The Original Guide to Toronto
North America’s fourth largest city has diverse neighbourhoods, a hot fusion food scene and quirky museums where themes run the gamut from shoes to ice hockey. Torontonian Alicia Miller takes us for a tour
05/03/2025
The Edible Woman is Margaret Attwood’s engaging first novel
Michael Cera as unlikely hero Scott Pilgrim (Allstar Universal Pictures)
Drake is a big fan of his home town (Getty)
Pre-trip culture checklist
READ: Toronto makes an appearance in novels by Canada’s pre-eminent author, Margaret Atwood, including her 1969 debut The Edible Woman. The proto-feminist tale follows young Marian as she loses touch with her former self following a marital engagement. Or try In the Skin of a Lion, Michael Ondaatje’s predecessor to The English Patient, set in the Toronto of the 1920s and ’30s.
WATCH: Cult favourite Scott Pilgrim vs. The World – a rare film set in Toronto – is a comic-book-inspired rom-com about a deadbeat musician who must fight off his girlfriend’s ‘seven evil exes’. Look out for icons such as opulent mansion Casa Loma, the city’s very own castle built by an eccentric financier.
LISTEN: Proud Torontonian Drake puts his home city, the 6ix, front and centre in his music, referencing the affluent Bridle Path neighbourhood, TTC subway and thoroughfares such as Queen Street West.
MidView room at the Ace Hotel, Toronto
A local’s view
“Toronto is one of the few large cities that’s not a massive tourist destination – so wherever you go, you’ll probably be surrounded by locals. I live Downtown in the Little Italy/Kensington area and the food scene is fantastic. A favourite is DaiLo, whose Chinese-French fusion tasting menu is sophisticated yet homely, as if it’s been cooked by your Chinese grandmother who’s also trained at the Cordon Bleu. It has a wonton like no other! The AGO building was designed by local-born Frank Gehry, and now we’re undergoing a big expansion of 40,000 square feet – but there’s so much other interesting architecture in Toronto to see, such as the Ace Hotel, by Brigitte Shim. It’s super understated, with a great use of materials – brick, steel, wood. Canadians know how to use softwood lumber really well. I also love the Toronto Reference Library – ugly from the outside but fantastic inside – and the Aga Khan Museum of Islamic art, which includes a beautiful garden. As for food and drink, try the Golden Lion (scotch, sesame, passionfruit) at Cocktail Bar on Dundas and the pistachio croissant at Emmer on Harbord. It’s absurd – like 1,200 calories. When you want to escape the city, I’d recommend going 90 minutes north to Creemore. It’s got a brewery and a great café with butter tarts. It feels as if you’re in rural Ontario, with great hiking nearby, but at the same time there’s a Michelin-starred restaurant called The Pine.
New view
Toronto is set upon the shores of one of North America’s rambling Great Lakes, and it’s only when you take to the waters that you can enjoy the city’s steel-and-glass horizon in all its glorious breadth. Hop on a ferry from the Downtown Harbourfront to Centre Island, just a 10-15-minute ride away, and get a first-rate skyline view fronted by glittering Lake Ontario. Once you’ve finished snapping pics, explore the seasonal amusement park grounds or sip a lager in the sunshine-drenched patio space of waterside Toronto Island BBQ & Beer Co.
The Royal Ontario Museum; Bata Shoe Museum (Philip Castleton)
Rainy day saviours
In a city where winter days regularly drop below freezing, there’s plenty to do inside if the weather’s meh. At central intersection Bloor Street West and Queens Park, a clutch of museums sit steps from each other; hop from the world-class Royal Ontario Museum, with its dinosaur bones and mummies, to the ceramics-focused Gardiner Museum and quirky-but-fascinating Bata Shoe Museum. Very nearby there’s also the Koerner Hall (for musical rapture), the 17th-floor Writers Room Bar – a former Margaret Atwood haunt – and the upmarket boutiques of Yorkville.
The museum is housed in a former bank dating back to the 19th century
Stained-glass dome in the Esso Great Hall
Goalie masks
The original hockey museum
Canada and ice hockey are synonymous, so little wonder Toronto is home to the official Hockey Hall of Fame, founded in 1945 and open to the public since 1961. As well as exhibits dedicated to star NHL players, replica dressing rooms and a full-size Zamboni (ice resurfacer) machine, it houses the ice hockey world’s most coveted prize: championship league trophy The Stanley Cup.
