The too-little-known history of one of Toronto's first Black-owned restaurants

Two former Toronto Argonauts, a jazz musician and a burgeoning Black entrepreneur walk into a vacant space at the intersection of Bloor and Sherbourne. What happens next would go on to shape the city's culinary culture for generations to come.

In today's Toronto, with its dazzling mosaic of cultural cuisines available in nearly every neighbourhood at any time of day, it's easy to forget that things in the city haven't always been this way.

Moreover, it was real people pursuing their dreams who paved the path through history that helped shape today's local cultural landscape.

When it comes to Black-owned restaurants in the city, the credit for getting the ball rolling goes squarely to The Underground Railroad Restaurant, which operated for 20 years through the '70s and '80s.

It's a little-known history for those outside of Toronto's Black community, but one not soon forgotten by those who experienced the restaurant in its heyday.

 

 

 

 

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The restaurant was a joint venture between a seemingly unlikely group of four: American-born Toronto Argonauts players John Henry Jackson and Dave Mann, jazz musician Archie Alleyne (a Toronto native) and Howard Berkley Matthews, an entrepreneur who, at age 12, immigrated to Toronto from St. Kitts.

In 1969, just five years after the last racially segregated school in Ontario closed down, The Underground Railroad Restaurant officially opened its doors. It was an instant hit.

The Underground Railroad Restaurant is largely credited with introducing Southern soul food to the Toronto culinary scene, with a menu populated by staples like Southern fried chicken, gumbo, cod fish cakes and hush puppies.

Inside, music was always playing, while an all-Black staff team served scores of adoring customers from all walks of life.

In a 2016 article by Order of Canada recipient and past-president of the Ontario Black History Society, author Rosemary Sadlier writes, "It was a destination, a rendezvous, a concert, a slice of the black experience, all through the inspiration of a few good men..."

After a decade, the restaurant's popularity prompted Jackson, Mann, Alleyne and Matthews to move The Underground Railroad to a bigger and better location, settling in at 225 King St. E.  for another nine years.

During its storied run,  the restaurant not only served as a cultural hub for the city's Black community, but according to Heritage Toronto, it also welcomed its fair share of A-List visitors, including (but not limited to): Miles Davis, Mick Jagger, Bob Dylan, B.B. King, Stevie Wonder, Magic Johnson, Sugar Ray Leonard and Bishop Desmond Tutu.

It's not often that you can rub elbows with the greatest boxer or most acclaimed jazz musician of all time while you dig into ham hocks, but at The Underground Railroad, it was possible. It even felt... normal.

The restaurant was lauded for its warm, casual atmosphere, the sort of place where no one's a VIP and, ipso facto, everyone is. 

In 1981, Jackson bought his partners out of the restaurant, becoming the sole owner, before the restaurant was forced to close its King West location in 1988. After a brief reopening in 1989, the restaurant eventually closed for good.

Today, The Underground Railroad Restaurant is remembered with a heritage plaque, installed outside the restaurant's first location at 406 Bloor St. E., and in Toronto's still-vibrant soul food culture, which it paved the way for.

Nowadays, local legends like Harlem's Carl Cassell and Jerome Robinson, better known by his moniker and the name of his restaurant, The Heartbreak Chef and Chanée and Jason, the duo behind Mississauga's Honey Soul Food, are all among those carrying the flame.

And though the southern soul food options in Toronto today are decidedly more limited than those in, well, the American South, The Underground Railroad Restaurant did more than simply introduce the city's residents to hush puppies and gumbo: it paved the way for the scores of subsequent Black entrepreneurs that would play a pivotal role in shaping Toronto's culinary culture for years to come.

That's something worth knowing about.