Why Toronto’s west side has more (and better) restaurants than the east
Toronto’s first all-charcuterie restaurant wasn’t The Black Hoof on Dundas West. It was Pic Nic, and it quietly opened in the summer of 2008 on Queen East, just past Broadview. There were no crowds, no press, no buzz, no loud music—staff just sliced the meat and put it on a plate. It’s now closed.
The west side’s restaurant scene does receive a lot of attention, and it seems the spots in the east are often neglected. There are plenty of great places to eat on the east side, particularly as you head further into Scarborough—it just hasn’t exploded the way the west side has over the last five years. Why?
Demographics and development
For the purpose of kitchen inspections, Toronto Public Health divides the city into zones. The downtown zone (Parkside Ave. to Victoria Park Ave., and Eglinton Ave. to the waterfront) is split in two: west of the Don River and essentially south of Bloor there are a whopping 4,627 places that serve food including restaurants, bars, hotels and cafeterias. East of the river, and across a much larger area, there are only 2,544.
“Parkdale has a lot of 20-to-40-year-olds with disposable income,” suggests Stephen Murphy, a commercial real estate consultant who specializes in restaurants. “Hipsters, and people who go out more.” That seems like a fair, if anecdotal, description, but couldn’t the same be said for Leslieville, Riverdale and the Beach? We asked Peter Viducis, manager of research and information systems for the City of Toronto, to compare two popular neighbourhoods on opposites sides of the divide: Parkdale and Leslieville.
Based on data from the 2011 census, there are actually more people living in Leslieville (29,000) than Parkdale (27,000). Viducis looked at the variables of not just total population, but daytime population (people who work, but don’t live, in the area), household income and number of household occupants, and couldn’t find a significant relationship that would account for the disparity in the number of restaurants. The standout factor, however, is density: at 13,804 people per square kilometre, Parkdale has 1.6 times the population density of Leslieville, which means more potential customers in a smaller space. Condo construction sites are fewer and farther between on the east side.
Real estate
I’ve had friends with kids move to the east side to score a slightly more affordable home, which led me to think that all real estate is cheaper east of the Don River. According to Murphy, a Queen East restaurant space is comparable, at approximately $35–$40 per square foot, to one on Queen West. He placed La Carnita on Queen near Broadview and the as-yet-unopened craft brew pub (run by Fab Concepts, the company behind Brazen Head, Pogue Mahone, Mill Street Brew Pub, etc.) in the old Dominion Hotel spot. He’s seen interest in the area from chains, but only from a handful of young chefs looking to open their first restaurant. And even the established restaurateurs are MIA. “I take calls from landlords, developers and real estate agents about locations and opportunities,” says Charles Khabouth, who owns seven successful restaurants—Patria, Byblos, Weslodge, La Société, Spice Route, NAO and America—all located west of Yonge Street. “No one has called me in 10 years about one location on the east side.”
No one wants to go first
In 2004, Jeff Stober’s renovation of the Drake Hotel got a frosty reception from some in the neighbourhood, but it galvanized the renaissance of West Queen West, an area that was largely quiet during the day and dead at night. Ossington Avenue was a commercial ghost town before chef Tom Thai opened his South Asian–inspired Foxley restaurant in 2007. At that time, restaurateurs could lock in a lease for $1,800 a month (for an 1,800-square-foot space). Now it’s more like $6,000.
It takes a special type of entrepreneur to be the first, to risk their savings to find out if locals will support the type of food they’re serving, and if outsiders will drive, cycle or take transit to try it. Not all the food on Ossington is as exotic as Thai’s at Foxley, but it took something bold (his arctic char with ginger and apple is still king of Toronto ceviches) to bring outside diners to an area where they didn’t normally go. Jen Agg did it with The Black Hoof on Dundas West; Colin Tooke and Ian McGrenaghan did it with Grand Electric in Parkdale. Someone’s got to plant a bigger flag on the east side.
