Before Toronto’s first post-Prohibition cocktail bars could serve whisky in April 1947, officials, fearing a breakdown of law and order without proper lighting, suggested bars install one 60-watt bulb per 14 square feet. If a lounge was within 200 feet of a church, school, university, or other cultural institution, lighting rules did not apply — it was simply lights out for cocktails. Period.
The Barclay Hotel’s Elbow Room, an L-shaped lounge with chocolate walls and tan leatherette banquettes, opened on 1 April 1947, with bartender Ted Sadler serving the era’s first drink. The following day, Club Norman and the Silver Rail opened their doors. More venues soon followed. Like Sadler, they too endured regular lectures from officials who condemned cocktail lounges as the devil’s invention — then promptly ordered a Whisky Sour. Meanwhile, hardware stores that stocked light bulbs were delighted.
In 1953, Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker visited the Silver Rail to watch a Rocky Marciano fight on a small black-and-white TV while on break from their Massey Hall set. After weathering the troubled 1980s, there was no silver lining; this last of the first classic cocktail bars ultimately closed in 1998. A landlord-tenant dispute delivered the final knockout blow. Whisky still thrived in pubs, their rank measured by how many whiskies lined the back-bar.
In 2009, when a small community of bartenders sparked a revival, light bulbs were no longer regulated. Instead, they were turning on above the heads of people like Jen Agg, Dave Mitton, Sandy De Almeida, Frankie Solarik, Mike Webster, Robin Goodfellow, Rob Montgomery, and many more. This resurgence was powered by classic, spirit-forward cocktails, traditional technique, innovation, and a focus on flavour, which nowadays sees countless venues welcoming imbibers. Today’s Toronto ranks among the world’s top cocktail destinations, boasting spots like Bar Pompette, Cocktail Bar, Bar Ravel, Mother, Bar Mordecai, Bar Chef, and Simpl Things. Visiting Toronto soon? Discover its many world-class bars — far too many to list. Your taste buds will thank you.
Bar Mini
1118 Queen St E.
Toronto, ON M4M 1K9
Although this 18-seat establishment is small, the flavours from its bar and kitchen are enormous. As its name signals, this isn’t a spot with hundreds of whiskies. Instead, the team has curated a whisky list for fun, creative cocktails without posh prices. Their amari selection, including bar manager Ethan Mann’s barrel-aged root-beer amaro, impresses. The cocktail menu shifts away from whisky during warmer months, and while whisky is on summer vacation, general manager Jacob Perry and Ethan will freestyle a whisky-forward cocktail to start the evening. They stir or shake whisky into something delicious while keeping the price mini.
Co-owners and chefs Maty Gignac and David Still complement the cocktails with compact 1970s-inspired plates from a postage-stamp-sized kitchen. Delivering flavours that exceed the sum of their parts, Dave, Maty, Ethan, Jacob, Lydia, and Jenna are like a family, and Bar Mini is their living room, where people drop by for a bite and a drink before heading elsewhere. But, after that first sip, you’ll know this is where you’re meant to be.
Le Tigre
1060 Yonge St. 2nd Floor
Toronto, ON M4W 2L4
Toronto’s Paul Hahn & Co, one of Canada’s oldest piano stores, opened in 1913. Here, specialists restore and sell heritage pianos, including Steinway grands — the gold standard, distinguished for their harmonically rich, resonant sound and tonal colour. Moving upstairs, Le Tigre, a funky pink bar where everything takes on a rosy hue, looks like it stepped out of a time machine into 1984 Miami, with an impressive back-bar of rare whiskies.
Le Tigre transposes the Steinway standard onto its cocktail menu, which also features lavish Martinis. This standard carries through a process where talented bartenders, together with owners Rob Granicolo, Stephen Gouzopoulos, and beverage director Andrew Foster, collaboratively test and adjust each cocktail. Starting from an initial recipe, they methodically taste, refine flavours, balance components, and perfect presentation before finalising each drink for the menu. For example, the House Money is a cocktail on island time, projecting a soundboard of flavour with Canadian rye, Fernet, Drambuie, white rum, coconut bitters, and other ingredients. Each element finely tunes the cocktail’s profile, making it one of the city’s best Old Fashioned-inspired drinks.
