t’s Tuesday evening, and Caren Walters is working the room. Decked out in tight maroon trousers and a fitted black shirt, she hops from table to table, greeting people as the dutiful hostess. Her outfit, a major fashion statement, is stylish as the place itself; pants that that appear to be a blend of Lycra and linen cling to her legs as she appeases to the anxious crowd. Something she’s accustomed to doing at her long stint as the host at Joso’s.

Except we’re not at Joso’s. We’re at Walters’ new self-titled bar, Caren’s Wine Bar in Yorkville. The room is in fine form tonight; a few tables are occupied on the upper level, suits are at the bar, while three suicide blondes have anchored the front window table on the main level. Not a packed house; it doesn’t take many people to make Caren’s meager square-footage feel crowded.

“I knew we’d need every square inch to make this project work,” Walters says on taking over the slim space vacated by the Flatirons Christmas Store. And it was a lot of work. The concept was to provide an energetic place, with good ambiance and cocktails.

And cheese. Caren has discovered, like other bar owners have known for years; club crawling is as much about the food as the drinks. Food can be a powerful lure, just one more inducement to spend the evening here rather than there. The usual nibbles - little fried things, tacos, nachos - have been upped a notch at Caren’s with full-scale cheese platters.

Hard to compete with Christmas ornaments, but Caren’s - in its two-month existence - has managed to create a scene with the right kind of magic. With its entire leather wall and miniature custom-made chandeliers (Walters found one in an antique store, and had six more reproduced) Caren’s reads as a hipster's version of a fondue party.

Dark, plush and polished, with woodwork buffed to a high shrine and the pungent scent of wine wafting through the room, Caren’s evokes an air of sophistication, of people who know one another from boarding school engaging in witty banter, sipping wine and looking down on the rest of us. Two levels continue with the same vibe (meaning no VIP area), so find a seat you like and try to capture the spirit.

Still finding its legs, the mix includes not just Nesbitt Burns boys, which is HQ'd uptown, but also visiting Four Seasons types and the much-desired urban cocktail crowd that has picked up on the new pulse on the street.
It's too early to say whether the fresh-faced Caren’s will have smooth sailing. Yorkville is the trickiest of all Toronto areas; while spectacular spots that were instantly adored had shockingly short life spans, some of the city’s most smirked-upon venues soldier on forever in these parts.

Come to think of it, when did fondue itself stop being smirked-upon? When, exactly, did pots of cheese garner enough ‘hip-status’ to deserve placement at cool lounges? Does the younger club generation realize the extraordinary phenomenon they're taking part in? Probably not: If they did, it might make them self-conscious and spoil their fun. But an extraordinary phenomenon it is nevertheless. Baudelaire claimed you needed drugs to achieve the "systematic disordering of the senses" that leads to poetry; Caren’s does it with music, cocktails and a bowl of melted cheese. And it's legal.
- D.E



Review This Place

Reader Reviews