Riley's Fish & Steak
Riley's Fish & Steak is the long-anticipated Toronto location of a Michelin-recommended Vancouver chophouse by Glowbal Restaurant Group, the same team behind Black + Blue Steakhouse.
Taking over the space that most recently housed The Shore Club, Riley's Fish & Steak breathes new life into the chophouse genre, which has long suffered accusations of staleness.
At Riley's, everything is vibrant, and beyond the desire to appeal to the equally colourful clientele around the city's bustling Entertainment District, there's a good reason for that.
Riley's Fish & Steak is a deeply personal project for the team at Glowbal. The restaurant got its name from Chef Sean Riley, one of Glowbal's five partners, who passed away from cancer in late 2024.
"Sean Riley was my apprentice, my chef de cuisine, my chef de partie, my executive chef, and he's never left my side until he got sick and passed away," Glowbal CEO and President Emad Yacoub tells blogTO.
"When he got sick, my other partner and I wanted to honour his name, so we made sure to name the restaurant after him."
With a Michelin recommendation for the original Vancouver location and a breathtaking new sister in the heart of Toronto's Entertainment District, Riley's is an honourable tribute, indeed.
Doing away with the cold formality one might expect from restaurants of a similar calibre, Riley's, despite being situated on a 9,000-square-foot plot, feels decidedly intimate. The ceilings aren't so high that your conversations get lost in them. The chairs are wide, plush and heavy, ripe for sinking into as your food coma announces itself.
In the main dining room, plantlife cascades from the ceiling (a compliment to the line of trees that quietly partition the space), while local musical talent performs on a central stage nightly.
It's dramatic, sure; the mirrored bar and its amber lights arc all the way to the ceiling, while checkerboard floor tiles in the bar area stir nostalgia for the white-glove steakhouses of yesteryear, but it's all intentional.
The drama doesn't cap out with the restaurant's interiors, though. In fact, some form of theatrical element is present in around half of the items on the menu. But I'll get to that. First, let's talk about the bread.
As someone who eats for a living, very few dishes tend to make me blush. When the Riley's sourdough ($19) was set down on my table, however, the response was involuntary.
A beautiful bundle of sourdough topped with parmesan and garlic butter would be enough to make me happy, but the addition of melty cream cheese baked into the bread is downright knee-buckling. It almost feels sinful to eat, but it's too good to deprive yourself of.
Remember what I was saying about drama? The jumbo prawn cocktail ($29) is the perfect primer for the show that's to come.
Eschewing the old-school shrimp-in-a-martini-glass trope, these gargantuan (I mean, the size of your hand, seriously) prawns are served atop a bed of dry ice that releases a cascade of mist.
Upping the ante even further, Riley's menu features a selection of dishes prepared tableside, like a salt-baked Chilean sea bass served with mussels in a saffron and fennel white wine nage atop forbidden rice.
The dome of salt is cracked by your server, the tender, glossy filet unwrapped and assembled right before your very eyes. It almost taps into childhood feelings of wonder while unwrapping a birthday gift. I'm not sure how many kids are dying to receive poached Chilean sea bass for their birthday, but, as an adult, I most certainly wouldn't complain.
The real king of Riley's tableside offerings, though, is the lobster pot pie ($154).
The pie, comprised of root vegetables and two whole lobsters, arrives baked in a deep stock pot, before your server embarks on the hypnotizing journey of assembling it for you.
One by one, the ingredients of the pie are removed from the pot and placed atop the crust. Then, butter, St. Remy brandy and cream are flambéed in a saucepan and drizzled over the whole vibrant bundle.
At the end of the day, it remains a deeply approachable meal. The familiar flavours of chicken pot pie are elevated with lobster tails and St. Remy, yet it still feels undeniably luxurious.
Some dishes are so dazzling that they require none of the pomp and circumstance to stand out. The whole roasted chicken ($85) is undeniably one of them.
A hefty 3.5-pound chicken arrives perfectly golden and glossy, presented to the table whole before getting broken down in the kitchen for easier eating. It can easily feed four people, likely with leftovers, if you can find it within yourself to stop going in for more.
Stuffed with brioche and foie gras, it's exceedingly juicy and tender, drizzled with Madeira jus to cut through the richness.
As a lifelong orderer of roast chicken at restaurants (an unpopular opinion, I know) I'm planting my flag proudly now: this has to be one of the best roast chickens in the city.
For how attention-grabbing the mains are, it may be easy to overlook the desserts, but you'd be making a grave error if you didn't save room for something sweet.
The banana tart is truly one of a kind, using bananas and whey to create a custard-style filling poured into a slightly salty graham cracker crust. It's garnished with bananas foster on one side, vanilla bean chantilly on the other, and a caramel sauce to seal the deal.
If, like most Toronto residents, banana pudding and smash burgers were your go-to meal in 2024, perhaps it's time to up the ante with a banana tart and one of Riley's selection of Canadian Prime steaks. It's 2026, after all, I'm sure you've grown.
When it comes to drinks, Riley's has it all figured out, too. A tableside martini cart makes its way around the room, mixing the drinks up to your preference in personal-sized cocktail shakers that, unfortunately, you don't get to take home with you (trust me, I asked).
As people in Toronto grow increasingly aware of how they spend their disposable income and time — two things that feel increasingly hard to come by and thus impossibly valuable lately — choosing where you spend them is more important than ever.
Riley's seems to actually, genuinely understand that.
It's not a cheap night out, to be sure, but it's an experience that won't leave you feeling like you got pick-pocketed. From the friendly and engaged hospitality to the breathtaking interiors and food that hits the mark every time, it's the sort of place that respects its diners, and I, for one, am already looking to book my next reservation.
Riley's is located at 155 Wellington St. W.
Fareen Karim