Compton Ave
1282 Dundas St W.
Toronto, ON M6J 1X7
The centrepiece of Frankie Solarik’s back-bar at Compton Ave is Heinrich Hollpein’s Portrait of a Lady in Black. Hollpein, renowned for his mastery of colour and dramatic contrasts between light and shadow, brought a dynamic, poetic quality to his art. This painting complements the bar: on either side, dark wood shelves hold spirits, house-made bitters, infusions, and syrups, ingredients for cocktails as colourful and poetic as Hollpein’s canvases, and showcasing similar technical mastery. Chandeliers illuminate the deep burgundy walls and dark brown, tufted leather sofas. This British-inspired bar channels the spirit of London’s Compton Avenue, with Frankie Solarik’s signature culinary approach to drinks. Alongside an impressive whisky list, Gianluca Passuello, director of beverage, and the rest of the members of the team curate a balanced menu of Martinis, classic cocktails, carbonated, nitrous, and contemporary drinks.
The Caledonian
856 College St. Toronto, ON M6H 1A2
www.thecaledonian.ca
The Caledonian is Toronto’s whisky headquarters and a sanctuary for distillers, whisky lovers, and brand ambassadors alike. As Canada’s first on-trade Ardbeg Embassy, David and Donna Wolff have curated a whisky list featuring more than 600 single malts, over 50 of which are Ardbegs. The Ardbeg selection, possibly the world’s largest accessible to the public, includes bottles dating from 1965 to the present. Enthusiasts often call from abroad to confirm rare Ardbeg expressions are available before travelling.
Donna and David collaborate with distilleries and whisky companies, such as Gordon & MacPhail, sourcing
single-cask samples for tastings with 60–70 customers, who then vote to select bottles for release exclusively at the Caledonian. This is a spot where you can order your bucket-list dream flights of drams, but whisky-forward cocktails showcase the range of these drams. Order a Highland Champagne Cocktail — Glenmorangie Original, Aperol, and bubbly — and call it a palate cleanser for the drams to follow. Toronto’s Last Straw Distillery creates exclusive vodka, gin, rum, and rye whiskies for the Caledonian, which uses them in other mixed drinks and cocktails to wash down the best Scottish fare in the city.
Bar Etc
1036 Gerrard St E. Toronto, ON M4M 1Z5
www.baretc.ca
The west-facing wall of Lee Stein’s and Sasha Siegel’s gorgeous East End bar curves up to the ceiling, while the east wall remains traditionally angular, creating a geometrically pleasing visual, as the curve flows above the bar to meet the same endpoint on the other. Siegel applies the same aesthetic to cocktail ingredients, whimsically interpreting classic cocktails while preserving their foundations. Is he a brilliant geometrician? Assuredly yes, if one considers how he applies the relationships of points, lines, angles, and surfaces of ingredients to create and balance flavours with each spirit, including whisky.
Without being a tiki bar, the duo focuses on tropical ingredients minus the Hawaiian shirt. A star-studded cocktail menu features an impressive range of modern techniques, with many ingredients made in-house. Pineapple and mango find their way into the mix, and so do savoury, bitter, pickled, and woody flavours from that tropical spectrum. Siegel’s treatment of sweetness can be described with a bartender’s dryness. A Boulevardier is made with Canadian whisky, house-made pandan, and gentian liqueur, and a host of other supporting ingredients, garnished with strawberry shortbread. The Oaxaca Old Fashioned uses Tequila instead of whisky but is rich with whiskyisms and amontillado sherry, black cardamom, and mole bitters, described on the menu as, “James Brown on an off-day level of funk.” But to those who know, The Funk is about hitting the one, which is what this bar does with every drink.
