The windshield wipers of our car are attempting to slap away the pouring rain that’s turned this part of Corso Italia into a spot full of gravel and mud, as we make our way towards the Regal Heights Bistro on St. Clair, just east of Dufferin. The tearing up of St. Clair Avenue West for a streetcar track/road improvement project is still going strong five years later, and we’re reduced to one lane. However, the traffic is light in this ugly weather, and we can to park our car just across the street from the bistro. 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 right place.” “Yep – Regal Heights Bistro,” says my partner and points at the small hand-lettered sign at the front window. Just after that, we notice there is 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 wish. At eight fifteen, the restaurant is about a third full, with most patrons seated near the bar area. “Is this your first time here? The wind blew down our sign, and the new chalkboard one was washed away by the rain.” “Today you are in for a treat, we have a birthday celebration and a jazz band, it will be fun!” She reassures us that this is indeed the place we were looking for – though the interior looks more like in a pub than in an upscale bistro, and we can smell French fries in the air. We focus on the menu and my partner is disappointed at the two-sided affair we’re presented with.
“They must’ve changed their menu,” he notes with a sad face. Maybe since he is an elitist jazz musician himself, he just doesn’t like the idea of a live band playing here tonight. I re-read the restaurant name written at the top of the menu just to make a hundred percent sure we are in the right place. The Bistro doesn’t have any internet pages (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. I don’t need a menu to tell me that no homemade black squid ink linguine is coming out of this place. When we look at the current offer, we can see it’s mostly typical pub food, if a bit gussied up by some unusual flavours and toppings.
Our hostess comes back to note our order and I note that the menus are very different from what we found online – what happened? Different owner? “Oh no, it’s still the same ownership,” she answers reassuringly. “We haven’t done anything on the website in a long time. Our menu has been this way for the last couple of years, we’ve just gone through a lot of various chefs. Our focus is always on fresh food; we shop every day, we cut our own meat, we prepare our own burgers, there’s no microwaves…we just wish to have more of a casual dining feel.” Though the place is definitely 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, pleasant manner.
See the rest of the story at our original restaurant writeup.
