Bampot Bohemian House of Tea & Board Games is soon to open on Harbord in the cottage-style house that was once Parentbooks. Inspired by the traditions of Czech tea houses, this new spot just wants to be recognized as a laid-back hangout. Enticing people to settle in, the cafe will stock a collection of 150+ board games accessible for a $5 cover (potentially discounted with food orders).
Behind the project are husband and wife team, Andrea and Mark Heins Newell, ex-burlesque dancers taking a first foray into food service. Their indiegogo campaign to raise capital didn't quite hit its target, but the couple notes that producing the video pitch helped solidify the concept.
The niche drink list will centre around house-blended, loose leaf teas available to stay or for home brewing. An accompanying food menu aims to keep things simple and affordable offering snacks, salads, soups, and one meatless main -- likely a daily curry bowl.
The cozy 30-seat room is slated to open by mid-April, though there's potential to double capacity once the back rooms are renovated. Those with 'lax afternoons should note that the tea house plans to operate from 11am to 11pm every day but Tuesday.
Midday meal options are now a little richer in midtown thanks to this 3-month old dim sum parlour. The menu runs the gamut of bite-sized steamed and fried specialties featuring dumplings, buns, pancakes and seafood selections.
With their low, tranquil lighting, menu of relaxing treatments, and music that's heavier than the average on the pan flutes, you might expect spas to crack down completely on atmosphere-ruining smartphone chatter. But even in spots that pride themselves on being mini-getaways from the outside world, many folks are still reluctant (to the point of being irritating) to leave their beloved mobile devices behind. 
Have style, will travel: Toronto finally has its very own fashion boutique on wheels. 
A store with a similar concept, 
The most serene spots in Toronto aren't necessarily the quietest spots -- if that was the case, the PATH on a weekend would probably take the prize. But given that there's always been a weather-ly connotation to the term, one imagines the most serene places in the city as those where you can sit for a while with no distractions, and where there's something to look at that's calming and peaceful: you know, a work of art, body of water, or just something pretty.
Toronto Food Events rounds up the most delicious events, festivals, pop-ups, winemaker dinners, supper clubs and other food related happenings in Toronto this week and next. You can find us here every Friday morning.
Touring an empty hotel is like visiting an abandoned city, where everyone from the ditch diggers to the mayor have downed tools and fled the scene. On the day I preview the 
The last empty hotel I got to visit in this melancholy state wasn't nearly as posh as the Sutton Place. The old 
There are well over a hundred hotel rooms full of furniture set up for the sale, with beds made, closets with spare sheets, a TV and a coffee maker in place as if waiting for guests that will never come. The dominant colour scheme is beige and comfy brown; the dominant style fixed firmly somewhere back in the '90s, before midcentury and minimal conquered every hotel and condo showroom.
Most of the auction is aimed at people in the hospitality industry, so if you need several identical suites of bedroom furniture with linens, a hundred dinner plates, several dozen creamers or multiple stacks of hard-wearing dining room chairs, this is the place to go. In one hallway near the ground floor kitchens I came across drifts of those folding trestles used by waiters and room service. In an office off the hallway there was a stack of a dozen boxed mirrorballs, with two opened spares on the top.
There are more glamourous items, to be sure - the ballroom chandeliers, valued at $25,000 and rumoured to be made from cut Bohemian crystal, are for sale, as is every light fixture in the place, each wall sconce and chandelier ranging in size from Frisbee to picnic table tagged for sale. There's a baby grand sitting by the check-in desk, antique furniture in the bigger rooms, and several fireplace mantles in the suites and boardrooms. There's also a boardroom table, if you're in the market for one.
In the housekeeping offices there are rows of Electrolux vacuum cleaners and a room full of employee uniforms. One desk is covered in calculators, another in telephones, with a server room nearby, its expensive hardware likely to go for a song. But as I'm led deeper into the basement, and then up to the mechanical rooms on the top floor, the real meaning of "everything must go" becomes clear.
In a vast laundry room there's a wall of industrial driers, and three huge washing machines, each larger than the last. On another wall, there's a machine that will take mounds of just-dried tablecloths and sheets in one side and spit them out at the other end, stacked and folded. It's hard to imagine that there are a lot of people who'll be in the market for machinery this specialized.
Bits of essential building infrastructure like lights and machinery are sold with the condition that buyers will have to wait until everything else has been emptied out before they can be claimed, with a month's deadline until the wreckers move in. Similarly the bathroom fixtures - toilets and bathtubs and the thick slabs of marble that marked the Sutton Place as a luxury hotel - are all for sale, with the condition that licensed workmen have to do the work taking them out.
