Goodbye Hoof Café, hello Black Hoof and Company
After just over a year of bone marrow doughnut holes and lineups out the door, Toronto’s most unabashedly carnivorous brunch spot, the Hoof Café, will be closing up shop on February 28. As co-owners Grant van Gameren and Jen Agg explain to Corey Mintz (on a guest post on van Gameren’s blog), the space will be reborn in April as the more upscale Black Hoof and Company.
The new restaurant in the Hoof empire will be the first to take reservations for its 18 seats (two seats will be held open for same-day reservations), and will serve two different tasting menus each day, with no a la carte ordering. Van Gameren will move across the street from the Black Hoof’s cramped kitchen to take the reins along with Geoff Hopgood, the current Hoof Café chef, and Colin Tooke will take over as chef of the charcuterie bar that started it all. Although he confessed to Mintz that closing such a popular location is “scary as shit,” van Gameren’s reason for making the change should be obvious to anyone who has followed the Hoof’s meteoric rise: “I am bored of having it easy.”
Meanwhile, we’re bracing ourselves for even longer lineups at Dundas and Gore Vale for the rest of the month.
• Black Hoof & Company [Charcuterie Sundays]
