With the current boom in restaurant openings taking up much of the commercial real estate in Toronto, it's no surprise that budding young chefs look for shortcuts to get their food to the masses. Obviously the global food truck craze has been well documented, but given the restrictions placed upon the meals-on-wheels industry in the city, the need for bricks-and-mortar is dire, and several notable food trucks have forged alliances with bars and restaurants around town that are in need of culinary talent.

Joining an already restaurant-rich scene at Dundas and Bathurst, this new cocktail bar looks to keep things interesting with a regularly rotating drink menu and a healthy dose of live music. With reasonable drink prices and slick (if minimalist) interior, this could be a popular place in the weeks ahead.

Read my review of Montauk in the bars section.

The cocktail has made a surge back into the mainstream in the last decade or so, and with particular speed in Toronto over the last two or three years. New specialty products are launched daily, an ever growing list of new and exciting bars continue to open and some even refer to bartenders as "mixologists" — everybody wants someone who cannot only execute a great drink, but also create an original one. Gone are the days when ordering a wine to accompany your meal seemed intimidating, it's now the cocktail that has certain mystique and lofty sophistication.

As the restaurant scene in Toronto evolves into something worthy of international acclaim, it seems that the rate of restaurant openings increases all the time. After Vancouver izakaya Guu opened its doors in 2009, there seemed to be a surge of Vancouver Japanese restaurants from the west coast following suit (Hapa and Kingyo, to name a few). Toronto was also sought after by New York's Michelin-starred chefs: David Chang, and his former boss Daniel Boulud both opened restaurants in top hotels in the city during 2012.

When it comes to quitting time after a hard night of service, a favourite order for many of the city's bartenders (aside from a massive pint of beer) is the classic Negroni cocktail. Refreshing, bittersweet, and containing plenty of booze, this drink has been soothing shattered nerves for years.

It is said to have been invented in the early 1900's by Italian aristocrat Count Camillo Negroni. As a regular customer at his local bar, his usual tipple was the hugely popular Americano (campari, vermouth and soda). After one day requesting that his bartender substitute his soda for gin, customers starting asking for the cocktail "the Negroni way."

A week after the Toronto final of the MadeWithLove cocktail competition (which drew angry accusations of bias and profiteering from the wonderful commenters on this fair website), popular Kensington bar Cold Tea, in conjunction with neighbouring delicatessen Thomas Lavers, hosted its own competition, with a somewhat more altruistic motive: to raise as much money as possible for the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation. All bartenders worked for free, and donated 100% of their tips to the charity.