Category: Toronto

I recently read Connla Stoke’s “Once upon a time in a Hanoi café” and thoroughly enjoyed it. It transported me to a different time (and a different pace).

I’ve been walking more in Toronto recently, especially drawn to the strip-mall lands in the East end. On Friday, I ended up at Pho Metro at Warden and Lawrence where they made me a nice dark coffee with condensed milk. The next day I read Connla’s piece about Hanoi cafes. It got me thinking about my relationship with coffee, Vietnamese coffee, and the city of Toronto.

I first started drinking coffee back in 2010 when I was Felix. Somewhat like the Procrastinator in Connla’s story, I did it to while away my time. I had “figured out” my main project and it wasn’t mentally stimulating anymore. There was no “next thing” lined up for me, so… may as well start sitting around in cafes.

The big eye-opener cafe, the Platonic ideal for me, was a place called “The Communal Mule”. The coffee was tasty. The space was sparsely furnished with refurbished wood items, and it had enormous windows that let in lots of sunshine on chilly days. I would sit there and pretend to be someone confident, knowledgeable and mature.

The Communal Mule closed a few months after I discovered it. But that just kicked off my exploration of other cafes in the up-and-coming Dundas & Ossington neighbourhood.

My regular hangout ended up being a place called “Full of Beans“. What I liked was the solitude – whenever I’d come in, there might be a maximum of 3 other people there besides me. It had bookshelves filled with books I was never interested in. An active bean-roasting operation. Good coffee.

Sometimes there would be a musician hired to play to the patrons (all 3 of them) and I would feel obligated to keep up the performer’s spirits by clapping politely.

My girlfriend (now wife) would point out that “no other patrons” is a sign of ill health and that this place was likely to close soon. This was a sharp observation. But, somehow, Full of Beans is still open 16 years later¹…

Unlike Hanoi, Toronto is not a “sit down with your coffee and watch life go by” kind of place. The city is so sparse that the amount of life-per-square-kilometre is very low. Chances are: not much is happening outside the cafe.

No. Toronto is a “grab your coffee and walk” town. You’re more likely to encounter life when you roam around.

That’s what I did on my Friday walk. I grabbed my cà phê sữa to go, got an assorted meat banh-mi, put on DJ Mosko’s Rick Ross mix, and shuffled my stompers down Lawrence street. Here’s some of what I saw:

My favourite condensed-milk coffee in town is at Pho Xua at the far end of St. Clair West. When I first had it, I asked them if they’d forgotten the condensed milk. It was that dark. They said “no, it’s in there”, and as I drank… it began to taste like a deep thick chocolate drink. Like a Dark Heaven.

As I learn a little more about Vietnam’s coffee industry, I think that what I like about these coffees is the flavour of Robusta beans. The vast majority of cafes serve a completely different variety called Arabica. Most Robusta beans aren’t available at cafes – they’re used for instant coffee production.

Having Vietnamese coffee in Toronto is not an experience that stretches out time. That’s because the coffee served in restaurants – in a loud, hectic environment alongside food. It is either pre-mixed with condensed milk for you, or the phin sits on an opaque glass that hides the slow drips from you.

Before reading Connla’s piece this Saturday, it never occurred to me that watching the coffee drip is an “enforced pause” in your day. A meditative moment. Afterwards, I made up my mind to go to a Vietnamese cafe, request a coffee with a phin, then sit there and daydream while the coffee drips.

Today, on Sunday, I again found myself at a Vietnamese restaurant and had a serendipitous surprise.

I ordered a coffee. And, for the first time, it came with the full setup to enjoy that languorous drip:

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1. Jacob’s Grand Unified Cafe Theory dictates that no cafe in Toronto shall go bankrupt, unless due to some extreme transgression. Cafes are a rock-solid business here. Even during COVID, in the super-sleepy neighbourhood where I live, no cafes have closed. Even the absolute worst cafes are still open and operating.
   An example: after the pandemic, a new cafe opened and its proprietors immediately shut it down for a 1-month vacation. A ridiculous thing to do when you’ve just opened! That place survived. It is wildly successful. ↩︎

Note: this is the final part of my journey across Toronto on foot (Sept. 18, 2026). Read the pre-walk background here and what happened in the first half of the walk here before reading this post.

It’s a week after I crossed half of Toronto on foot, and it’s time to tackle the second half.

My body is fully healed for this more challenging part – according to Google Maps, it should theoretically be 2 hours longer than the previous walk (which took 9 hours). I’ll pick up where I left off (Union Station) and finish at the far East of town, the Zoo.

