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Restaurant Write-ups: Regal Heights Bistro in Toronto

24th November, 2009 - Posted by health news - No Comments

As our car approaches the Regal Heights Bistro on St. Clair just east of Dufferin, the windshield wipers slap at pouring rain that’s changed this stretch of Corso Italia into a churning sea of gravel and muck. The St. Clair Avenue West is currently in the middle of the streetcar track/road improvement project, reduced to one lane only. However, the traffic is easy in this bad weather, and we manage to park our car just across the street from the bistro. First we have to cross the no-man’s-land of cracked pavement and orange cones, and then I can finally look at the building where I think the Regal Heights Bistro is housed. “There’s no sign, there used to be a big sign, and it looks like a pub inside,” I notice uneasily. “I hope this is still the same place.” “Yep – Regal Heights Bistro,” my partner confirms, pointing at a little hand-lettered sign inside the front window, and we notice the trademark Jazz Brunch sign as well.

No sooner do we cross the threshold than a hostess is waiting to seat us, offering a choice of any table we pick. At eight fifteen, the place is about a third full, with most patrons seated near the bar area. “This is your first time here? Our sign blew down, and when we put it on a chalkboard, the rain washes it away.” “Tonight you are in for a treat, we have a birthday celebration and a jazz band, it will be fun!” So now we are reassured we are indeed in the right place, although when I look around us, I can see more of a pub than an upscale bistro interior, with the smell of French fries in the air. Next we focus on our menus – a two-sided affair that quite disappoints my partner.

“They must’ve changed their menu,” he notes with a sad face. Maybe as an elitist jazz musician himself, he is just uncomfortable about the prospect of a live band. I have to check the restaurant name written at the top of the menu again and again, so that I am completely certain we really are where we want to be. I tried to look up the restaurant’s website but I couldn’t find any, and the only internet information available was a few bare-bones positive reviews. But I found some posted menus with meals like caprese salad, provencale escargots, chicken liver pate, smoked salmon crepes and black squid ink linguine. But no homemade black squid ink linguine is coming out of this kitchen, and I really don’t need a menu to tell me that. But now the offer consists of typical pub food, improved with some special flavours and toppings, but still – pub food stays pub food.

Our hostess comes back to take our order so that I can ask – what happened? The actual menu is completely different from what we found online. Different ownership? “Oh no, same ownership,” she reassures us. “Well, we haven’t updated the website in a long time, our menu has been this way for the last few years. Only the chefs have been changing a lot here. But we always focus on fresh food: we shop daily, we cut the meat ourselves, we prepare our own burgers, we don’t use any microwaves… we just want the overall atmosphere to be more easy.” Although the whole pub is definitely casual, including the paper napkins, when I look at the wall signage from around the world, I would still expect a little more sophisticated offer.

“We shrink from that term gastro-pub,” she laughs, putting us at her ease with a charming, pleasant manner.

Want to read the rest of the story? Here you can find the whole Regal Heights Bistro write-up.