Among the vintage shops and mom ’n’ pop grocers of Kensington Market, one of the city’s most anticipated restaurants of the spring is set to open this weekend. At El Rey Mezcal Bar, there will be a well-curated list of mezcal, along with Mexican bar bites made from meat and produce mostly sourced from the neighbourhood – there will not be a taco in sight.
The name Grant van Gameren, the popular chef behind bars Raval and Isabel, will bring patrons in, but it will be the efforts of his unique team that will determine whether a refined bar experience can succeed in the stubbornly bohemian market. For them it’s a second chance, an opportunity to see if they can accomplish in Toronto what they couldn’t do at home in Quebec.
The chefs Julio Guajardo and Kate Chomyshyn created a buzz in Montreal four years ago when they opened La Catrina Paletas, their summertime business making the frozen Mexican treats. When they couldn’t produce paletas fast enough, they enlisted the help of Myles Harrison and Vanessa Payne, friends who also worked in food and lived in the same Saint-Henri neighbourhood.
Together, their grand plan had been to spin off La Catrina into a full-fledged Mexican restaurant. But after a few years, “it wasn’t going anywhere. It didn’t work out with our investor,” Ms. Chomyshyn says.
While they loved the French-forward cuisine and wine culture of their city, they were finding it difficult to find an audience for, say, guacamaya, a chicharron sandwich that originates in Mr. Guajardo’s hometown of Leon.
In Toronto, meanwhile, Mr. van Gameren was devising a new place to showcase his current obsession, mezcal, and partner with Owen Walker, who came to master the bar program at Bar Isabel over three years.
With the chef’s plan for the kitchen still in flux, his wife Sunny Stone insisted he reach out to good friends from her time cooking at Le Comptoir in Montreal: Mr. Guajardo and Ms. Chomyshyn. So in April, 2015, they flew to Montreal for a single afternoon. At the couple’s flat in Saint-Henri they prepared their vision of a Mexican-inspired tasting menu, with Mr. Harrison and Ms. Payne offering wine and cocktail pairings.
Mr. van Gameren eventually offered them a chance to realize a version of their stalled Mexican concept – in Toronto.
By October, they were here, picking up work at Raval and Isabel or with friends of Mr. van Gameren who were in need of cooks, while El Rey took shape.
“It was a pretty big leap of faith, to be honest,” Mr. Harrison says. He and Ms. Payne saved as much money as they could before moving from their flat in Montreal, with 14-foot ceilings and two balconies, to a basement apartment at College and Ossington, while Mr. Guajardo and Ms. Chomyshyn settled a block over on Dovercourt Road.
Toronto has slowly worked its charm on the transplants. Mr. Guajardo and Ms. Chomyshyn have taken to the Latin American feel of Kensington Market. “French was hard for me,” Mr. Guajardo says. “Being able to speak Spanish in the stores is great.”
“It was tough for them to trust me, to move to Toronto, and for me not to be this guy who’s going to screw them over,” Mr. van Gameren says.
He is aware that the high-design aesthetic of his College Street restaurants, and their attendant prices, can’t be simply transposed to an area such as Kensington. How the bar fares in the next few months will set the tone for others looking to set up in the market. Jen Agg, Mr. van Gameren’s former partner at the Black Hoof, is opening a place in the neighbourhood later this year as well.
“Kensington doesn’t want anything too fancy,” he says. “That’s the beauty of it: We have to marry the ideals of us and the community.
El Rey Mezcal Bar, 2A Kensington Ave., elreybar.com
