Dufferin Grove ranked one of the coolest neighbourhoods in the world

Dufferin Grove may call to mind a park across the street from a mall for most Torontonians, but the surrounding neighbourhood by the same name has just been called one of the world’s coolest by Time Out. 

Dufferin Grove falls at #39 out of 50 of the coolest neighbourhoods in the world, just behind Montreal’s Petite Italie at #37 and Prague’s Karlin.

Other neighbourhoods on the list include Highland Park in Los Angeles, Peckham in London and Hayes Valley in San Francisco, with Embajadores in Madrid taking the top spot. 

Restaurant SoSo Food Club and brewery Burdock are shouted out by the travel advisors, who cite a tight-knit community as the source of the neighbourhood’s vibrancy. 

Parks, Duff Grove included, are also noted as a hub for community life in the city. While the park can be the setting for some, ahem, eccentric behaviour, Dufferin Grove is simultaneously home to public fire pits as well as music and theatre performances. 

For those not that familiar, Dufferin Grove is technically bordered by Dufferin, Ossington, Bloor and Dundas West.

Here are the complete rankings:

• 1. Embajadores, Madrid
• 2. Euljiro, Seoul
• 3. Nueva Villa de Aburra, Medellin
• 4. Metaxourgeio, Athens
• 5. Princípe Real, Lisbon
• 6. Strasbourg-Saint-Denis, Paris
• 7. Neukölln, Berlin
• 8. Yanaka, Tokyo
• 9. Highland Park, Los Angeles
• 10. Fitzroy, Melbourne
• 11. Peckham, London
• 12. Noord, Amsterdam
• 13. Ancoats, Manchester
• 14. Enmore, Sydney
• 15. Bandra West, Mumbai
• 16. Shuk HaPishpeshim, Tel Aviv-Jaffa
• 17. West Village, New York
• 18. West Loop, Chicago
• 19. Tangba Jie, Chengdu
• 20. Osu, Accra
• 21. City Bowl District, Cape Town
• 22. Sant Antoni, Barcelona
• 23. Monti, Rome
• 24. Leith, Edinburgh
• 25. Hornstull, Stockholm
• 26. Sololaki, Tbilisi
• 27. Phibsboro, Dublin
• 28. Botafogo, Rio de Janeiro
• 29. Former French Concession, Shanghai
• 30. Roma, Mexico City
• 31. Cedofeita, Porto
• 32. Prawirotaman, Yogyakarta
• 33. Wynwood, Miami
• 34. Hayes Valley, San Francisco
• 35. Wan Chai, Hong Kong
• 36. Ari, Bangkok
• 37. Petite Italie, Montreal
• 38. Karlín, Prague
• 39. Dufferin Grove, Toronto
• 40. Central District, Seattle
• 41. Palermo Soho, Buenos Aires
• 42. Damansara Heights, Kuala Lumpur
• 43. Kadıköy, Istanbul
• 44. Tanjong Pagar, Singapore
• 45. Kitay-Gorod, Moscow
• 46. Langstrasse, Zurich
• 47. Safdarjung Enclave, New Delhi
• 48. South End, Boston
• 49. Sanlitun, Beijing
• 50. Dubai Marina and Jumeirah Beach Residence, Dubai

The list was compiled by local Time Out editors, city experts, and a global survey of 15,000 people.