The New Restaurant In Forest Hill Village Isn't New To The Neighbourhood

Walk north on Spadina Road past St. Clair on a Tuesday night and you will notice the same storefronts you noticed five years ago. Pizza Banfi's sign has been glowing over Lonsdale Road since 1988. Edo has been slicing sushi on Spadina long enough that most regulars can't remember a version of the block without it. What A Bagel still smells like fresh bread from the sidewalk. For a neighbourhood with some of the highest average incomes in the city, Forest Hill Village has a strange track record: contemporary restaurants open here, struggle, and quietly close, while the same handful of institutions keep the lights on decade after decade.

This summer that pattern finally cracked, and the reason it cracked is worth understanding if you already live on these streets.

The storefront that kept losing

The space at 387 Spadina Road has a short, unglamorous history. It was most recently Mashu Mashu, a Mediterranean grill that served the neighbourhood for years before closing. Before that, other concepts tried the same address and the same stretch of sidewalk, and most didn't last long enough to become anyone's regular spot. Toronto Life's food desk put a name to something regulars already sensed this July: despite the money in this postal code, the block near St. Clair keeps failing to hold onto anything ambitious, and it's defined far more by its old guard than by anyone new actually making a go of it.

That is not a small thing to say about a neighbourhood where the average income sits well above the city average. Money was never the obstacle. Something about this specific block, the rents, the tenant mix, the loyalty already locked up by Banfi and Edo, kept newcomers from sticking. Which is what makes what happened at 387 Spadina this year worth paying attention to.

Who actually opened Gigi's

Earlier this summer, quietly, a new restaurant called Gigi's opened in the old Mashu Mashu space. The name alone tells you this wasn't a market-tested concept parachuted in by a national group. Gigi's is named after the late mother-in-law of Mike Kimel, the operator behind Harlo Entertainment, the hospitality group that also runs Linny's and brought Shake Shack to Canada. But according to Toronto Life's reporting, Gigi's isn't a Harlo project. Kimel grew up a few streets from where the restaurant now sits, and he lives in the neighbourhood today with his wife and five children. For him, this one is personal in a way his other restaurants aren't.

That distinction matters more than it might sound. Every previous new arrival on this stretch was, in some sense, a bet placed from outside: an operator looking at foot traffic and demographics and deciding the numbers worked. Gigi's is a bet placed from inside, by someone who already knew exactly which families walk this block on a Saturday and what they'd actually order.

The menu backs that read. Classic pastas, amatriciana, pomodoro, bolognese, all come in under $30, alongside a wide range of small plates spanning Greek, Italian, and Spanish influences: marinated anchovies, polpette di nonna, patatas bravas. There's a splurge option too, Wagyu picanha served with truffle-parmesan fries, but Kimel has said there's deliberately no burger on the menu. He already has that category covered a few kilometers away.

Gigi's is open daily, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., seven days a week.

What's still standing next to it

None of this replaces the neighbourhood's anchors. If anything, Gigi's success will likely depend on coexisting with them rather than competing directly. Here's the current lay of the strip:

Banfi remains the kind of place where staff know regulars by name and the room still fills up on a Friday night. Edo has held its own against sushi spots that have opened and closed elsewhere in the city. Neither is going anywhere, and neither should be treated as competition to a new Mediterranean menu two doors down. If anything, having four reliable options within a five-minute walk of Spadina and Lonsdale is the first time in a while the Village has offered that kind of range without sending anyone up to St. Clair or down to Eglinton.

Why this September Saturday actually has two reasons to show up

The timing lines up with something else worth knowing if you're already planning a weekend around the Village. The Forest Hill Village BIA's free outdoor concert series, Music in Suydam Park, is winding down its season this month. The format hasn't changed in years: acoustic performances on Saturday afternoons, 1 to 3 p.m., at the small stage in Suydam Park near the crosswalk at Spadina Road and Coulson Avenue. It's free, it's all ages, and it's built around exactly the kind of low-key community gathering the BIA has been trying to protect on a block that could easily feel like nothing more than a drive-through commercial strip.

The Big Smoke Brass Band, a recurring act in the series, had a Suydam Park date listed on its own touring calendar for September 5 this year, confirming the series was still active heading into the month. Past seasons have typically run for several Saturdays through September, so if you've got an afternoon free before this one wraps, it's worth checking the BIA's schedule and building the rest of the day around it. Walk the dog through Cedarvale Park's off-leash area or along the Kay Gardner Beltline Trail beforehand, grab a table or a slice on Spadina, then head to the park for the show. It's a version of the neighbourhood that existed before this year too, but it hasn't had a genuinely new place to eat at the center of it in a long time.

What this actually changes if you already live here

None of this is a reason to think Forest Hill Village is suddenly a different neighbourhood. It isn't. The tree-lined blocks, the Tudor and Georgian homes, the sense that Spadina Road hasn't changed its personality much since the 1980s, all of that is still exactly what it was. What's changed is smaller and, in its own way, more telling: for the first time in years, someone who actually grew up here bet that the neighbourhood could support something new, and so far it looks like he was right. That's a different kind of proof than a chain testing the market. It's a neighbour testing his own read on the block, in the exact spot where outsiders had already tried and failed.

If you've been walking past that storefront for years assuming nothing would stick, this is the season to walk back in.

New Chapter Homes is Claire Speedie's Toronto real estate practice, built around the neighbourhoods she knows block by block, including Forest Hill. If a move, a sale, or simply a second opinion on what your home is worth in today's market is on your mind, start your new chapter with a conversation, not a sales pitch.