Taiwanese snacks and kegged cocktails are coming to Cabbagetown

Cabbagetown is great for pubs, cafés and cozy brunch spots, but it’s not exactly a hopping-Saturday-night kind of destination—or not yet, anyway. Kanpai, a new snack bar opening later this year at 252 Carlton Street, is hoping to inject the sleepy neighbourhood with a little late-night sizzle. (“Kanpai,” co-owner Trevor Lui tells us, is Mandarin for “bottoms up”). Taking its cues from the night-market scene in Taipei, the restaurant will serve “Taiwanese-inspired” snacks, like char-grilled meat skewers, wok-fried seafood and several different kinds of fried rice. (Some options, like the “Taipei Tater Slaw” pictured to the left, seem slightly less authentic than others.) Booze, of course, is also on the menu—Lui is chummy with the owner of Montauk, the Dundas West bar known for its dangerously cheap Negronis on tap, and he plans to set up a similar kegged-cocktail program at Kanpai. The restaurant is slated to open by the end of the year—look for updates on Kanpai’s Twitter feed.