TORONTO—Drake Hotel Properties is launching its first stand-alone restaurant with the opening of Drake One Fifty in the heart of downtown Toronto. The newly renovated 6,000-square-foot space seats 180 guests and includes a dining room, bar, covered urban patio, micro-Drake General Store, curated art, and performance space.
Designer Martin Brudnizki collaborated extensively with the Drake team on space, and Executive Chef Ted Corrado has created a Canadian brasserie menu, upholding the company’s reputation for elevating comfort classics with high quality ingredients.
Nestled in an early 1980s postmodern office building, the newly transformed restaurant features a playfully deconstructed dining room and bespoke 60-foot oval marble bar. This new concept of a combined restaurant, bar, retail, and art space is a wink to the original Drake Hotel concept—in effect, a Drake without beds.
The design was inspired by historic brasseries and taverns, along with decades of modernism, and features a custom handmade tile floor, Brothers Dressler-designed wood pergola, one-of-a-kind marble top surrounding the circular main bar, custom cork ceiling and a louvered steel and glass window curtain wall, to form the entire east wall of the restaurant. Other design highlights include antiques from famed Brimfield Antique Market, crafted millwork, vintage light fixtures and a restored photo booth.
“Our new venture in the thriving core of downtown Toronto allows us to showcase our superb food and cocktail program as the headline act, with all the usual Drake offerings, be it innovative design, visual, or performance art backing it up,” said Jeff Stober, CEO and founder of Drake Hotel Properties.
Drake continues to grow and evolve its particular brand of modern cooking at Drake One Fifty, where Corrado and his team showcase twists on classic dishes. Highlights of the brand-new menu include: roasted shoulder of lamb (served with blanched haricot vert, roasted baby eggplant, new potatoes, chili puree and yogurt), rotisserie chicken for sharing (with leeks, potato, carrot, Brussels sprouts, roasted chicken jus), seasonal house-made pastas including rabbit confit torchetti (with sundried black olives, spinach, chanterelles and pecorino) and a seafood tower (fresh daily mix of lobster, crab, oysters, shrimp, mussels, clams and squid, served with an array of sauces and available in multiple sizes).
