Toronto restaurant forced to shut down after TTC workers mistakenly cut off water
A Toronto restaurant's water was completely cut off during service because of TTC track work construction.
Jules Bistro was suddenly unable to wash dishes, use the washrooms, make ice or serve coffee at 9:30 p.m. on Nov. 17 when the water main on Queen West was damaged while TTC track work was being completed.
While the restaurant had already been plagued by the construction happening just outside their door, they had no idea the water service was being cut off. The only explanation Jules Bistro owner David Piltz got was an email sent to him a by a friend living across the street.
The email was sent to Candy Factory Loft residents, and advised that a water shut down was scheduled for the area starting at 5 a.m. to complete repairs, and that the work was supposed to take six to 12 hours to complete.
"I called City Hall, BIA and city councillor," Piltz tells blogTO. "They are not sure if they will have it back in service today."
It's been a bad start to the week for the French restaurant that's had a string of bad luck recently. They were also just broken into on Monday morning at 4:30 a.m. The culprits broke the front door window, making away with just two iPads.
"Lockdown, break-in, lockdown, capacity restrictions, monitoring vaccination, streetcar rail replacement and another break-in and iPads stolen," read the caption to an Instagram post the restaurant made on Monday, photos showing the broken glass door and construction-throttled street.
Repairs to the window cost the restaurant about $2,500, and Piltz estimates about 15 hours of his time were eaten up waiting for the glass repair service and searching for replacement iPads. Apple and Best Buy were sold out, forcing him to fall back on last generation iPads from Staples.
"The thief's got only expensive paper weights and nice iPad stands," says Piltz. "I rendered the units useless remotely."
Piltz says Jules has also been victimized by a new payment process scam.
"I have had two different people come in to pay for items on credit card and input information prompting the terminal to have the merchant's access card," says Piltz.
"It's an attempt to have charges refunded to put into the perpetrator's bank account."
Many restaurants have been the victim of break-ins, construction woes and payment scams as they've also been dealing with a difficult period of lockdowns and coming out of them, but it's a bummer to hear this Toronto restaurant is experiencing pretty much all of those issues at the same time.
Hopefully things turn around for them soon, and in the meantime, you can support this local business by heading in for some cote de boeuf and a bottle of wine.
Hector Vasquez
