What’s on the menu at Runway 06, a 12,000-square-foot air-travel-themed supper club

Name: Runway 06 Contact: 132 John St., runway06.ca, @runway06toronto
Neighbourhood: Entertainment District
Owners: Sanjay Singhal (Coffee Oysters Champagne) and Prakash Chand Chefs: Akshat Modi and Lancer Dsouza Accessibility: Fully accessible

After graduating with an MBA from Cornell University, Sanjay Singhal—co-owner of Toronto’s first air-travel-themed supper club—started Audiobooks.com. After selling the successful company nearly a decade ago, he needed another challenge. “I was sitting on a pile of cash and didn’t know what to do with myself,” he says. It occurred to Singhal, who often travelled to New York, that he wanted to bring a piece of the Big Apple to the Big Smoke. “At the time, I was obsessed with the immersive theatrical experience Sleep No More, which I had seen at least five times.” For the show, ticket holders meet at an abandoned club in Chelsea that is filled with themed rooms. They then choose their own adventure, entering spaces designed to look like a hospital ER, an intricately choreographed acrobatics show or a Prohibition-era speakeasy, to name just a few. Singhal wanted to bring the show to Toronto but quickly realized it was far too complicated of a project to undertake.

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Instead, he opened Coffee Oysters Champagne, a bougie bar on King West. “I still wanted to bring a piece of the show into the city, and I felt like the bar could give a tiny glimpse into the experience,” he says. For Singhal’s inner circle and other big Toronto personalities, like Drake and Mitch Marner, the main bar was not the place for them to chill. “In Sleep No More, there was a room set up in a campy 1940s way that totally transported guests,” says Singhal. So he built a secret bar behind the main bar, with an entirely different menu, a staff costumed as though from a different era and a space designed to reflect the period perfectly. Those who know to ask for a tour of the “champagne cellar” embark on a magical mystery adventure into the past. (Those who don’t know any better simply indulge in champagne and oysters and are none the wiser or worse off.)

In a sense, Runway 06 is COC taken to the next level. It’s (much) bigger, wilder and—being an air-travel-themed supper club—even more transportive. Visitors receive boarding passes at the door, the cocktails and dishes take diners around the world, and cabaret performances may involve sexy takes on the in-flight safety demonstration. Coming soon: a VIP bar hidden behind a massive video screen displaying different corners of the globe. “If our host writes ‘first class’ on your boarding pass, you get to access our VIP departure lounge,” says Singhal. “It’s an exclusive experience, like the Air Canada Lounge.”

The Food

The wide selection includes both snacky bar bites—to keep feet light on the dance floor—and heartier entrées for those who want more of a dinner-theatre experience. The globe-trotting menu includes paella, ceviche, braised lamb shank and porcini mushroom coxinha.

The Drinks

Divided into three categories (Pre-Departure, Boarding and Lift-Off), the cocktail card is a playful collection of new takes on classic drinks. In a bold move, the house twist on a traditional manhattan, the Brazilian Manhattan, is bereft of whisky. Instead, the bar subs in a blend of sweet, spicy and citrusy Cocchi Rosa, cachaça (Brazilian sugar cane liqueur), oaky Bacardi Ocho rum, fresh pineapple, and cardamom bitters.

The Space

With a bit of old-world opulence, a lot of muted neon and enough screens to make a Truman Show sequel, Runway 06 is disorienting and frenetic enough to take diners from a relaxing night at a restaurant to a crazy night at the club (provided, of course, that their seatbelts are fastened and their tray tables stowed).