As we make our way towards the Regal Heights Bistro on St. Clair just east of Dufferin, our car is slapped by the pouring rain that has caused that this part of Corso Italia has turned into a churning sea of gravel and dirt. The tearing up of St. Clair Avenue West for a streetcar track/road improvement works is still going on five years later, and we’re reduced to one lane. However, the traffic is light in this ugly weather, and we manage to park our car just across the street from the restaurant. Jogging along the cracked pavement and among the orange cones in this no-man’s-land, I look at the building where I the Regal Heights Bistro is supposed to be located. After a short look, I have to notice: “There’s no sign, there used to be a big sign, and it looks like a pub inside. I hope this is still the right place.” “Yep – Regal Heights Bistro,” my partner confirms, pointing at a tiny hand-lettered sign inside the front window, and we spot the trademark Jazz Brunch sign as well.

Just after we cross the threshold, a hostess is already waiting to seat us, and we can pick a place according to our preferences. At eight fifteen, most patrons are seated near the bar, with the whole restaurant being about a third full. “This is your first time here? Our sign blew down, and when we put it on a chalkboard, the rain washes it away.” “Today you are going to have lots of fun, there’s a birthday party and a jazz band is coming.” So now we are reassured we are indeed in the right place, although when I look around us, I can see more of a pub than an upscale bistro interior, with the smell of French fries in the air. Next we focus on our menus – a two-sided business that really disappoints my partner.

“I’m sure they’ve changed the menu,” he says in an unhappy voice. Maybe because he is an elitist jazz musician himself, he just doesn’t like the idea of a live band performing here tonight. The name of the restaurant is printed on the top of the menu. I read it again and again, just to make sure we are in the right place. Though I could find no website for the Bistro, and precious little online information other than bare-bones positive reviews, I did look up some posted menus: and these presented dishes like caprese salad, provencale escargots, chicken liver pate, smoked salmon crepes and black squid ink linguine. There is no menu necessary to tell me that the probability of a homemade black squid ink linguine coming out of this very kitchen is zero. When we look at the current menu, we can see it’s mostly typical pub food, if a bit gussied up by some unusual flavours and toppings.

When our hostess comes back and takes our order, I ask her what happened, that the menus are completely different from the information we found on the Internet. Different owner? “Oh no, it’s still the same ownership,” she replies reassuringly. “We haven’t done anything online in a long time. Our menu has been this way for the last couple of years, we’ve just gone through a lot of different chefs. But we always focus on fresh food: we shop daily, we cut the meat ourselves, we make our own burgers, we don’t use any microwaves… we just want the overall atmosphere to be more casual.” Though the pub is really casual, right down to the paper napkins, wall signage from around the globe points to a more sophisticated gastronomy.

“We shrink from that term gastro-pub,” she laughs, putting us at her ease with a charming, nice behaviour.

Read the rest of the story at our original own Regal Heights review.