The Rosedale Diner is sort of a neighbourhood date night place. That’s how I remember it, anyway, having taken a date there about a decade ago. It’s funny that I remember the Duck Confit more than the conversation, but perhaps not all that surprising. I had read Kitchen Confidential and Heat and was interested in trying more adventurous food, but didn’t quite know how to explain why that was important to me to the young lady. It didn’t work out.

As I’m sitting at the bar interviewing Gil Filar, it’s evident that it’s still a date night place. At a couple of the tables against the wall, there are couples out for a quiet Wednesday treat. At one table, there’s a father and daughter out on what might be a weekly tradition; she looks to be just about old enough to be visiting from university, and as befits the neighbourhood both of them are clad in Roots apparel. Rosedale changes less than just about any neighbourhood in the city.

The Rosedale Diner, however, has gone through substantial changes. I was alerted to them by Untappd, of all things. I checked something in and was alerted that they were a verified venue. I seemed to recall having seen a Steam Whistle sign, so that expense didn’t jibe with my impression. Imagine the pleasant surprise when one late September afternoon, I stopped in to have look at the place and found one of the best bottle selections in Toronto in addition to delicious burger on a quiet sunlit patio. I had questions and Gil was good enough to talk to me about it.

“It’s pretty much changed the business. My parents were used to the status quo for 20 years. We’ve been here 40, but they could predict to the dollar how a particular night was going to go.”

It’s not as though Gil’s aspiration growing up was to run a restaurant, but it is the family business. His parents, Israeli immigrants, opened the By the Way Cafe at Bloor and Howland back in 1979. It was a time before Toronto had much of a restaurant culture. People didn’t really go out to eat. Perhaps my first food memory is from Peter Oliver’s Bofinger just north of St. Clair on Yonge with the preparation tableside of caesar salad. That the Rosedale Diner has been open since I was born makes it something of an outlier. A lot of neighbourhood places, where they existed, were opened by immigrants. In Rosedale, at least, restaurateur was not a profession people aspired to; a restaurant was somewhere you took clients for lunch.

One of their earlier ventures was Lick’n’ Chicken.

“I worked here off and on. It’s the family business. My sister was a manager. I was a manager. I wasn’t a very good manager and I didn’t know much about the industry, so I left. I was going to open a bookstore bar cafe. I’m glad it didn’t work out because it would have failed … I got a job at Boxcar, and worked a lot of different locations. I was at the Riverside location, which has 12 taps and the people choosing the beer would rotate them. There was nothing I’d ever heard of.”

By the time that Gil had returned to the Rosedale Diner, he had widened his understanding of the restaurant industry. “I came back and I was like “Why?” My parents had been in the industry before it even existed. I remember looking at the chalkboard and we had Guinness and Corona. On tap we had Creemore and Steam Whistle. Left Field was on tap at that time, which I’d brought in a few years before, but it was the same one every time. Sunlight Park. Junction was always Conductor’s. So I started… I learned about Blood Brothers. I started expanding and changed what was on tap and realized it was too crowded. Finally, I would write to Bellwoods and they would respond, or I’d write to Halo and they’d say we’ve heard about your beer list. When it came to things like Half Hours on Earth, I had asked some friends who know beer “what are some great beers I’d never heard of?” These tasted incredibly different, and weren’t available anywhere. I ordered Control Bored and Yalla Yalla Citra. They didn’t seem to me like flavoured beer, but beers with flavour.”

A surprisingly juicy IPA from Badlands. My first experience with the brewery.

Gil is extraordinarily conscious of the competition. It’s not the local restaurants that his beer list is up against. It’s the LCBO’s flagship store and, to a much lesser extent, The Beer Store across the street on Scrivener Square. One of the guiding principles of The Rosedale Diner’s curation of their list is that nothing should be for sale across the street.

“I don’t go into that section very much, but when I do it’s to see what they have. Even the craft beer section over there for Toronto or Ontario is still big production. I started really loving how many companies felt the need to go through the LCBO anymore. There’s some exclusivity to it. I bring up Half Hours all the time because I feel like sort of an Ambassador for them. We’re changing it often enough that it doesn’t get stale.”

