Review: Bar Fancy, Jonathan Poon’s new snack bar on Queen West, is an easy win

Bar Fancy ★★ 1070 Queen St. W., 416-546-1416

With Chantecler, Jonathan Poon proved he could make an ambitious restaurant work in down-and-out Parkdale. His latest project is comparatively easy: a casual snack and drinks place, reached down an alley, smack in the middle of the Queen West bachelorette party district. It’s casual in the extreme: tables are small and closely packed, baseball capped servers crank the volume on Young Americans, and there’s not a mixologist for miles (the drinks list is, for this ’hood, impressively cheap and limited to bar rail and microbrews). Food comes on melamine plates but is coyly posh: smoky shaved ham shoulder and extra-old cheddar with crusty bread, slices of royal gala and a dipping pot of flowery honey; minerally malpeques with a Vietnamese-inspired sauce; and deep fried chicken in a thin, five-spiced batter. His chicken wings, coated with a Szechuan numbing salt that builds with each bite until your mouth burns like a five alarm fire, seems like a cruel joke on the street’s punters.

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