Up on the top floor, rooms full of more machinery are tagged and ready for bids - parts of the HVAC, electrical and fire systems, but one major item isn't for sale. Behind a thicket of pipes is a huge cylindrical water tank, meant to gravity feed the sprinkler system in case the city water mains are cut during a major fire. That's never happened, so my guide speculates that the tank is probably still full or water from the hotel's opening in 1967. 
I pause to take in the view from what was Stop 33, the hotel's top floor eatery, taking in the city past Queen's Park to U of T and beyond. With nothing to obstruct it, it's easy to see why the building was ripe for 
This is where one of the hotel's most famous guests stayed, back when 
Exactly 60 years ago this Sunday, Toronto mayor Allan Lamport and Ontario premier Leslie Frost gripped a ceremonial lever in front of an eager crowd at Davisville station. When they pushed it forward, a subway signal set up for the gathered photographers changed from red to green. The Yonge line, Canada's first subway, was officially complete. 
Conceived as one of a pair of subway lines, 
By digging a relatively shallow 7.4 km trench and covering it with heavy wooden planking, the city was able to keep Yonge street and its busy streetcars running while construction continued below. Dynamite blasts, pile drivers, backhoes, and shovels dislodged and removed some 1.3 million cubic metres of soil and rock in a winding strip from Union to Eglinton Avenue.
Sadly, black and white pictures of the era rob the Yonge line of its original vibrant aesthetic. 
The subway platforms, free from any embellishment due to financial constraints, were 
Six decades after that first run, the Yonge line is still the busiest public transit route in the country. Without an outlet valve in the coming decades, it will remain so. In 1954, building the first subway the city so badly needed wasn't without difficulty or money concerns.
The first train heads north to Eglinton
A TTC employee prepares to let the first members of the public onto the subway.
A TTC guide directs a woman at Bloor station.
Kids on the first public subway ride.
A group of women pay their fares.
Crowds at the turnstile on opening day.
Hundreds gathered outside Davisville station for the opening ceremony.
Dignitaries aboard the first train
King station shortly before the completion of the subway
Bloor station before widening and the arrival of the Bloor-Danforth line
A new animated series says Rob Ford isn't a mayor, "he's a cartoon character." Using actual audio from Ford's most famous press conferences and amnight out in Etobicoke (somehow they managed to animate the nonsensical Steak Queen incident) non-profit group 
This taco joint has been around in Toronto since the 1980s, serving up DIY platters and other giant portions of Mexican eats near St. Clair and Dufferin. This is the type of place to go when you've been craving meat, as there's really no holding back on either the portion sizes or the various combinations of ingredients for their most popular spreads. 
A new nightclub that specializes in elite bottle service has taken over the space formerly occupied by Footwork. Look for a young and monied crowd, the resurgence of the cosmo (really), and some racy talk in the washroom area. In other words, this place is pretty fun.
Earth Hour takes place between 8:30 and 9:30pm in Toronto this Saturday, March 29th. While the event has only marginal environmental benefit on a practical scale -- last year the city 
The best French toast in Toronto is a staple on brunch menus citywide, appealing to sweet tooths looking to satisfy morning cravings with eggy bread and our most prized and essential local commodity, maple syrup. This is a breakfast dish so classic, it's no wonder that kitchens like to get inventive with combinations of fruit, candies, creams, and even duck confit.
Weekend events in Toronto is our guide to events happening this Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Here's what's happening in Toronto this March 28-30, 2014.
We are spoiled for choice when it comes to landmarks in Toronto. The biggest and most famous of them all, the CN Tower, edges in to view like a giant bony finger pointed to the sky in all but the furthest corners of the city. At the equivalent to 147 stories, it's impossible to miss downtown. 
James Worts was raised on the fertile plains of Suffolk in southeast England. For about 18 years, he owned and operated Kirtley Mill, one of hundreds of grain mills in the region, near the town of Bungay on the winding River Waveney. In 1818, Worts married Elizabeth Gooderham and started a business partnership with her brother, William Gooderham, who would later become the other half of Toronto's famous distilling company.
As such, Worts' windmill became a popular focal point for artists who sketched and painted early York. Set among scrubby brush close to the shore of the lake, it's distinctive shape is visible in the background of 
William Gooderham ran the company on his own for several years and later brought in Worts' son James Gooderham Worts. The pair were certainly not the first to try distilling - there were at least five distillers operating in the early years of the windmill, including William Arthur - but by 1837 they had built a small still and produced their first batch of whiskey.
The location of the windmill is marked in white.
Schnitzels, perogies and goulash are staple comfort foods, and this year-old eatery on Steeles is one of the best sources of this deep-fried dish in the GTA. Smack on the border of the 905/416, this takeout counter does everything from the classic Wiener Schnitzel to fusion versions of the dish that are surprising and delicious.
The rain has washed the snow away and sunny days are coming soon, but festival season is still a long way away, so you'll be stuck dancing indoors at the clubs and warehouses for a little while longer. March's 