Restaurants stick together
Nick Liu spent two years looking at dozens of possible locations for DaiLo, his modern Chinese restaurant in Little Italy. He considered the volume of business in the area, how many restaurants were operating in the vicinity and if there were already spots similar to the one he wanted to open.
Liu lives on the east side, but commutes every day from Coxwell and Gerrard to College and Palmerston, a corner that’s also home to La Carnita, Bar Raval and Woodlot—an unusually concentrated quartet of successful, chef-driven restaurants that serve fancy Chinese, fancy tacos, fancy tapas and fancy Canadiana. When similar businesses benefit from close proximity to their competitors (like in King East’s design district), it’s called an agglomeration economy. The popularity of one restaurant attracts the type of customer who is likely to spend money at a nearby restaurant of similar style.
Chefs also like to be close to their chef pals, and not just as a matter of fraternity. They want to know that local diners are adventurous and that the clientele will support something unique—and their buddies’ successful restaurants confirm it. In the end, this was the deciding factor for Liu. “The reason why we chose the west is it’s where our people are,” he says. “We have restaurant friends who know we’re here.”
Foot traffic
“The east side is fairly quiet, even at night,” says Khabouth. “There’s not an area you can walk around, like King Street or Ossington, where people can bar hop and say, ‘We don’t have a reservation. Let’s try this restaurant. If it’s full, there’s another five down the road.’ On the east side that doesn’t exist.” There is, of course, the Danforth, but that row has been oversaturated with middling restaurants for decades, and the rent is high. Plus, the Danforth doesn’t support the same kind of nightlife that neighbourhoods like Parkdale or Little Portugal do.
“There’s so much more buzz here in the west end,” says Liu. “There’s just more people out, riding their bikes. There’s an energy that I think is just starting to appear in some spots in the east end. Cooler restaurants, like La Carnita, moving into the area, make it a little more tempting.” But it’s still a wait-and-see situation.
Dave Mottershall was cooking food as hip as anything in Toronto—smoked broccoli covered in peach bourbon barbecue sauce, quinoa-crusted pig’s tail—from the kitchen of Hi-Lo Bar at Queen and Broadview. Last year, the former co-owner of the lauded Terre Rouge in Charlottetown, PEI, settled on Toronto’s east side and opened Loka Snacks as a pop-up at Hi-Lo. On a Wednesday night in June, the bar’s Metallica pinball machine, which no one was playing, made more noise than the rest of the neighbourhood combined. There were hardly enough pedestrians walking by outside to form a jury, much less fill restaurants.
“You don’t see many full restaurants around Queen and Broadview,” says Mottershall. On the same night, even the more popular spots like La Carnita were half-full. “The foot traffic still doesn’t seem to be coming. Much of the neighbourhood isn’t progressive enough to go looking for more than steak frites or a burger.”
There’s nothing wrong with a good old-fashioned hamburger joint, but the quality cooking and beautiful plating of Mottershall’s short head-to-tail menu was the sort of thing that should have had people lined up out the door. “We love the east end and still there was a part of me that wanted to open there,” Mottershall says, “but the dining crowd that’s walking around, looking for something different to eat, is in the west.” After exceeding a $25,000 Kickstarter goal to open his own place, Mottershall shut down his pop up in late September and secured an address for a restaurant—at 620 Queen Street West.
Darren Robinson is about to have an aneurysm….or an orgasm.
Well, no. If you actually read any of his original comments that led to his tally, I don’t think his point was that east side has more or better restaurants than the west side, but that Toronto Life, unlike other publications, never ventures beyond a certain portion of the west side to cover what is happening. I don’t think he’s ever said that the coverage should be equal, merely that Toronto Life should stop navel gazing and venture outside its comfort zone on more occasions than it does. I can’t speak for him, but that’s always how I saw his tally. This article says that there are a lot of great places to eat in other parts of the city, but that there is more happening, and more exciting things happening, in the west. I don’t think anyone disputes that. But it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy (it’s all happening in the west) if Toronto Life rarely ventures beyond a bubble to report on interesting things that might be happening elsewhere outside the small portion of the city where everyone’s attention is currently focused. This article talks about certain great places in the east lacking buzz, but of course it’s publications like Toronto Life, which largely ignores anyone outside a certain radius, which help create that buzz. It’s the media which feeds this so-called agglomeration economy of which the article speaks, and nobody is going to plant his or her flag elsewhere in the city, or the author suggests, when a publication like Toronto Life can’t even feign interest. How much of a role does lazy journalism play in all this? Probably more than Toronto Life would care to admit.
