This new Italian restaurant in the Financial District is a love letter to Florence

Name: Florin Contact: 80 Richmond St. W., florintrattoria.com, @florin.to
Neighbourhood: Financial District
Owners: Turner Hospitality Group (Mother Tongue, Twist, Poppy’s French Bistro) Chefs: Executive chef Francis Bermejo (Bar Buca) and chef de cuisine Brian Kang (Don Alfonso, DaNico) Accessibility: Fully accessible

Florin takes its name from the golden coin once minted in Renaissance-era Florence—a fitting emblem for a trattoria with one foot in Tuscany and the other in Toronto’s Financial District. It’s the latest from Turner Hospitality Group, the small family-run outfit behind Mother Tongue and a string of restaurants near Blue Mountain in Collingwood.

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For their first foray into Toronto’s Financial District, the Turners looked to Tuscany. “My grandmother was a Magnone, so there’s a family connection to Italy,” says second-generation restaurateur Shelby Turner. “But, more than that, we love how Italians eat—it’s about savouring the moment, from morning espresso to a late-night amaro.” With the neighbourhood’s steady churn of office workers and tourists, it was the perfect place to channel the rhythm of a true trattoria: pasta and hearty salads at lunch, afternoon espresso, negronis and gnudi for the cinq-à-sept crowd, and a dinner of show-stopping bistecca alla Fiorentina (thick-cut steaks sold by the weight, with the largest ringing in at 70 ounces).

The Food

The restaurant’s name may reference 16th-century Italy, but the kitchen is firmly rooted in the present. “Florence is our North Star,” says Turner, but that’s less a set of marching orders than a source of inspiration. This means the recipes aren’t necessarily bound by Nonna’s rule book—if Thai chili hits the spice mark better than peperoncini, so be it. “Being rooted in Tuscany gives us guard rails,” says Turner. “But it’s not about rules—it’s about direction.”

The Drinks

Turner caught the cocktail bug while launching Liquid Courage, the speakeasy tucked below Mother Tongue. At Florin, that fascination finds full expression in a tight, thoughtful drink list anchored by Italian staples. “With Florence as our focus, we couldn’t not give the negroni its due—it was invented there, after all,” she says. So there’s a whole negroni section on the cocktail card, alongside spritzes and martinis.

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As for the wine, the current list is 100 bottles long and growing. It covers the Italian classics (chianti, pecorino, montepulciano d’Abruzzo, amarone) plus globetrotting picks from the Loire to the Napa Valley. It’s a wine card built to please everyone from the C-suite suit with a generous expense account (hello, $480 Piedmont barolo) to the vinho verde fan hunting a crisp budget-friendly bottle.

The Space

Florin may sit in a 1920s heritage building, but when the Turners took over the lease, the space was more DHL depot than dolce vita. To bring the room back to life, they enlisted Solid Creative Design and leaned in to stile Liberty—Italy’s riff on art nouveau. Think terrazzo floors lined in brass, reeded orb lights, walnut millwork and enchanting botanical bas-reliefs featuring Tuscan flora like poppies and rosemary.

There are wine windows inspired by those found in the streets of Florence: arched walnut niches built into the walls beside tables, designed to cradle bottles of red during dinner. For anything that needs to stay chilled, ice buckets are seamlessly built into the banquettes.

The 96-seat space includes a seven-seat marble bar and a leafy 46-seat patio tucked in an alley.