Crush Wine Bar gets squeezed out

Since it opened in 2002, Crush Wine Bar has been a King West fixture, but its new owners clearly weren’t such big fans: it’s now closed, with the last day of service announced in one short tweet late last month. Niagara-on-the-Lake hoteliers Vintage Hotels, who purchased the oenophile’s paradise from the Queen and Beaver’s Jamieson Kerr back in 2010, sold the restaurant in order to focus on their holdings on the other side of Lake Ontario, according to Crush’s executive chef Trista Sheen. Shortly after the sale, the new owners gave all of the staff two weeks’ notice. “We all kept saying it’s the end of an era,” says Sheen. “It’s the place where I became a chef for the first time, and I just wanted to enjoy the last two weeks—to be with the people I worked with.” Sheen tells us she’ll be taking the rest of the summer off. “I’m going to take it easy: eat out, travel to the East Coast, and enjoy things on the other side of the food scene.” The new owners, meanwhile, haven’t revealed their plans yet.