurateur behind the now-defunct Prenup Pub and the […]
Toronto’s appetite for burgers has never really had a ceiling — the city supports everything from scrappy local smash-patty shops to full-scale international chains without much sign of saturation. Still, even by Toronto standards, having two heavyweight burger giants set up shop within metres of each other is a fairly rare event. McDonald’s has operated […]
Plenty of food influencers are happy collecting free meals and staying comfortably behind the camera. Marcello, the creator behind @marcelloeats, is choosing the much harder path: actually opening a restaurant. With nearly 140,000 followers on Instagram and over 115,000 on TikTok, Marcello has spent years building an audience by reviewing viral food spots across southern […]
Say the word “steakhouse” and most people picture the same thing: marble floors, low chandeliers, white tablecloths, and a wine list that requires its own table of contents. Shinji, which opened in the Financial District on July 8, is deliberately built to subvert that image. The restaurant comes from Harlo Entertainment, the team behind MIMI […]
Toronto is about to get its first taste of Mailo’s, a Greek pasta chain that has built a devoted following overseas and is now crossing the Atlantic for its North American debut. The Toronto location marks a notable expansion moment for a brand that has succeeded by blending Mediterranean tradition with a contemporary casual dining […]
Summer in Toronto arrives with a particular urgency — the months are precious, the evenings are warm for a finite window, and the city’s collective desire to be outside and social reaches a pitch that doesn’t exist in any other season. The rooftop bar scene exists to meet that desire, and in 2026, it’s doing […]
South Asian cuisine has long been one of the most underappreciated fine-dining categories in Canada — a cuisine of extraordinary depth and complexity that has too often been evaluated against price points that don’t reflect its ambition. Aangan, which landed on Toronto Life’s 2026 best-new-restaurants list, is part of a broader shift in how the […]
There’s a type of Toronto nightclub that doesn’t need to advertise itself widely, because its reputation among the people who matter most to it — committed dance music fans, DJs who request it for their touring riders, clubbers who know the difference between a sound system and a great sound system — does all the […]
If you’ve spent any time around Toronto’s food social media ecosystem in the past couple of years, you’ve probably encountered Penelope Focacceria, the Woodbridge-based bakery and sandwich shop that has developed a following wildly disproportionate to its original square footage. The focaccia — properly made, properly cured, properly topped — became the kind of thing […]