A trio of Alo alumni have opened a restaurant in the old Harbord Room space
But, despite its name, Bar Eugenie isn’t French
Name: Bar Eugenie
Contact: 89 Harbord St., bareugenie.com, @bar.eugenie
Neighbourhood: Harbord Village
Owners: Ronnie Fishman, Lee Bonds, Rebekah Bruce
Chef: Rebekah Bruce
Pastry chef: Lana Spieler
Accessibility: Not fully accessible
The team behind the latest addition to Harbord Street’s increasingly epic food scene met while working for the Alo Food Group. “We never actually all worked in the same restaurant at the same time, but it’s like a family when you work for that company,” says Ronnie Fishman. “We would see each other all the time.” Lee Bonds (bar manager) and Fishman (GM) worked front-of-house positions, and Rebekah Bruce was most recently chef de cuisine at Alobar Downtown.
“We always knew we wanted to do our own thing together,” says Fishman. “Something small, with history and a patio. And we had a feeling Piccolo Piano, in the old Harbord Room space, was going to close.” They followed their hunch, approaching the owners and securing the lease.
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Bar Eugenie—named for Eugénie Brazier, the first chef to earn six Michelin stars (three each at two restaurants)—pays homage to the Harbord Room, where Fishman first fell in love with food and cocktails. “We wanted to bring back the integrity of the Harbord Room without copying it,” she says.
Like its pre-predecessor, Bar Eugenie has a casual approach to fine dining. “Sometimes I’ll get my order list from the farms we work with and I’ll order stuff just because I want to try it. It feels more like fun than work,” says Bruce. That sense of glee comes through in the food: soulful yet precise and served on clayware lovingly made by Fishman’s mother.
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The Food
The furiously rotating roster of small plates on date-stamped menus is meant to be ordered in abundance and shared. Each dish is built around a single ingredient, and many highlight the wood-burning oven the restaurant inherited from Piccolo Piano.
“We are all about collaboration here,” says Bruce. “Ronnie loves artichokes, so I grabbed a bunch when they were in season, pickled them, and paired them with stracciatella, seasonal peaches and salami—because, honestly, who doesn’t love salami?”
Unlike the restaurant’s namesake, however, Bar Eugenie isn’t French. Many of the dishes Bruce churns out of her small kitchen pay tribute to her mother, with Filipino flavours sneaking into the most unexpected corners of the menu. “For me, everything comes back to pancit,” she says.
The Drinks
Lee’s cocktails are deeply rooted in the restaurant’s culinary approach: star ingredients and quiet behind-the-scenes labour and batching (so no one sees him sweat). Delightful punches feature wood-fired fruits, and fig-leaf cordials make their way into crushable highballs garnished with pickled watermelon rind—part of Bar Eugenie’s no-waste mandate.
The Space
With a fresh, practical palette of chef’s whites, leather and denim, the small room—anchored by a white-washed stone bar with an oak backdrop—is just warm enough to feel like a neighbourhood local yet cool enough to stay relevant.
Erin Hershberg is a freelance writer with nearly two decades of experience in the lifestyle sector. She currently lives in downtown Toronto with her husband and two children.
