Toronto felt a little bit like an episode of the Twilight Zone. No, not the one where all the streets have trams in them, or the one about the really freaking tall concrete structure that they charge $27 to let you go up (though those were both good), but the one where everybody disappeared.

Now, I should mention that we showed up in Toronto on Easter Sunday. Apparently that’s a popular time to sit at home and close your restaurant/pub/whatever. I honestly had no idea. About three-quarters of all the fine cantinas and trattorias we walked past were closed that night, though we wound up getting dinner and drinking a pretty decent pale ale at some pub that called itself the Firkin (I think in the general vicinity of University and Queen Street, but I don’t remember for sure. Let Google be your guide), and then hanging out at a jazz lounge called The Rex on Queen Street where the music was good and the beer was local. Neither establishment was even remotely full, though The Rex wasn’t bad for a Sunday night, I guess. Also, we saw lots of technially-dressed nineteen-year-olds (the temperature was about freezing), which served as a good reminder of Ontario’s drinking age.

The next day was just as strange though. We took lunch at the awesomely-named C’est What? down by the waterfront (craft brews = victory. I recommend this place enthusiastically.) — totally deserted. Around 11 PM we went out to the not-remarkable but not-bad Ben Wick’s out in Cabbagetown, and we were literally the only people in the place. It was seriously weird. They were open, and the bartender/waiter did a reasonable job of paying attention to us without always hovering over us (he gave us the hard sell on a South African shiraz, but it turned out to be really excellent, so I’ll forgive him), so it certainly wasn’t a bad experience, but I fail to understand how Toronto can be so empty.

By contrast, I recently wanted to go out for a drink here in Cambridge with about 5 friends at 9 on a Tuesday night. There was no place at Central Square we could get a table. We wound up walking back to campus and hanging out at one of the student-run dives. Cambridge may in fact have the busiest (weeknight) bars in the world, but it still makes seeing an empty bar weird.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 3rd, 2008 at 6:27 pm and is filed under Bar, Review, Traveling.