My main concern about today is the 4 hour stretch right up to the Zoo. I’ve been down there as a teen and remember that it’s unbelievably boring. A straight-line walk along a solid fence with no landmarks. I’ve chosen this route because of a certain place I just have to visit: the grandmama of all Chinese Malls.

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Note: This is my first day of crossing Toronto on foot. Sept. 11, 2026 . Start with the pre-walk background here and read what happened on the second day here.

It’s the first day of my walk across the entire width of Toronto.

I leave the apartment at 8:15am to a waiting taxi downstairs. It’ll take me to the starting point at Pearson International Airport.

We go through a set of mid-sized city streets and onto Highway 401 which bisects the North end of the city from East to West. The ride takes 45 minutes which is enough to get me ruminating. Will I be able to complete this cross-city walk? I keep thinking that “it takes two”: my crossing of the city also depends on whether the city wants it to happen.

My thoughts drift to how this is a solitary heroic quest. Except, in preparation, my wife bought me a nut mix to keep me energized. And she’ll take care of the kids. And she’d made plans to call throughout the day to make sure I’m safe. No matter what my lyin’ brain says: I am not doing this alone.

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Note: this is the pre-depature post for my walk across Toronto. You can follow the first half of the walk here and read what happened in the second half here.

I’ve lived in Toronto for the past 27 years. I love being “in the street” and have obsessively walked Toronto’s streets, back alleys, side alleys, front alleys and ravines like some sort of territorial dog.

So when I got the idea to cross all of Toronto on foot, it just made sense!

I’ve been inspired by Craig Mod’s TOKIO TŌKYŌ TOKYO, an ephemeral journal of his walk across the city of Tokyo. In September of 2026 the stars have finally aligned to make it happen.

I am writing this “pre walk” post two days before departure to give some background. The walk is called “A to Z” because I’ll be crossing the city between its two psychogeographical ends – going from the Airport to the Zoo. There will be tears, joy, endless monologues, blurry phone pics and snacks. And all that before I even step out of the apartment! 😁

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I got in this argument with my mother in February:

We live in Toronto. Toronto is a city that does one particular thing very well. It is great at delivering a liminal feeling.

There are vast open spaces in the Northern part. Sometimes, you’ll be waiting for the bus on a cold spring day (no bus shelter! Wind Central!). There will be some geese nearby, nipping at the anaemic grass. And you’ll look up into the big clear sky. And you’ll look down – no people on the street as far as the eye can see. Wow. Wide open.

Sure, there are people in the handful of cars on the road, or inside those middle-of-nowhere office buildings that are becoming economically unviable.

But you’re all alone. And you get that feeling of “nothing is going on here”.

Sometimes I get that feeling when I’m in Toronto’s wonderful ravine system. The city is criscrossed with streams that flow in semi-wild ravines. This setup does double duty as natural sanctuary and flood control system.

You’d listen to the burbling stream. Smell the flowering horse chestnut. Dodge the stinging nettle growing on both sides of the trail. And think, this is nature. I am nature.

And no people anywhere around.

One time, I asked the City, “can you maybe give me other feelings than this liminal vastness?”. Other cities can give excitement, or curiosity, or a feeling of connection with the past. Rome gives beauty – with ornate fountains on every corner, clear cool stream of drinkable water. Montreal gives edginess – groups of young guys, sometimes fighting each other shirts inverted from over the head look at that one go down. London gives hustle – everyone running as rapidly as they can, trying to afford their 10 pound burgers, every little empty nook getting filled through 2000 years of settlement, even in the little dead zones under the bridge someone is running a car mechanic shop.

Toronto just gives liminal.

It’s there on a Saturday in the underground PATH system that links all our downtown skyscrapers. All stores are closed. Just a few human beings clacking their shoes on beautiful echoing granite. 50% of those you’ll meet are security guards. Vast and totally abandoned. You could roll some kids through there on their scooters have a blast (I’ve done it, I know!)

Is it possible to have a city that is all “transit area” with no destinations?

Just endless inbetween, endless road. Flanked by purely logistical amenities for your neverending journey: a Wendy’s to take care of your hunger; Shoppers Drug Mart to get bandaids for your blistered feet; 7-11 to slake your thirst; H&M to buy the next pair of jeans to replace the last disposable pair that disintegrated right on the crotch¹.

When I had the argument with my mother she had just moved into the heart of downtown. Oh, how jealous I was! You see, I live in a Midtown neighbourhood that is frozen in the 1950s. Nothing ever happens. All businesses are closed on Mondays. And some, additionally, on Tuesdays.

