Bar and restaurant coming soon to Toronto is 'an ode to Buffalo'
A Toronto couple with impressive resumes on the city's hospitality scene are about to open a brand new bar inspired by their shared love for good food, great beer, and Buffalo, New York, of all places.
To be completely transparent, my experience with Buffalo is, more or less, limited to quick trips over the border to shop at Target and Trader Joe's (in simpler times, anyway), and the odd occasion where I find myself at a sports bar during a Bills game. Oh, and Buffalo wings, of course.
For Allen Meredith and Mallory Bey, however, Buffalo plays a starring role in their love story, which is why, this week, they're opening a new neighbourhood bar that Meredith's old team at True History Brewing have described as "an ode to Buffalo."
It's an awkward time to launch a business that loudly declares your love for a south-of-the-border city, sure, but, on the other hand, better to make the treasure trove that is Buffalo culture available in Canada, rather than setting a course for Peace Bridge, right?
Local hospitality vets through and through, Meredith and Bey (or, as they're affectionately referred to, Al and Mal), met while Meredith was working in the kitchen at Enoteca Sociale and Bey was a bartender at Bellwoods.
Over the course of their relationship, they moved from a Dundas West apartment that Bey describes as "janky" to her grandparents' former home at Park Lawn and Queensway, less than a kilometre from where their new venture, The Elmwood, will soon open its doors.
"We desperately missed having a local place to have a snack and a pint, so we figured we had to do it ourselves. We searched for a place for a while and finally found this place 800 metres from our home," Bey tells blogTO.
The product of their efforts, The Elmwood, combines Bey and Meredith's shared passion for neighbourhood pubs (their first date was spent playing pool and day drinking pitchers at Monarch Tavern) and Buffalo, where they'd spent many a day off.
"We love hanging out in Toronto, but on our days off when we were dating, we hopped in my car and drove to Buffalo to drink amazing beer and sit at petinaed bars and chat with locals," Bey says.
It was the warmth of Buffalo's food and drink culture that really stood out to the couple.
"There's nothing pretentious about it," Bey says. "Some places have phenomenal beer lists and delicious food, but a welcoming atmosphere and a lot of crazy crap on the walls."
It's just the sort of place that, upon moving to Etobicoke, Meredith and Bey yearned for, and they believe that it'll appeal to their friends and neighbours in the community who "just want a good product, good conversation, and a place to watch sports." I'm inclined to agree with them.
Still, The Elmwood isn't a Buffalo theme bar, per se, despite it getting its name from the prominent Buffalo Street. It's its own thing, inspired by the friendliness of the Buffalo bar scene, with a handful of subtle nods to the U.S. city if you know where to look.
It's also got wings. Lots of wings.
"That's what we want to be known for, and it's been 10o per cent of Al's focus in the past little while," Bey explains.
Taking inspiration from some Buffalo standouts, even having fellow chef friends run recipe and development missions down south and meeting with a prominent Buffalo restaurateur to pick his brain, Meredith has settled on four to five sauce flavours that'll kick off The Elmwood's menu.
But not to fear, Canadian cuisine is also getting its fair share of the limelight.
"We're also really jazzed about our Montreal-style hot dogs, which are toastés with classic 'all dress' toppings," Bey says. "We really had to scour the supermarkets for the Quebec-style bun, but Allen has really nailed it."
It's hard to accurately capture, Bey tells blogTO, just how passionate she and Meredith are about the concept of the neighbourhood bar, but it's a theme that's being emulated in neighbourhoods around the city.
The divisions between great food and a comfortable atmosphere are continually eroding as more seasoned chefs opt to open the types of establishments they actually enjoy going to, and, for Bey and Meredith, it's a Buffalo bar that serves cold beer and hot wings.
"It's the classic trope of people who work in fine dining who just want to be somewhere super casual and on our days off," Bey says. "For us, eating wings in an establishment that feels and looks like it's been there for 50-plus years in Buffalo is our favourite thing."
The Elmwood is officially open for business as of 3 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 11.
The Elmwood