plus no mention of the hipster attitude. sure lots of places open in the west but TONS of places open and close. how many ’boutique tacquerias’ opened in kensington this week? 5? 6? how many asian/south american fusion places opened and closed in parkdale this week? it’s a big rush to find the new place that’s the hottest and an even bigger rush to start dismissing it. yeah… i was into mumford and songs long before they were even a band.. now EVERYBODY likes them! ugh!
This is purely theoretical, but just based on personal experience people from Mississauga, Oakville, Brampton and Vaughan seem to be more inclined to venture into the city than people from Richmond Hill, Pickering, and Markham. For one thing there are a lot more people in the Western suburbs than in the east, but also it seems to be easier for people from the west suburbs to enter the city itself than it is for people out east. When the western suburbanites come into the city, they don’t want to venture out that far (or deal with the DVP) and thus, west side restaurants get more customers and more coverage.
Hey Darren, you regrettable dipstick… are you reading this loud and clear?
Another story where there was nothing there before there was a there. There is only there apparently when Toronto lLife discovers it.
He never made any comments other than the tally.
This article coming from a publication that ranked neighbourhoods using spurious data and boundaries that surprised the crap out of the residents of said neighbourhoods. They referred to Leslieville as “South Riverdale” a now rapidly disappearing and seldom recognized label for the area. Also the proffered weighted slider controls could not fix the busted ass rationales presented for the rankings. It’s a long standing joke that Toronto Life and other city focused publications seem run and populated by people with only the vaguest notion of what is east of the Don Valley. It’s not a joke though…. I see articles like this that try very hard to piece apart the peculiar east west divide..and the eastends unusual low profile in many respects. This article is a hilariously recursive example of a prime factor causing disparities like it seeks to explain….and with that it missed a big one….the publications that should be highlighting the east, and without feeling the need to include that distinction since it is very much part of Toronto, either ignore it completely out of indifference, ignorance or active distaste. Or they write tone deaf “Wow, who knew the eastend had…” articles that come across as awkward and condescending to the residents and businesses already present…or the worst are articles like these that try to explain or reconcile the disparity with completely boneheaded obliviousness as to how they directly contribute to the disparity. If I was an outsider looking to invest or start a business… I’d imagine the east was a desert with only the occasional oasis…and pass it by. The following was my comment to a friend’s recent facebook post from Toronto Life: –“Toronto Life…. as always describing life in a Toronto I have never visited. I remember being a kid and picking up copies in waiting rooms….and wondering at the weird reality depicted that bore the name of my city. I thought I’d get it when I got older…. I’m scarily close to forty and I’m still not sure whose Toronto life they are describing.” — It had quite a few likes…you guys suck .at representing a cohesive picture of Toronto and always have…but advertisers must like you and your well heeled yet equally clueless target audience. Also your online presence is like a mashup of the Torontoist and BlogTO but way way crappier
We’ve been open for a year at Murgatroid, 568 parliament, doing exclusively locavore fare, and unless we fork over huge amounts of money on advertising, Toronto life, blog to, now, etc, all refuse to even come review us. Why is the east end lacking in good new restaurants? Because publications like this refuse to cover anyone who isn’t famous, or paying.
Darren, where are you? Does this count as a west or east review? :P
west side is dirty. East side is for grown-ups.
Yeah. No.
