Most people can’t afford to splash out the way they used to just five years ago, preferring to spend any expendable cash on unexpendable things like rent or the mortgage instead of a big night on the town.
And the restos know it. Given these trying economic times, it’s little wonder happy hours are popping up all over town.
And so to the Drake Hotel (1150 Queen West, at Beaconsfield, 416-531-5042, thedrakehotel.ca, NNNNN), where they’ve just introduced an Après Work cocktail ‘n’ sushi program to rope in punters. We figure we’ll have the lounge to ourselves holiday Monday, but here it is 4 pm and the room’s seriously slammed by the brunch crowd, most of them well into their third Pisco Fuzz ($13). We opt for an $8 Monkey Gland – 2 ounces of gin, orange juice, grenadine and absinthe – and a $6 glass of okay local Chardonnay.
At these prices, we’re expecting tiny portions, but chef Anthony Rose’s barbecued pork belly nigiri dressed with strips of scrambled egg, basil sprouts and sweet teriyaki ($7) could sink the proverbial battleship. As could the Scorcher ($6.50), a stack of blow-torched salmon tataki drizzled with spicy Dynamite sauce, slivered scallion and green wasabi tobiko roe plated over a bed of crispy soba noodles and deep-fried salmon skin.
In lesser hands, Sushi Pizza ($7) is as authentically Japanese as poutine, but Rose raises this rather routine dish to previously unseen heights, his a large, crisply fried puck of short-grain rice generously topped with marbled raw salmon, chunked avocado and bits of wasabi stem. We save the best till last: chef’s genius seared tuna tostada ($7.50) heaped with a deliciously creamy cabbage and black sesame slaw in crème fraîche dressing bombed with hellaciously hot jalapeños pickled in sour yuzu juice. Impressive.
Across the street at the Beaconsfield (1154 Queen West, at Beaconsfield, 416-516-2550, thebeaconsfield.com, NNNN), they’ve been offering their Five To Seven dinner and a 50 special Monday to Friday since they opened in 2008, even though the mahogany-lined saloon looks like it’s been around since the first Depression.
Tuesdays, nine bucks gets you a beer and a plate of chef Carlos Fernandes’s southern-style mac ‘n’ cheese, but since this is Friday, tonight it’s fish and chips or, more accurately, tranche of haddock in panko batter lashed with Guinness and sided with a veritable Everest of very good frites. Curried tartar sauce, too.
Better yet are Thursday’s chili fries ($8 à la carte), more of those exceptionally skinny spuds topped with fab bean-free beefy Texas chili, cubed avocado and sour cream.
“I could eat those fries forever,” sighs our server.
Over the road on the ground floor of the not so Bohemian Embassy, Piola (1165 Queen West, at Northcote, 416-477-4652, piola.it, NNN) advertises its happy hour as “L’Aperitivo Italiano.” Translation: buy a drink at the bar Monday to Thursday from 4 to 6 pm and be treated to what the flyer calls “an array of traditional finger foods.” We prefer the deal that sees any 13-inch pizza on the card for $8 at those same hours.
When we enter the newly launched Church Apertivo Bar (1090 Queen West, at Dovercourt, 416-537-1090, churchaperitivobar.com, NN), we hope they’ll be spinning the 12-inch mix of Madonna’s Like A Prayer – it is, after all, located in a former Slavic Pentecostal chapel – but we make do with the Reverend Al Green’s greatest hits in its place.
Shame the bite-sized Italian canapés (mushroom-topped pizza squares, stuffed mussels, arancini on sticks) available at the bar Tuesday to Saturday from 5 to 6:30 pm are stone cold. They do, however, make a very good Caesar with Ketel One vodka and pickle juice ($10).
We’ve come to the Ritz Carlton (181 Wellington West, at Simcoe, 416-585-2500, ritzcarlton.com, NNN) to sample chef Tom Brodi’s celebrated nibbly bits but find his TOCA Bar off the hotel’s lobby closed this Family Day, the one day a year we could really use a stiff drink. The front desk sends us down the hall to the far less glamorous DEQ Bar, the rec room of the Ritz.
While affluent tourists lounge in sweatpants by the fireplace and a table of ladies take afternoon tea, we order a round of $16 cocktails at the circular marble bar. There’s no sign of bar snacks, but once we ask, they bring out bowls of Parmesan-dusted popcorn (ho-hum), spicy Mexican pumpkin seeds (salty) and house-made wasabi peas (woo-hoo!). No complimentary strips of maple-syrup-infused bacon, though.
Vegetarian spring rolls ($3 for two) are the size of your pinky, while shrimp cocktail ($3.50) is little more than a butterflied decapod and a blob of ketchup mixed with horseradish. Halfway through your second Corpse Revivor – gin, Cointreau, Lillet Blanc, lemon juice and a dash of absinthe – you won’t notice a thing.
