
ou are a cowboy: adventurous, tough and poor. So while the lusty cut of a rib steak at three in the morning is practically your birthright, your lack of respect for sleep and distaste for Fran’s in equal proportions shows your urban cowboy tendencies. Forget the froufrou coffee bars. When it's just time to sit with your cohorts after a hard night of clubbing, amongst a wide-ranging cross-section of suits, coveralls and tourists, the just-opened Michie’s offers a higher-end all night alternative.
Now open, in various stages, Michie’s exhibits a similar inclination for a 24-hour lifestyle. I happen to like 24-hour breakfast-lunch-dinner places, knowing that I can walk in nearly any hour of the day or night and get a satisfying meal without being asked, by fellow diners, for spare change. In short: My middle-of-the-night steak-eating expectations are not high. With a 24/7 schedule, the owners of Michie’s have taken a decidedly all-things-to-all-people-all-the-time approach - from cheap breakfasts to burger and sandwich lunches to a dinner menu that’s served around the clock.
The bar/restaurant, located in One King West, a new complex designed to operate in the spirit of a 19th century hotel/apartment, taking over the historic 1912 Dominion Bank of Canada building. With the opening of the hotel/condo complex, the goal was to produce a hotel restaurant with just enough high style so you don't feel like you're slumming, but with not so much stuffiness to make you shift gears. The result? A lot of happy insomniacs with gold cards. Neither its high designed glass wall dividers nor its tiled floors betray the space's deliciously great beginnings as a hotel restaurant.
The Rib steak’s $23.95 price tag dictates that you rope in a richer insomniac than yourself to cover your meal come check-wranglin' time. So long as your dining partner appreciates the finer things in life - like a traditional Nova Scotia Lobster on a hotdog bun - that shouldn't be too hard. Michie’s atmosphere evokes the relaxed casualness, but for now the owners' ambition and reach seems to be fairly low –evident when perusing the photocopied menu.
Best on that menu is the Dominion Burger, a fierce and feisty beast: fresh sirloin beef, black pepper, and lots of aged cheddar cheese create his body; sweet, sautéed onions make his lid. He arrives cradled in a soft bun seared slightly on the inside, accompanied by fries or a cucumber salad. Other options include a rib steak with caramelized onions, a grilled pork loin chop with mashed potatoes, a flash fried provimi veal liver and the aforementioned lobster on a hot dog bun.