As of this writing, their menu is available on Untappd. The draught list is small, but well kept. There’s Dominion City, Bellwoods, Halcyon Barrel House, Blood Brothers, and, as something of a sop to tradition, Steam Whistle (by way of explanation he says “it’s for that customer who feels offended by the things they don’t know.”)

The Bottle and Can list features 82 items, including Cantillon and Tilquin, Burdock and Barncat, New Limburg and Bellwoods. By the looks of it, The Rosedale Diner could be keeping Half Hours on Earth in business single-handedly during this Canada Post strike. Untappd is unwieldy and in person, the menu takes on an improved significance. Gil has a master’s in creative writing and puts it to good use constantly refreshing the menu as products come and go in short categories that get the character of the beers across. The last page is a small glossary for the uninitiated. I can tell as he shows it off that playing with the typeface brings him joy.

The room is quiet for a Wednesday, but perched on a stool near the door, it’s clear that the regular crowd appreciates his presence. As Father and daughter finish their meal and get ready to file out into the crisp early November evening, he stops to comment on the Rouge River bottle he had with dinner. “It had a sort of autumnal flavour.”

Gil says “They’re coming out with an Autumn Pale Ale. I might bring that one in next.”

“Well, if it’s here,” says Dad, “I’ll drink it.”

The beer list isn’t the only thing that has changed. The menu has developed over the last year to display more eastern Mediterranean influence. “My parents thought ‘we’re a destination place. We can’t change.’ Well, we didn’t change, we just embraced who we were more.” In 1981, leaning into middle eastern food in Rosedale might have been meshuga, but with the popularity of Fat Pasha and Souk Tabule, there’s room to maneuver. The Israeli hummus is the best I’ve ever eaten, and although I’m no real expert, the texture is right, which goes a long way. The Salatim platter seems like it would please a crowd gathered to quaff just about anything. The menu features bold flavours like sumac and za’atar. The Shawarma Poutine and Pomegranate Pork Ribs (with date jalab syrup and pistachio dukkah) are examples of classic Canadian diner fare being reimagined through a specific lens.

For me, the Skhug Fries tell the tale. The fries are potato and onion and topped with garlic aioli, tahini, and a Yemeni hot sauce called Skhug. Yes, there’s heat, but it’s a complex heat that ranges from green and leafy to Ras el Hanout. Green chilis and cilantro, cumin, caraway, cardamom. Here is a compelling set of flavours that complement the Loirette from Brasserie La Pigeonnelle, itself like a less assertive Orval. Here’s a rarity: the cardamom settling into that phenolic spice that this French saison yeast produces, the earthy suggestion of brett playing off the cumin, the cilantro weaving through what I think might be a pear and pepper strisselspalt hop. It’s simple, but exciting.

Where else could these flavours come together but Toronto? This is what I want from this city. We have all of the cuisines of the world and we have fantastic beer, but we need to put the pieces together. As I’m developing material for a beer and food pairing class at George Brown, it’s something I think about more and more frequently. 

It’s the kind of thing that’s hard to know how to promote. “We’re a 40 year old restaurant. No one is paying attention. All the lists are focused on the best ‘new’ thing.” Gil says it matter of factly, as though it’s not being taken personally. The only reason I know about them is Untappd, and they’re trying that for a year. “We may not be great at reaching out, but we make sure the product is good. It’s about consistency and quality. With the beers, we’re working with businesses that care about their output. It’s just that simple.”

Father and daughter are probably halfway home by now. They’ve probably been coming there for years. Gil tells me about growing up in the restaurant and as I look through photos that sit on the bar displaying patrons from decades ago, it is the continuity that impresses upon me; how the pieces fit together. Food your parents grew up with, a selection of beverages that simply couldn’t have existed when they arrived here, a little flair for storytelling, and simply caring for people in the neighbourhood. That continuity of existence that keeps people coming back and enough change to make them look forward to that next visit.