I told her that she’ll probably have a great time in her new neighbourhood. Imagine, sitting outside at a cafe; people watching!

“Toronto isn’t Paris” was her sour response.

I get it. For years, she’d complained that we don’t have decent opera, quality orchestra performances or museums. That, not only are our cultural activities mediocre, they’re also overpriced. “All people do here is eat at restaurants and go shopping”.

Well, she’s not wrong. It’s hard to find anything that makes Toronto remarkable². But with an attitude like “It’s not Paris”, you may as well dig a neat little hole in the ground and get all dressed up and buy yourself a nice bouquet of flowers and gently lay down in that hole.

Sometimes you have to invent your own fun. Pretend. Lie to yourself.

Sometimes you have to make your own Paris. Right there in the hallway. In that transit area between life’s loading dock and some temporary storage area from which you can pass into the backstage (before you get on a long escalator to nowhere).

Yes, there are hardly any people in Toronto. Hardly anything to do.

My wife and I are always puzzled when we see a family of German tourists, or a visiting British couple.Why have you come? . “What could there possibly be here for that you haven’t already seen?”, we want to ask.

And yet.

I’d like to think that 2,200 years ago, some weary Gaullish traveller stopped on a mid-river island for a break. “This is neat” he thought to himself. Over there, between the trees, he could imagine a large cathedral. And there, a… a… big king’s palace that will be turned into a museum. And right there on the left, lots of people sitting at little tables, eating some sort of flaky baked good with cups of hot bitter liquid. Oh how wonderful. Magnifique.

And, right there, midway between someplace that mattered and anotherplace important. Right there in the ass-end of nowhere, he decided to make Paris.

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1. As I learned from the book “Ametora“, American lost its capacity to make the kind of denim fabric they had in the 1950s. All the jeans we wear are made of short-length inferior fibres, and that’s why our jeans disintegrate from sitting in an office chair, while great-grandpappy-Filipp’s jeans could survive the grueling work of a gold prospector out West. Japan is currently the place where they have the proper fabric and looms to make sturdy jeans. (Although, just because you see “Japan” on a store, it doesn’t mean that their jeans are hardy – I’m looking at you, Uniqlo) ↩︎
2. Except, unfortunately, the food is perhaps remarkable. Where else can you tear into sauce-soaked Ethiopian injera, have a deathly-spicy Tibetan tripe dish and drink Vietnamese coffee so friggin dark that I had to ask “where is the condesed milk” and they said “oh, it’s in there” and it just tasted like the deepest darkest chocolate. ↩︎

I am a fan of Toronto’s Asian malls be they thriving, declining or already gone.

So I was heartened to find my kindred spirits at the Dragon Centre Stories project.

Dragon Centre was Toronto’s first Asian mall, located at 23 Glen Watford Drive. It served as the nucleus of a Chinese community that grew around it in the Agincourt neighbourhood. The mall was in decline for many years as people started spending more time at the fantastic Pacific Mall.

Jane Law has a great writeup that includes some of the mall’s history and the racial tensions it sparked.

The mall shut down for redevelopment in 2019, but before it did, several people contributed their memories of the mall for you to read.

As of 2025 the mall is still standing, unused. The site has not been redeveloped into condominiums and it appears that the mall was sold in 2023.

Other declining malls

I really like Chinatown Centre mall, at Spadina and Dundas downtown. They put on a great cultural show for Chinese New Year, and it is a favourite for my family and I. The mall is in decline for an interesting set of reasons that are described in this Reddit thread.

Recently, a set of art-kids, goths and fashion designers have been breathing new life into this old mall (Doll Funeral and Level 1313 are particularly notable).

Another notable declining mall is Splendid China Mall, just south of the wonderful Pacific Mall. It is very clean but has few visitors. Here’s a writeup about Splendid China Mall from 2012 – things have gotten even sadder, but Graceful Vegetarian is a real winner and we make the trip to the mall just to eat there (you must get the “steamed vegetarian tender beef with turnips”. And the “deep fried Chinese bun” – fried steamed buns with condensed milk).

One popular spot that recently opened is Thai restaurant Koh Lipe.

Lately, I also noticed some unique stores popping up in the mall – selling flowers made out of metal wire and nylon fabric & a business run by a young woman who’s a wizard at growing unusual succulents and cacti (Sunshine Garden).

Do you have a favourite story from one of these malls? Please share in the comments!

Bonus from March 2026: if you like Chinese malls and Chinatowns, check out Morris Lum’s photography book “Tong Yan Gaai” (Chinatown).