What’s on the menu at Compton Ave., the new British cocktail bar from the BarChef team
That’s Compton, London
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Name: Compton Ave.
Contact: 1282 Dundas St. W., comptonave.com, @barcomptonave
Neighbourhood: Little Portugal
Previously: Founder
Owner: Solarik Holdings (BarChef, Prequel & Co.)
Chefs: Director of culinary Lionel Duke, chef de cuisine Joshua Algas
Accessibility: Washrooms are not wheelchair accessible
It’s been 15 years since BarChef, one of the city’s best-known cocktail bars, opened on Queen West. It took owner and mixologist Frankie Solarik 13 years to open his next project, Prequel and Co. A comparatively short 12 months after that, he opened Compton Ave., his third and newest spot in the city’s west end.
“BarChef is an institution at this point, and it’s such an honour to continue to run it,” says Solarik. “Now, we’re going from individual modernist cocktails to spaces that can fully transport a guest.” The destination? Compton Avenue in Highgate, London, an old-moneyed neighbourhood chock full of 18th-century mega-mansions.
“We have two spots on Queen, so we wanted to move up to Dundas and be part of a neighbourhood that’s so vibrant with bars,” says Solarik. “Our neighbours—Bar Mordecai and Mahjong—are both fantastic.”
The drinks
BarChef’s over-the-top ethos (esoteric ingredients, fancy glassware, house-made bitters) transferred over to Compton Ave. But this is a British bar, so tea makes an appearance in more than one cocktail—lapsang souchong bitters here, an Earl Grey espresso martini there.
And carbonation is a key part of the program. There are four draught taps behind the bar: one for carbonated drinks (a CO2 tap) and one with nitrous oxide for still-batched cocktails. BarChef is a destination, a place people stay for a whole evening; Compton Ave., on the other hand, is meant to be more of a way station—somewhere to pop in for a great drink before or after dinner. Draught cocktails allow drinks to come out at a steady clip, allowing staff to focus on service.
The food
The menu, headed up by long-time BarChef vet Lionel Duke, is British-ish. There’s plenty of pub fare, but it’s reimagined through a modernist lens. Parker House rolls? Here, they come with black truffle butter. Instead of chips, fish is served with a carefully stacked potato pavé. Beef cheek is stuffed into a croquette for a deep-fried take on cottage pie. And roasted bone marrow (a decidedly un-pubby dish) is accompanied by house-made crumpets instead of the usual crostini.
The space
Solarik aims to take guests to a thumping UK house party in the basement of one of those aforementioned mansions. The walls are painted a rich burgundy, the leather bar stools have a nice patina and the trimmings are heavily gilded—right down to the paintings, which were sourced from a museum in Vienna. They somehow managed to pull this all together in just two months—the previous occupants closed up shop on New Year’s Eve.
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