Yasssssssssssss
This is simply 100% untrue and no one from Toronto Life would have told you that you need to purchase ads in order to get a review. There is no connection AT ALL between getting reviewed and paying for advertising on TorontoLife.com or in the magazine. If you contact me at ken[dot]hunt[at]torontolife[dot]com I can make enquiries as to why we haven’t reviewed you (we don’t review everything/everyone for a variety of reasons), but there is no connection with ads.
Of course nobody said that outright, that would be borderline illegal. It is, however, the nature of the conversation and implied in so many words, whenever restaurants are approached about paid advertising, upcoming “feature”/”best of” issues, or in response to press releases. I’m sure you have the utmost confidence that your staff would never employ such a dirty tactic. I’m also sure that were you to investigate practices in this regard, you’d find almost every publication in this city follows the same set of nefarious practices.
That’s in regards to the pay-for-coverage issue. In regards to the other point, I see no reason for major publications to continuously provide free advertising in the form of overblown “review” features waxing poetic every time an already rich and famous restaurateur opens yet another spot that needs no publicity. Mention it, sure. But the obsessive coverage of everything rose or susur related is a big part of why people who try to bring lively and innovative food culture to the east end fail; our media continually gives then the cold shoulder
The only thing we are obsessed with is connecting our readers with the best things to eat, see and do in the city. One thing I can say is that if you had purchased ads, it would have been no help in getting reviewed. That’s just not the way it works. If anyone had been explicitly or implicitly offered a review for buying an ad and then didn’t get one, I would certainly get an earful from someone. You can prove this theory yourself: take a look at all the restaurants Toronto Life reviews (hundreds in the course of a year) and then look at all the restaurants you see advertising in Toronto Life (maybe a dozen or two, and often we have ads from people we are not reviewing.) I can’t speak for NOW or BlogTO but I bet they would say the exact same thing. Taking money to review restaurants is a bad business plan and no legitimate publication that I know works that way.
I seem to recall posts of his well before the tally.
Hey, Bolo Punch, grow up.
LOL
I agree with Canadianskeezix. There has definitely been an innate prejudice in Toronto that the West End is ‘cooler’ than the East End. This prejudice has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. I once owned a restaurant in Cabbagetown and in Amy Pataki’s review of my restaurant she commented that she couldn’t believe that she was travelling East of Yonge to review a restaurant. Nice journalistic integrity, right!?!
Which is why people prefer the west side. Who wants to be a grown-up? I’ll grow up in 40 years when I’m 85 thanks.
The immature are insecure and always trying to compensate. Poor babies. I’m happy to never be that again :) So you’re older than me and immature. sad. oh well, you seem to be enjoying it. all the best to you, my friend.
Mottershall doesn’t know a fucking thing about the east end. There are lots of great places that are filled at Queen E and Broadview. The Danforth also has some great places that do well. Maybe if he wants to see some quiet restaurants he should go back to PEI to see a true example.
Um, I’m just going to say it since Ken is apparently too polite to do so: I’m sure Murgatroid is a perfectly fine neighbourhood joint (maybe even better than fine!), but places like Toronto Life and Blog TO tend to review restaurants they think people will go out of their way for. You’d have to be serving some pretty mind-blowing club sandwiches and eggs benedicts for Murgatroid to fall into that category.
We don’t even have a boring old Benedict on the menu. It’s precisely this kind of dismissive elitist attitude that is at the core of the problem
Correction: The Black Hoof was started by Jen Agg and Grant Van Gameren. Not just Jen Agg. Also since selling the black hoof Grant has gone on to revive the College Street restaurant scene. Seems strange to omit Toronto’s (arguably) most celebrated chef and restaurateur when it’s the central theme of the editorial.
Hey there. We opened a small place this year, in the Junction. We have been fortunate to have had some good press. I know how valuable it is. We have never been approached to advertise quid pro quo, nor would we. Our advertising budget is zero. Who knows how editorial decisions get made, but for us, it had nothing to do with where we spent our money.
