The Toronto location of Vietnam’s Michelin-starred Lunch Lady is now open

Name: The Lunch Lady Contact: 93 Ossington Ave., thelunchlady.com/toronto-menu, @thelunchladytoronto
Neighbourhood: Trinity-Bellwoods
Previously: Boehmer Owners: Michael Tran and Benedict Lim Chefs: Culinary director Benedict Lim and chef de cuisine Allan Lu Accessibility: Step at front door, washrooms on main floor

In 2009, Anthony Bourdain landed in Ho Chi Minh City with his No Reservations film crew to explore Vietnam and its food scene. There, he stumbled upon the late Nguyen Thi Thanh, who ran an unnamed stall selling soup under an umbrella to shade her from the blazing South Asian sun. Her daily soups, like bun mam—a kind of Vietnamese seafood gumbo made with the freshest ingredients hand-picked from the local markets—floored Bourdain. He dubbed her “the lunch lady,” introduced her to the world and changed her life for good.

A few years later in Vancouver, Michael Tran was seeing success with his fast-casual chain Pacific Poke, but he felt like something was missing. “Michael, who grew up at his mother’s Vietnamese restaurant, saw the No Reservations episode with the lunch lady,” says Ben Lim, co-owner and culinary director of Lunch Lady. “He wanted to bring something like that to Canada, that was new but that would also connect him with his culture.”

Tran made a pilgrimage to Vietnam to meet Thanh and eat at her stall. After tasting her soup, he instantly knew that he needed to bring her recipes to the masses. “Michael asked her then and there to come with him to Canada, but she said no way,” says Lim. Tran repeatedly visited Thanh, attempting to convince her to partner up with him, but she would budge only on one condition: “She wanted Michael to marry her daughter,” says Lim. “But that—even for someone as single-minded as Michael—was a non-starter.”

In 2018, Tran pulled out the big guns, bringing his mother to Ho Chi Minh City to help broker the deal with Nguyen. It did the trick. The next step was to convince Lim (who at the time was illegally running a six-course nightly tasting menu out of his 600-square-foot apartment) to head up the project in Canada. “I met Michael three years earlier, in 2015, while I was running a poke stand at the Richmond Night Market,” says Lim. “He was always hanging around trying to pick my brain about my poke recipe.” Lim had no knowledge of Vietnamese cuisine whatsoever, but he was up for the challenge.

In 2019, Lim immersed himself in Vietnamese cuisine, travelling to Ho Chi Minh City to taste everything Thanh had to offer and chatting with her on Facebook Live and Zoom. He even learned some of the language so that he could hire proper Vietnamese cooks for his kitchen. By 2020, he was ready to open. “Our plan was to create a menu that was 80 per cent built around Nguyen’s traditional soups, with the other 20 per cent giving me the freedom to explore other Vietnamese flavours I’d discovered in my travels.”

Due to Covid, Thanh didn’t make it to Vancouver until 2022—it was the first time she’d ever left Vietnam. When she finally got to the restaurant, she approved of it wholeheartedly.

The menu at Toronto’s Lunch Lady is a bit different from its BC counterpart’s. “It’s only natural that some Toronto influence will leak into the cuisine here,” says Lim. “But it will take time and insight for the recipes to build.” For now, Lim (whose brother Bernard Lim happens to be the co-owner of St. Catharines’s Michelin-starred Fat Rabbit) is planning a brunch banh mi op la piled high with Fat Rabbit’s house sausage. Lim is also borrowing flavours from his delicatessen neighbour, Linny’s, and using the smoker he inherited from Boehmer to smoke Wagyu beef cheek for his take on pastrami (which will be added to pho).

The Food

An assortment of Vietnamese staples (grilled lemongrass chicken thighs over rice and pho bo) are interwoven with Lim’s renditions of classic dishes. His version of Shaking Beef (bo luc lac) uses Canada Prime ribeye from Martin’s Family Farm, which is marinated and grilled and arrives to the table cubed, topped with a peppercorn sauce and burnt scallion butter, and served with crunchy cassava fries. It’s bo luc lac meets steak frites, and that kind of mash-up is what Lunch Lady is all about.

The Drinks

The cocktails offer an unpretentious and playful mix of South Asian spins on the classics, like the Ca Phe Negroni, and tropical cocktails, like the Tropic Thunder, a blend of coconut rum, Campari, pandan syrup, pineapple and lime. Lunchtime brings a list of Vietnamese coffees, and the Ca Phe Sua Dau Phong (iced Vietnamese coffee topped with peanut butter foam and salted peanuts) is a modern spin on the country’s rich and inventive coffee culture.

The Space

With its natural materials, vibrant colours and intricate patterns, the 150-seat restaurant channels key elements of Vietnamese design. But the exposed ceiling and industrial lighting keep it distinctly Ossington.