Bird’s-eye view
Soaring 553m high from top to toe, the CN Tower still remains – almost 50 years after it was built – the tallest freestanding structure in the Western Hemisphere. Every year millions of visitors stream up to its three window-lined observation decks to gaze down at the ant-like urban sprawl below, but only the bravest few step outdoors on the electrifying EdgeWalk. Strapped in a harness, you’ll shuffle along a narrow open-air walkway 116 storeys above the city rush before leaning over the verge.
Catherine Zeta-Jones and Renée Zellweger in Chicago (Landmark Miramax)
As seen on screen
As ‘Hollywood North’, Toronto frequently appears on screens, but typically as a stand-in for US cities – it played New York in Suits, Baltimore in The Shape of Water and Boston in Good Will Hunting. The Bay Adelaide West tower in the prim Financial District hosted the Pearson Specter Litt office in the aforementioned legal series – where protagonist Mike Ross fell for co-worker Rachel (played by a pre-Duchess Meghan Markle). The historic stone-fronted buildings of the University of Toronto’s campus doubled for Harvard in Damon-and-Affleck’s dramatic debut. As for the atmospherically cobbled Distillery District, now a hotspot for shops and restaurants? That was a star in the 2002 musical Chicago, which, despite its name, was entirely filmed in T.O.
Aquilegia in Toronto Botanical Gardens
Access all areas
From theatres such as the Princess of Wales to museums including the AGO, Toronto has upped its accessibility beyond ramps and lifts to include welcome support teams, relaxed hours for neurodiverse visitors and resources for the sight-impaired. For example, Toronto Botanical Gardens, a four-acre outdoor space with 17 themed gardens, has earplugs, headphones, sunglasses and fidget toys to borrow (book in advance).
The sensory six
The humble hot dog cart still rules Toronto’s street food scene (Getty)
The Drake Underground is one of the city’s top music venues
The world-famous peameal bacon sandwich from Carousel Bakery (Alamy)
Woodbine Beach on Lake Ontario (Adobe Stock)
The roof is open at the Rogers Centre (Adobe Stock)
This tiny historic house sits surrounded by skyscrapers in downtown Toronto (Alamy)
SMELL
Wafting from sidewalk carts, the aroma of sizzling hot dogs and sausages – what Torontonians affectionately call ‘street meat’ – fills the air outside Union Station. The array of DIY toppings, from raw onion to hot pickled peppers, is epic.
HEAR
Go see whoever’s on stage at the Drake Underground, a long-running intimate performance venue where everyone from Chromeo and La Roux to Broken Social Scene and Billie Eilish have performed.
TASTE
Peameal bacon is unsmoked, wet-cured, rolled in cornmeal and completely delicious. Try it in a peameal and mustard sandwich from Carousel Bakery in St Lawrence Market.
TOUCH
On a hot summer day, nothing beats stepping out onto sun-warmed sands in the Beaches, Toronto’s laidback, boutiquey eastern neighbourhood that’s popular with families.
SEE
Watch Toronto’s beloved baseball team, the Blue Jays, home-run to victory under cerulean skies at the Rogers Centre, the city’s downtown retractable roof stadium.
SIXTH SENSE
Victorian-era Mackenzie House, the living – and dying – place of Toronto’s first mayor, William Lyon Mackenzie, is said to be haunted. It’s now a museum, so why not pop in and decide for yourself?
Grey Gardens holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand award
The one thing
From Chinatown to Little Italy and the Entertainment District, Toronto’s a city with distinct neighbourhood flavour. If you choose just one area to visit, make it Queen Street West, where the indie shops and eateries of Queen Street West intersect the greenery of Trinity Bellwoods Park and the hipster hangouts of Ossington Ave. And if you eat in just one restaurant, make it Jen Agg’s new American smash hit Grey Gardens, where menus progress from venison carpaccio to pickerel yuzu kosho, via oysters and shrimp cocktail.
Suite at spanking new Nobu Toronto; Gladstone House, the city’s oldest hotel
Where to stay
Toronto has seen a recent influx of glossy new stays – the latest being a swanky Nobu Hotel, opening this spring – and the city is also home to the flagship of the Canadian-based Four Seasons brand. But for an only-in-Toronto experience book into the city’s oldest hotel, Gladstone House, a creative pad where bedrooms come with exposed brick and one-off art pieces. The buzzy restaurant has eclectic eats, hopping from steak tartare to Korean fried chicken wings, while live music and cocktail venue Melody Bar features a recently rediscovered 19th-century mural.
The Chicago Theatre dates back to 1921
Where next?
Fallen for Toronto? Chances are you’ll also love Chicago. With its turn-of-the-century skyscrapers, distinct cultural neighbourhoods, baseball obsession and waterside landscape – plus a similar climate ranging from frosty winters to hot summers – the two North American cities have plenty in common.