I live in the real west end (Mimico) so I get confused when parkdale is treated like it is the western edge of the city. I get it though as mimico is kind of its own thing and most people here don’t really think of themselves as Torontonians. That said, You guys should head out here sometime, once you get past hipster St West and condoburbia you will find a neighborhood with an improving culinary scene and, rare for T.O, a bit of soul.
Forgot about you’re review of Tich. So I guess you have been to Mimico..nice
Sarzy, do you do any research before making those comments?
Bolo Bunch is the same guy that screamed about the posts being ‘spam’. Same guy that never said a word when Uber and other spam was being posted on here. The same guy that when Darren DOESN’T post, Bolo takes time out of his day to still complain and even post the numbers himself.
What does that even mean? I know that’s one of those common things people like to say, like ‘Erm, No.’ and ‘No… just no’. But what are you ACTUALLY saying?
Prejudice or lazy journalism? Maybe both.
“Much of the neighbourhood isn’t progressive enough to go looking for more than steak frites or a burger.””
This is how you know you’re a dick. When you say stuff like this, out loud.
Research…?
I mean, it’s not exactly a huge secret that outlets like Toronto Life
and Blog TO don’t (and can’t) review every new restaurant that opens in all of the city. They tend to focus on places that either already have buzz, that have a known chef attached, or that have
something interesting/noteworthy about the menu. A restaurant like Murgatroid, which serves no-frills diner classics (or at least dishes that appear that way on paper), is unlikely to get much coverage unless it’s serving food that’s truly spectacular (and even then, it would be a crap-shoot).
The east will not be as easily won by trumped up Tacos and barnboard decor. Scarborough is home to some of the best food in North America, and most are hidden gems that would make a hipster nervous. Living in East York, I am more likely to hunt down those gems than wait 2 hours for a taco on Ossington.
“Much of the neighbourhood isn’t progressive enough to go looking for more than steak frites or a burger.”
Aside from the obvious condescension, what really gets me is the suggestion that NOT flocking to (yet another) “fancy taco” joint somehow makes us east siders less refined in the eyes of Toronto’s culinary crowd.
Perhaps you could comment on how Toronto Life chooses establishments to review, and why so few are outside of the “west end”?
It’s all about coming out of the bubble. TL should try, for a month, not covering the usual Roncesvales/Ossington Strip/Kensington routine so they’re forced to actually stray, seek something out for a change. But they might miss another opening for another overpriced Taqueria. Hey everyone, Carnita opened another place on King West. Read about it in today’s Toronto Life.
I would think purchasing ads would help in getting on the TL radar. Of course yelp has said the same kind of thing in the past.
East Danforth East is where it’s at!
“Much of the neighbourhood isn’t progressive enough to go looking for more than steak frites or a burger.”
Dave Mottershall opens hipster pop-up food joint in east-end hipster bar, only serves food a couple nights a week at weird hours, fails to attract the outsiders who “will drive, cycle or take transit to try it” as this article claims an area needs before it can be considered a hip dining spot… and then slams all east enders as people with boring palates. Idiotsayswhat?
I did a double-take when I realized this article was written by Corey Mintz, since I normally respect his work and he tends to have his finger on the pulse of what’s actually going on in Toronto’s dining scene. This article suggests he’s either started shilling for clickbait, or he’s truly become out of touch. No mention of the great restaurants and chefs that have discovered the east end’s potential (Libretto, La Carnita, County General, Lynn Crawford). Or places like Burger’s Priest and Queen Margherita Pizza that started in the east end and have since become Toronto institutions? Or the great restaurant scene in Corktown? Or the fact that, contrary to what this article claims, you can indeed walk around Leslieville on any given night and bar- or restaurant-hop?
It’s easy to continue to perpetuate the myth that Toronto stops east of Yonge St. But it’s completely factually incorrect.
Also, no mention of the fact that Jilly’s/The Broadview Hotel is undergoing a massive reno. It’s not being run by Jeff Stober. But like the Drake in Parkdale, it should definitely change the face of Riverside and the east end.
