Before Baba, the Corner at Yonge and Woburn Was a Drugstore for Decades
At the back of the room at 3204 Yonge Street there's a steel-doored vault, and its walls are covered in disposable-camera photos. The shots show the owners' friends, family and regulars. Baba's founders date the vault to the 1920s and built it into the restaurant on purpose. Its practical job is support for service. Its other job is to be what the owners call a memory wall.
Baba opened on August 24, 2026, at the northwest corner of Yonge and Woburn Avenue, a short walk north of Lawrence. Most coverage calls it a Lawrence Park spot. For anyone on Lytton Park's streets heading toward Yonge and Lawrence, it's a corner they have walked past for years. Toronto's old city directories show what that corner usually was: somewhere you went during the day. Baba is the first tenant in that record to stay open for the evening as well.
The 1930 edition of Might's Greater Toronto city directory lists Orville P. Watson, a druggist with a pharmacy degree, at 2600 Yonge, "also 3204 Yonge." Each store had its own phone number on the old HUdson exchange. The same directory's list of drugstores puts him at both addresses.
Twenty years later the corner was still selling medicine, under different names. Here is the record for this one address:
Taken across nearly a century, the uses are prescriptions, frozen yogurt and salads. All of them are daytime purchases, made on the way to or from something else. Anyone can read the full directory text on archive.org for 1930, 1950 and 1955, and searching "3204 Yonge" brings the entries up.
The closest look at how the City treated this corner comes from 2019. Municipal Licensing and Standards had refused a boulevard café permit at 3204 Yonge, which covers outdoor seating along the Woburn Avenue side of the building. The refusal went to North York Community Council, and on November 5, 2019, council overturned it and approved the café. The approval came with one condition: no alcohol could be served in the boulevard area. The file includes correspondence from Menchie's Frozen Yogurt at Yonge and Lawrence. The council minutes are public under item NY10.16.
So in 2019 the corner got outdoor seating approved, on the understanding that the seating would stay alcohol-free. That condition fit a tenant selling frozen yogurt.
The next tenant left in mid-2026. Stephanie Dickison's OPEN/CLOSED restaurant column for August 20 to 26, 2026 reported the end of Chop Hop's flagship at Yonge and Lawrence, with Baba moving in. Her October 1 to 7 column adds that Chop Hop still runs downtown locations at Commerce Court and First Canadian Place.
Michael Medeiros and Kevin Chen met almost ten years ago while working at One Hazelton. Medeiros later worked in Australia, then came back to Toronto as executive chef at Lyla, with Chen as his executive sous-chef. In January, Chen told Medeiros he was leaving to start his own project and wanted Medeiros in on it. As Toronto Life reported, they found 3204 Yonge in the spring and opened after a renovation of seven and a half weeks. "We ended up loving the community, the venue and everything that came with it. So we decided to pull the trigger very quickly," Medeiros told the magazine.
Earlier tenants were daytime businesses. Baba is designed as two businesses in one room, a day café and an evening snack bar. Medeiros described the idea to Streets of Toronto:
"We want Baba to feel familiar from the first visit…a place where people can stop in during the day and return at night for a completely different energy."
The kitchen equipment follows the same split. Toronto entertainment blogger Mr. Will Wong reported a flat-top grill for daytime brunch and a charcoal grill for the evening menu. The name comes from the word for father. Medeiros calls it "an homage to the men who raised us in the industry."
Hours and policies from Baba's website:
The room is small, with seating for 37 to 40 and a seven-seat bar. Cocktails cost no more than $20, and the largest plates run about $40 to $45. With no reservations and a room that size, timing matters more than booking. Weekend brunch and Saturday evenings have the most competition for the bar seats. Sunday nights are closed.
Much of what's on the table comes from Toronto suppliers. Coffee is from Library Coffee, a micro-roaster that recently ranked No. 54 on The World's 100 Best Coffee Shops list. Bread is from Tre Mari Bakery. Chocolate from Moakable, a bean-to-bar maker, goes into a coffee-marinated striploin and a dessert.
Daytime dishes include coffee-marinated steak and eggs and a pastrami sandwich based on one Medeiros used to eat with his father every other week. The kitchen grinds its own meat for burgers and makes its own pastrami and pickles. At night the best-known dish is a mapo bolognese, made with slow-braised sauce and house-made rice tofu noodles. Charcoal-grilled skewers anchor the snack menu.
Nick Hao of Uh Bar designed the drinks. The list includes a gin gimlet with St-Germain, tomato and yuzu; a banana-and-coffee paloma; and the Baba Negroni, made with fig leaf and mole bitters. Hao also wrote a mocktail menu, so non-drinkers get the same attention in the evening.
Two months after opening, Baba was No. 8 on Foodism's October 23, 2026 list of the 21 best new restaurants and bars in Toronto. According to Toronto Life, the owners' main goal is to become part of the neighborhood and offer the "old-school hospitality" that builds a base of regulars.
The 1930 directory also points south. Watson's first listed store was at 2600 Yonge, between Eglinton and Lawrence on the stretch that runs along Lytton Park's eastern edge. Almost next door, at 2610 Yonge, Circles and Squares Bakery & Café has been reported as the next tenant of the former Club Monaco space. Watson's two corners show that this part of Yonge has supported everyday walk-in businesses at both ends for a long time. At the Woburn end, the corner that sold prescriptions in 1930 now also has an evening crowd.
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