Inside Jacobs and Co.’s new 14,000-square-foot steakhouse

Name: Jacobs and Co. Steakhouse Contact: 81 Bay St., 4th floor, jacobssteakhouse.com, @jacobssteakhouse
Neighbourhood: South Core Owner: King Street Food Company Chef: Executive chef Danny McCallum Accessibility: Fully accessible

Way back in 2019, the Jacobs and Co. team began to reassess their relationship with their Brant Street digs. “Our lease was coming up, and the space was getting a bit tired,” says executive chef Danny McCallum. “We visited the new space while it was still very much in the construction phase, and we fell in love with it even in its raw state.” The idea of moulding 14,000 square feet to fit their vision was tantalizing, and King West was becoming less of a culinary destination than it had been when Jacobs first moved in. “We had just outgrown the neighbourhood, and it was time to go bigger,” says McCallum.

Related: “How I went from being a vegan activist to chef at one of the world’s best steakhouses”

The new space—which includes two private dining rooms, a store with grab-and-go steaks and pre-batched cocktails for sale, a piano lounge, and two outdoor terraces—marks its territory with confidence. “This is a legacy lease we’ve signed here,” says McCallum. “We wanted to build a future with this place—something that could survive the passage of time. The hope is that it will still be around even when I’m long gone.”

But the idea wasn’t to entirely erase the original restaurant—a spot that has been ranked for the past two years as one of the world’s best steakhouses. Rather, the new Jacobs, or “Jacobs 3.0,” as McCallum calls it, is more of an expansion on the old space. For example, where there was once a relatively limited seafood program, there’s now an expansive raw bar and a dedicated fish-aging room. “We don’t want to be known as just a steakhouse anymore,” says McCallum. “We’re a great restaurant with a steak focus.”

The Food

The menu features reinventions of some of Jacobs’ greatest hits—tableside caesar salad, super-rich potato gratin, and prime cuts of beef from farms in Canada and around the globe. “We’ve gone the extra mile to make our food fit our new world,” says McCallum. “We even got local artisan ManyaMade to hand-make plates that echo our different steak cuts, and we ordered custom-made caesar salad carts for the optimal bowl tilt.”

Related: What’s on the menu at Harbour 60, the new-and-improved revamp of the luxe steakhouse

Cuts of meat are aged from 30 days all the way to 150 days, including all kinds of fish—a protein that also benefits from aging. “We consider ourselves experts at dry-aging, so adding fish to our repertoire was a natural move,” says McCallum. Some sides, like duck-fat fries, scream old-world steakhouse. Others, like king oyster mushrooms in miso and togarashi, veer toward a level of sustainability that McCallum is bent on achieving.

The Drinks

There’s an impressive 6,500-bottle wine list (with the option of a Coravin glass pour for bottles that are $600 or less) as well as a slightly less intimidating cocktail card of reinvented classics. Think pisco sours refreshed with infusions of chamomile or jungle birds made with pineapple rum, passion fruit syrup and spicy bitters.

The Space

The sprawling space was designed by Toronto’s own DesignAgency and features two distinct rooms—the piano lounge and the dining room—which subtly echo the hot (sizzling steak) and cold (raw bar) sections of the menu. Like surf and turf, warm walnut millwork meets glassed-in showcases. And hidden nooks offer cozy escapes from the staggering floor-to-ceiling windows that look out on the city’s hustle and bustle.