Dear reader,
It was around a decade ago that the term “power lunch” last appeared in the pages of Toronto Life. In March of 2014, we listed the top five restaurants “for draining an afternoon—and an expense account.” These included the Chase, Canoe, Drake One Fifty (RIP), Woods (RIP) and Reds (RIP). You can see a pattern forming. Then, in late 2015, we called Cactus Club, still fresh on the scene at the time, the new “power lunch hot spot.” These days, the First Canadian Place resto-lounge is less always be closing, more rosé all day, its Instagram account resembling an appreciation page for the bar’s frozen peach bellini.
In 2016, the script flipped, and we ran a feature on the downtown core’s best takeout lunches—places where some of the city’s top chefs were now slinging upscale sandwiches instead of porterhouse steaks. Cory Vitiello had launched Flock, a rotisserie chicken chain; Barberian’s opened TLP, a neighbouring lunch counter selling steak on a bun; the Chase tried takeout with Little Fin, a fast-casual fish-and-chips spot; and chef Rob Bragagnolo started Carver, an offshoot of his popular restaurant Marben, serving roast-dinner lunches with all the fixings but in clam-shell containers. These may have been the opposite of sad desk lunches, but we were still eating them hunched over keyboards. Gone were the three-martini midday meals; everyone was too busy hustling. And that’s the way it remained until Covid came and shut it all down entirely, effectively sticking a fork in the Financial District and the restaurants that fed its workers.
But now the core is making a comeback, with fancy new restaurants sprouting up for the white collars who have steadily trickled back into their cubicles after years of working from home. And the power lunch is making a triumphant return: restaurants are bringing back indulgent midday feasts—we’re talking five-course meals with wine pairings and tableside-carved pithivier (think beef Wellington but with bigger energy). Either dinner has gotten so expensive that a leisurely lunch is the new splurge, or we’re all just going down swinging. In this week’s Table Talk, we spoke to the people behind five of these new lunch menus to see what they have to say about the city’s hunger for something better than brown-bagged sandwiches.
Also in this week’s newsletter: chef Eric Chong’s favourite places to eat in Oakville. And what’s on the menu at Arianna, Harbour 60’s new Italian sister restaurant and cocktail lounge.
For more of our food-and-drink coverage, visit torontolife.com or subscribe to our print edition.
