What’s on the menu at Greta, a new 12,500-square-foot bar with more than 50 arcade games
Welcome to King West, Pac-Man
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Name: Greta Bar YYZ
Contact: 590 King St. W., gretabar.com/locations/toronto, @gretabaryyz
Neighbourhood: King West
Owners: Chris DeCock and Casey Greabeiel
Chefs: Corporate chef Taylor Iwaasa and head chef Shawn Tesoro
Accessibility: Fully accessible
Greta co-owner Casey Greabeiel jumped on the arcade-bar concept back in 2018, when he saw a shift in the market. “I’ve been in the hospitality industry since I was 19,” he says. “I bought in to my first chain, Hudson’s Canada’s Pub, in 2003, growing it to 11 locations.” But then, sometime around the late 2010s, Greabeiel and his partners started to notice a change in partying patterns. “People started looking for experiences in bars—something to do rather than just drink.”
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Greabeiel and his team opened up their first Greta in Calgary, with a plan to expand across Canada. The concept was simple: street-food snacks, quality drinks and a boatload of multiplayer arcade games. “We put tables to hold beer and food next to all of our arcade games so that our customers could hang around them and chat,” says Greabeiel. “These aren’t meant to be serious gaming stations—it’s all about joining in on the fun.” Four locations and one pandemic later, Greta has opened its most ambitious arcade bar yet: a 12,500-square-foot space inside a heritage building on King West. “Before Covid, a place like this would have been reserved for office and retail, but because that market dried up, we were able to get in,” says Greabeiel. “Pre-2020, this would have been impossible.” There’s room for three massive bars, more than 50 arcade games, a DJ booth and dance floor, a full restaurant, and half of a food truck (for walk-up orders in lieu of table service).
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The food
Chef Shawn Tesoro, who worked under Susur Lee for over a decade, turns out sharing plates of street food–inspired snacks that lean Asian. The Korean fried chicken wings are cornflake crusted, drenched in house barbecue sauce, then piled high. For his take on tempura mushrooms (insert Mario Kart reference here), Tesoro gathers an assortment of fungi (enoki, oyster, portobello, cremini), dunks them in a traditional tempura batter, fries them to a golden crisp and finishes them with freshly shaved Parmigiano Reggiano and lemon zest. And of course it wouldn’t be a Toronto kitchen without a proper smash burger (insert Super Smash Bros joke here), served with hand-cut fries.
The drinks
The cocktail card lists Greta’s takes on the classics, including a negroni, an old fashioned and the obligatory espresso martini (but with a fruity twist). Taps here pour both batched cocktails (mules, margaritas) and local and imported beer, plus Western Canada’s favourite shooter: the Shaft, a mix of vodka and caffeine three ways (cold brew, espresso, coffee liqueur). Giddy up!
The space
The two-storey space looks somewhat like a futuristic saloon, but—thanks to all the wood, exposed brick and velvet—it doesn’t feel post-apocalyptic. The central focus (besides all the brightly coloured, noise-making machines) is what’s known as Charlie’s Bar: a separate area in the middle of the main floor with a DJ, a dance floor, an art deco–inspired bar and bottle service. It’s an exact replica of Charlie’s Watch Repair, a speakeasy Greabeiel also co-owns out west.
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Erin Hershberg is a freelance writer with nearly two decades of experience in the lifestyle sector. She currently lives in downtown Toronto with her husband and two children.
