O&B opens Café Grill for Bay Street movers and shakers

By Mike Deibert
Photos by Allison Woo

TORONTO—A downtown Toronto Oliver & Bonacini Café Grill opened last month.
This is the fifth unit in Oliver & Bonacini Restaurants’ casual Café Grill chain, which also has locations in Bayview Village in Toronto, Oakville, Blue Mountain resort and Waterloo.

The new 230-seat Toronto restaurant takes up14,500 square feet in what was previously the site of a Shopsy’s delicatessen, at Front and Yonge Streets, next door to O&B’s more upscale Biff’s Bistro on Front Street.

Besides the dining area, Café Grill has a bar, a lounge and a wraparound patio.

“We wanted the downtown flagship O&B Café Grill to reflect a casual, down-to-earth attitude in both atmosphere and culinary style,” said the restaurant company’s co-owner Michael Bonacini, in a release which says the bar menu will be “playful yet sophisticated.”

“We are responding to the financial district’s need for a casual yet stylish culinary destination,” said Bonacini’s partner Peter Oliver.

The company announcement also said, “The restaurant will continue to approach everyday global dishes with a modern bistro edge including favourites such as pancetta and mushroom pizzetta, lamb and spinach pasta and mac and cheese.”
The pizzetta costs $16, the pasta dish $16.50, and the mac and cheese, made with Balderson cheddar, $15.

About two dozen wines are available by the glass, in six and nine-ounce pours, generally in the $10 to $20 price range. The international list includes Niagara wines, and bottle prices are mostly in the $40 to $70 range.

Bar chef Adrian Stein has developed a number of cocktails which are classics with a new twist, such as a Manhattan flavoured with vanilla and cherry, a sidecar with lemon meringue and a grapefruit negroni.

Toronto-based Anaceto Design worked with Bonacini on a layout that includes a communal table, semi-private booths and a “loft-like dining room.” The colour scheme is mainly blacks, greys and off-whites.

Restaurant chef Luke Kennedy is back in Canada after two years overseas working in London’s Michelin-starred The Greenhouse restaurant. Kennedy worked at fine dining restaurants in Vancouver and took a gold medal in a regional cook-off in the Gold Medal Plates competition.

Besides Biff’s and the Café Grill chain, Oliver & Bonacini has some of Toronto’s most upscale restaurants: Canoe, Auberge du Pommier and Jump. O&B is also the exclusive caterer for the Toronto Board of Trade.

Later this summer the company will open two restaurants in the TIFF Bell Lightbox, the new headquarters of the Toronto International Film Festival.