And no mention ever of the chef at Morgans, Anne Sorrenti winning Chopped Canada. Even Now Magazine had an article about it, including in the paper version. But I’m sure TL was busy looking for something, ANYTHING that was even slightly new in Kensington.
That title is horrible so really there are absolutely no good restaurants in the east end? Talk about self fulfilling prophecies and I wonder how the restaurant owners on the eat end feel about that. Also I wonder how the customers of the restaurants in the east end feel about that?
They sure as hell can review a LOT MORE restaurants (new AND old) outside of the west end than they currently do. Hell, they could even come up north once in a while and find PLENTY of solid spots that deserve the praise and fawning they heap on their precious west end restos. Place the hipsters WOULD make the effort to visit (even by subway for those too cheap to own a car) IF THEY NEW THEY WERE THERE. There’s a definite, long-standing bias in this magazine that cannot be denied, no matter how Mr. Mintz and Mr. Hunt try to spin it. Up to now, anyone who pointed it out inevitably suffered the petty wrath of westenders who couldn’t be arsed to venture outside their little bubbles, and so didn’t feel any need to know what was outside of them. Either change the mag’s name to “West End Toronto Life” or start covering ALL of Toronto. And stop blowing the west-end celebrity chefs. That’s precisely the reason they move there!
But the tally is what forced Toronto Life to publish this article, and instead of addressing their implicit role in favoring the west end, or simply sharing the love with the east end AND the north end, they circle the wagons around their precious little west-end bubble with their celeb-chef friends and throw out a bunch of statistics that complete sidestep the real issue.
Spot on across the board. You could substitute all usage of the word “east” in Devin Telfer’s post with “north” and every single point would still stand. It’s like they willfully deny Toronto is actually TORONTO north of Bloor and even up beyond the 401. It’s truly sickening.
NAILED IT!! :D
Can’t speak for Pickering, but Markham and Richmond Hill are practically Toronto North these days, even if the official designation ends at Steeles. Despite these two boroughs being ABSOLUTELY LOADED with amazing restaurants and even nightlife (all of which are much more accessible by car than ANYTHING downtown), but I’m sure TL and it’s west-end enablers only think of these regions as Chinese-only or some such silliness.
Sorry, Westerly, but Toronto Life staff and reviewers are like the characters in that Luis Bunuel movie The Exterminating Angel. They simply can’t move through certain open doorways. They’re psychologically trapped in a hipster paradise entirely of their own making.
We hate it. We’ve hated it for years now. And we’ve grown to loathe “Toronto” Life for it.
It’s a thing they say in the west end that Toronto Life tells them to say.
Late to the party on this one, but couldn’t agree more with ALL the commenters below who rightly point out that Toronto Life doesn’t give NEARLY as many reviews for the east as for the west. The whole REASON Mintz’ article even exists is because commenter ‘Darren Robinson’ actually posted the score each time a new review went up. It’s taken well over a YEAR for this article to go up in response, and yet Mintz clearlly makes no mention — or was ORDERED NOT TO make any mention — of the plain fact that TL, a magazine which positions itself as a lifestyle guide for downtown hipsters, routinely neglects to any further east than about, what, Yonge Street?
Interesting to see someone from TL actually responding in the comments section for a change, though. That’s rare in itself, but not surprising it only happened when the impilcation of review-rigging was taken from (rather than put forward by) an east-end restaurant owner.
Having worked in the print (newspaper and magazine) media for 20+ years — though not at TL or any affiliated company, as far as I can recall — I can tell you without hesitation that advertising and editorial ARE very much tied together. “Here, buy this quarter-page and we’ll throw in a review or fluff piece about your business in our upcoming feature!” Perhaps TL rises above it — frankly, I think they do, for the most part — but many, MANY mags and newspapers don’t, and the businesses being approached know exactly how it works.
