Dining Out on St. Clair — St. Clair West Oral History Project

Hungry? You will have a hard time deciding where to eat along St. Clair West! There are dozens of restaurants serving food from around the globe: fast food places, such as Gerry’s, Albert’s, and the newly opened Chamsine, fine dining experiences – think of FK or Queen of Persia – and everything in between. Sushi, pizza, saltenas, quiches; Indian, Thai, Middle Eastern, Mexican; bars, grills, patios and cafes. You could eat out every night of the week for a month and still have places to try!

A few decades ago there were far fewer choices, and for the most part you could only have “a very simple meal” as Annette Simms explains. Paul Hersenhoren agrees: “just local restaurants; nobody came from around the city to eat there.” Archer’s (present-day Nodo) was perhaps the fanciest establishment. Peter Mohan remembers going there for special occasions, the posh red leather booths and large steaks you could order, along with side dishes.

One popular spot was the Cottage restaurant between Bathurst and Vaughan on the south side of St. Clair. Joanne Naiman and her husband Neil fondly recall drinking chocolate sodas and milkshakes there, but for the Werdens it was a little too expensive, with a lounge at the front and a dining room in the back. They preferred the Coral Reef where they’d go for French fries and danishes. According to Michael Colle, the Cottage was a hangout for the boys at St. Michael’s College - somewhere you could order a beer when you looked old enough Peter Mohan confesses! Farther back, during the war years, Oakwood student Dorothy Bader would go to Uplands Restaurant after school for a lemon or cherry coke. Another hangout was the New Tivoli near Dufferin. Each booth had a juke box and there was a bar with stools where kids would order chips with gravy and vanilla cokes. “We lived at the Tiv” admits Linda MacDonald.

Of course there were several Chinese restaurants back in the day. Stephen Endicott used to go to the New Niagara Café near Atlas Ave., a hangout for the football team at Oakwood. Leonard Luksenberg also remembers the New Niagara, but he went there for fish and chips on Saturdays as a treat. Bill’s Chinese Restaurant served Chinese and Western food and lasted until the 1980s; it still exists as Chinese Dumplings on St. Clair between Wychwood and Christie.

For fast food you could go to Queen’s Dairy on the north side of St. Clair by Humewood. Originally a gas station, Mike Colle says it became a “breakfast/hamburger joint” in the late 70s. He saw a video of Bono being interviewed there one day after U2 had played at the Maplewood Ballroom across the street.

Apparently that location is a good one for fast food; McDonald’s opened up right next door and outlasted Queen Dairy. (In fact, there was quite a fight over their application for a drive-through there. You can read about it here and here.

If you didn’t want a hamburger, you could walk further west and get Kentucky Fried Chicken at the corner of Hendrick Ave. and St. Clair.

Robert Ashley learned that it was “one of the busiest locations in Ontario” and that, along with the fact that McDonald’s was also thriving, influenced his decision to open his salon in our neighbourhood. Or you could stop off at Gerry’s Fast Food for a patty. Donovan Wong tells how his father, wanting to establish his business in a fresh area, conducted his own market research and found that St. Clair West was a good bet. That was back in 1977, and Gerry’s is still going strong!

In the early 1990s competition began to arrive. The pool hall Leonard Luksenberg remembers turned into Ferro in 1993.

Next came the Rushton across the street, previously the Di Maria Food Market, a beloved grocery store. Along with cafes such as Pain Perdu and Cocoalatte and other interesting stores, these restaurants “became anchors to bring people and businesses to the area” (Peter Mohan). In light of our wealth of choice, few will mourn the food desert that used to characterize our neighbourhood!