Doc's Green Door Lounge and Shinji: two new Toronto restaurants with interiors that do the talking
A punk musician's Edwardian café in the Junction and a modernist Japanese steakhouse for Bay Street both lean on design choices with a specific story behind them.
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Doc's Green Door Lounge sits in the Junction, in a run-down Edwardian building that began life as a hair salon. Jayson Green, a punk musician and former natural-wine salesman who moved to the neighbourhood from Brooklyn in early 2023, had no experience running or building a bar. His landlords, John Leddy and Matt Malloy, proposed the wine-bar idea after showing him the empty salon.
Archival photographs revealed an original storefront under the cladding, and Green restored the curved-glass windows. He brought in Michael Vadino, a graphic designer who had worked on the visual identity of James Murphy's DFA Records. "He has something I don't: restraint," Green says. Without Vadino, he says, blue vinyl flooring would have gone in throughout. Pulling up the old laminate exposed a dirt subfloor, and the room got marmoleum, a plant-based linoleum laid in a bold geometric pattern that nods to 1970s Italian design. Hardwood was judged too expensive, according to the build notes.
The bar's references run to Bemelmans in New York and Midwestern dive bars. An autographed photo of Mets pitcher Dwight "Doc" Gooden hangs in the room, chosen for his name and his New York connection. From the street, the exterior evokes Edward Hopper's "Nighthawks".
Across the core of downtown, Shinji occupies the west tower of the Bay Adelaide Centre, behind a historic 1920s façade. Its proprietor, Harlo Entertainment, also backs Linny's, Mimi Chinese and Cabana Pool Bar. The goal was a Japanese feel without lanterns or Edo motifs, so Odami, the firm behind Sara Restaurant and Aesop Yorkville, drew on Japan's denim industry and its indigo dyes instead. The midnight-blue ceiling and walls are hand-applied limewash, meant to look like ink-soaked cloth, with navy banquettes beneath floating lights.
The grill island sits at eye level rather than on a stage. "It's not the 'moment' of the space but its soul," says Odami co-founder Arancha González Bernardo. Ventilation was the single biggest line item in the build; the stainless steel hood was camouflaged in powder-coated steel. Designers Arancha González Bernardo and Michael Fohring describe the result as "anti-nostalgic."