However, as others have pointed out, TL is definitely NOT above willfully creating a self-fulfilling prophecy that caters to a very narrow market. They got called on it in the online comments sections of review after review of west end hipster joints (many shorter-lived than places in the east), and FINALLY responded to it by circling the wagons around their Queen West paradise and throwing a bunch of demographics and condescension at the east end (and the north by association) without once acknowledging their own role in wholly “creating” the impression that the west end is where it’s at.
“west side is dirty. East side is for grownups.”
That’s not immature? Those blanket labels for each side are beyond ridiculous and completely unhelpful… Your smug self satisfaction and condescending attitude add nothing more than precisely that to a complex situation.
But Ken, “the city” doesn’t end at Yonge, Bloor and Ossington. It goes all the way out past the DVP and way up north to Steeles. Perhaps Toronto Life needs to hire more freelancers with cars.
Please explain this incredibly bad and poorly researched article Mr Toronto Life. Because it is all based on a number of pretty shaky presuppositions… easily disproven and not with conjecture..with a cursory glance at publically available and empirical statistics…Also it’s great how it only seems to quote/reference people who qualify it’s pulled out of your asses premise.
If you were legitimately obsessed with “connecting our readers with the best things to eat, see and do in the city” why would you have someone write and present an article that will literally make people unfamiliar with the area second guess going there? When there is clearly an active and rapidly growing nightlife along the Riverside/Leslieville strip (and the other long standing interesting eastend spots)…. The cognitive dissonance is unbelievable!
I wish the East End had the kinds of restaurants featured on the FoodNetwork’s “Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives”. Specifically, great food made from scratch, at reasonable prices. Oh, and easy-to-find parking, of course! I know: I’m living in a dream world… But that’s why I don’t venture out for dinner often, and when I do, I find there are few places to eat out near where I live and/or play. Like, for example, around Fairview Mall [Cinemas]. Dinner-and-a-movie used to be a thing, but it’s harder to achieve than it should be.
Can you name some places? TL did a revue of Café du Lac which was a neat little place. And there’s FBI pizza, but so far the ‘scene’ has been pretty anemic in mimico.
Or … they have data that shows they get more interest in articles about west end restaurants and therefore concentrate on the desires of the people who read the magazine.
it’s a no-brainer…king/queen/bloor west, the junction, college st., ossington strip vs. what? the danforth and rosedale?
We don’t know that Toronto Life was “forced” to do anything, or that they even care about the tally. But assuming for a moment that the tally, plus perennial criticism that long pre-dates the tally, prompted this article, the fact that TL chose to double-down instead of doing its job is not a reason to have never criticized them in the first place.
you think it’s to a ratio of something like 140 to 10? you do realize queen street doesn’t end at yonge, right? cabagetown. carlton. i do like that you take the same dismissive and limited attitude that tl has. and i get it when it comes to individuals being lazy and i’d like it if tl would just admit they’re lazy and can’t be bothered leaving the bubble. claiming they’re obsessed’ with sharing places to enjoy from all over the city is like fox news saying it’s fair and balanced. nobody takes either of those statements seriously.
Ummmm, since when did it become area versus area? When have Toronto Life’s critics spoken in terms of “versus”? I think you’ve completely missed the point.
Sure. But then don’t purport, as Toronto Life does, to cover Toronto’s food scene. Admit that your coverage is limited to one small part of the city.
Such a bitch fest. Why do we always have to pit the West against the East? We are one city and all sides have a lot to offer. The fact is that the West has developed faster than the East. Nothing more. I have lived in TO for 15 years and remember when there was no such thing as ‘West Queen West’ before the Drake Hotel, no Ossignton until all the Vietnamese gangs moved out and no King West before the Starbucks went in. The same will happen in the East end too, it is just a matter of time. Stop fighting like children and start supporting ONE city!!
to the ratio of a hundred and twenty something to like 14?
maybe if toronto life supported one city instead of sticking inside the bubble they choose and then pretending that they don’t. besides stargazer, it’s just debate on a message board. it’s not like the jets and the sharks in west side story. choosing to complain about something being a bitchfest on a message board is amusing.