Restaurant Reviews Toronto: Regal Heights Bistro

As our car approaches the Regal Heights Bistro on St. Clair just east of Dufferin, the windshield wipers slap at driving rain that's turned this stretch of Corso Italia into a churning sea of gravel and mud. The streetcar track/road improvement work on St. Clair Avenue West is still not finished, limiting the traffic to one lane. Fortunately it looks like everybody else stayed at home in this bad weather, so the traffic is light and we find a parking spot just across the street from our restaurant. Crossing the no-man's-land of cracked pavement and orange cones, I gaze at the building I believe to be the Regal Heights Bistro. "There's no sign, there used to be a big sign, and it looks like a pub inside," I observe 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 see the trademark Jazz Brunch sign as well.

Just after we cross the threshold, a hostess is already waiting to seat us, and we may pick a table according to our preferences. It is quarter past eight and only around a third of the tables is full, most patrons sitting near the bar. "Is this your first time here? The wind blew down our sign, and the new chalkboard one was washed away by the rain." "Tonight you are in for a treat, we have a birthday party and a jazz band, it will be fun!" So now we are reassured we are indeed in the right place, though 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. We examine the menu and my partner is disappointed at the two-sided thing we're presented with.

"They must've changed their menu," he observes with a sad face. Maybe since he is an elitist jazz musician himself, he just doesn't like the idea of a live band performing here tonight. The name of the restaurant is written on the top of the menu. I check it again and again, just to make certain we are in the right place. The Bistro doesn't have any website (at least I couldn't find any) and the only information available on the internet I found were some really great reviews and a few posted menus including meals such as caprese salad, provencale escargots, chicken liver pate, smoked salmon crepes and black squid ink linguine. There is no menu needed to tell me that the chance of a homemade black squid ink linguine coming out of this very place is zero. But now the offer consists of typical pub food, improved with some unusual ingredients and toppings, but still - pub food stays pub food.

Our hostess comes back to take our order and I observe that the menus are very different from what we found online – what happened? Different owner? "Oh no, it's still the same ownership," she replies reassuringly. "The website hasn't been updated in a long time. Our menu hasn't altered for the last couple of years, just our chefs have been changing a lot. But our most important focus is always on the food to be fresh: we shop every day, the meat is cut here by us, the burgers are made here too, you won't find any microwaves in the kitchen... we just want the atmosphere to be more casual." Although the restaurant is really casual, right down to the paper napkins, wall signage from around the world points to a more sophisticated gastronomy.

"Well, we are shrinking from that term gastro-pub," our hostess smiles and we are put at her ease with a charming, friendly manner.

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