Suite 115
532 College St.Toronto, ON M6G 1A6
www.suite115.ca
College Street was originally a private, tree-lined avenue known as “College Avenue”. It served as a private entrance to what is now the University of Toronto, functioning as an exclusive, landscaped drive. Today, that landscape has grown into a major commercial street, where this essential speakeasy-style bar stands tall among the city’s best bars and restaurants. Oliver Leung and Jacky Ha, along with their crew of bartenders, work behind a 40-foot bar divided into two 20-foot sections that mirror each other. This includes a 40-foot back-bar, with one quarter dedicated to whisky.
The aesthetic, from the colour palette to the lighting, is all structured around clean lines to frame the beautiful cocktails. The Old Man takes the classic concept of an Old Fashioned and spins it into a revolutionary tipple made with Hong Kong milk tea and neutral spirit. The Brown Butter Boulevardier, made with Bearface Canadian whisky, vies for the city’s best.
Library Bar
100 Front St W. Toronto, ON M5J 1E3
Located in the Royal York Hotel, the Library Bar opened in 1972, making it one of the city’s longest-operating cocktail bars, despite brief interludes for renovations. As if plucked from a time capsule, the room’s lavish and elegant appearance is complete with all the art deco trimmings. Canadian literature and a back-bar filled with whiskies garnish shelves, while a portrait of the city’s second chief librarian, George Locke, hangs above the mantel. Locke promoted literacy at the turn of the 20th century. Today, the director of beverage, James Grant, infuses every cocktail with a story.
The Library Bar is rooted in Toronto history, so the cocktail menu follows a literary theme. Menus change, most recently inspired by Michael Ondaatje’s In the Skin of a Lion, in which the team built cocktails that tell a story about Ontario and Toronto, with a focus on Canadian spirits, many of them whiskies. Grant is a storyteller, but instead of ink, he writes with a medium much more delicious. The bar is also famous for its Birdbath Martini, made with a proprietary gin and vodka called Quill, distilled locally at Dillon’s.
C Suite
126A Cumberland St. Toronto, ON M5R 1A6
This stylish cocktail bar in Toronto’s chic Yorkville neighbourhood is the closest you’ll get to travelling without moving. Designed to evoke the feeling of boarding the Orient Express club car from Paris to Istanbul, the long, narrow room is decorated with comfortable, gold-framed, royal blue chairs, ambient lighting, and Prohibition-era tiles. Maison Fayard French potato chips and Ontario sparkling wine are served complimentary to welcome guests. Elegance continues at the bar, where director Albert Han has deliberately curated a luxurious cocktail menu of classically structured drinks elevated with refined touches.
Han and his cohort, Fei, aim to serve cocktails that sincerely connect with guests. The duo have great respect for whisky, believing the best experience is sitting at the bar and having it made into a whisky-forward cocktail on the spot. Tell them your preferences, and they’ll form a story by layering different whiskies to match your flavour liking, then enhance those flavours with many bitters, cordials, and vermouths made in-house with fresh ingredients sourced daily. Macallan single malt flights and a large selection of whiskies are available to toast a pair of bartenders who understand whisky as an art.
Civil Liberties
878 Bloor St W. Toronto, ON M6G 1M5
There are many discoveries and firsts that changed the game we all play. The first antibiotic, the first flight, the first democracy in ancient Greece: They all share a common thread with Civil Liberties. If you’re flying into Toronto and want to visit a bar where the power is vested in the people, they make a delicious riff on a Penicillin with the Scotch whisky of your choosing. A cocktail bar with an impressive whisky list, Civil Liberties opened in 2015 without a cocktail menu — a first for Toronto.
Every cocktail is bespoke, customised to your preferences. Simply tell the bartender what you’re into, and they will make something that exceeds your expectations, using many harmonising in-house-made ingredients. It has the ethos of a fancy dive bar. Come as you are, and expect your whisky preference to be elevated.
