Davenport, Toronto: The Food Lover’s Paradise

I’ve lived in Toronto’s west end for my entire adult life, and it feels like I married my high-school sweetheart. I’ve never lived anywhere else. I’ve never had a wandering eye. When I travel to another city, I find myself defending Toronto with a missionary zeal. Everyone here is trying hard to make the best something. 

That reverence doubles in my neck of the woods. Davenport, just northwest of the city’s downtown, is in the most interesting and complicated phase of neighbourhood evolution: mid-stage gentrification. In the 1970s, the CP rail corridor that cut through the area made it a logical home for the tradespeople, small manufacturers and mechanics that keep the city going. Much of that past is legible in the neighbourhood today, but over the past decade artists, restaurateurs and event organizers have turned Geary Avenue’s warehouse spaces and former body shops into creative studios, all types of food establishments and after-hours night spots.

Who the area serves changes by the hour. On weekday mornings, arts workers, cooks and the remaining industrial employees head out for the day, coffees in hand. By the late afternoon, patios swell with millennial parents kicking off the evening with a craft beer or a glass of natural wine. By night they’re replaced with diners leaving polished restaurants and party people spilling out of a small list of louche clubs to finish their last dances outside. It seems like every weekend there’s an art crawl, music festival or loud wedding that sends smiling—occasionally screaming—faces of all ages onto the sidewalks.

Yet off the main strip, where I live, the streets are peaceful and homey. A slew of sleek apartment buildings in development are looming but, otherwise, modest brick houses with tight setbacks and skinny lots provide a quiet antidote to city chaos. The homes—originally built as affordable worker housing—aren’t glamorous, but they’re deeply cared for. In summer, giant cucumbers and grapevines sag on trellises that sprawl from the backyards and, in late fall, homeowners brush every last leaf from the sidewalk. By winter, I imagine they head inside to hibernate, living off their spoils of homegrown vegetables and table wine.

Davenport’s most obvious draw is the rapidly evolving culinary scene. I call it the Treat District. Head out for a simple errand, and you’ll return with a bowl of golden pappardelle and a $15 pint of ice cream. Throw a stone in any direction and you’ll hit a world-class restaurant, bar or specialty food business. Ideally the stone lands near Amelia’s Market on Westmoreland. Named for the daughter of owners Aaron Brandolino and Andrea Thomas, Amelia’s is technically a specialty grocer but that category doesn’t do it justice. There’s a hot-lunch menu (the crusty jambon beurre sandwiches have a following), a deli counter full of house-cured charcuterie and Canadian cheeses, produce from nearby farms and a natural-ish wine program that sells bottles to go. 

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In the name of transparent journalism I’ll note that I worked at the first location of Paradise Grapevine on Bloor in 2020. Since then, Christian Davis and Dave Everitt have also opened a spot on Geary, pouring their own wines in the spacious bar and on the sunny patio next door, which turns into an outdoor dance party with a Mexican menu pop-up every weekend in the summer.

Most mornings, I need a full day of coffee to perform the structural work of holding me up. Contra Café is a bright, minimalist corner spot tucked into a tree-lined street—and it’s arguably kept me alive for years. Originally it was owned, renovated and operated by two renowned Toronto architects. They sold the business to their long-time baker, Zoe Atkinson, a pastry magician whose wand is a stick of butter. 

The treats don’t stop at the stomach. For the body, there’s Samantha McGrenaghan’s serene yoga space, The Yard, which is one of the only places where I can close my eyes and not immediately see the daily horrors of the news. For the brain, there’s Cooper Cole, a gallery that shows some of the city’s best visual art outside of major institutions. It occasionally stages work in its nearby storage locker, requiring a walk through the building’s clammy industrial corridors, past exposed pipes rattling with the hum of machinery that keeps it alive.

In this neighbourhood, there’s no need to hurry past the infrastructure to get to something shiny and new—the infrastructure is part of the fun. The boiler and the sculpture are in the same room. There’s conversation in the loading bay. Concrete is a garden. Right now, the old and the new are interlaced. What makes the neighbourhood cool is that it contains both.