Posted by Greg Clow in beer, beverages, italian, restaurant profile on April 29, 2008 at 7:48 am

Volo
587 Yonge Street
416-928-0008

The restaurant business, as we all know, isn't easy. Statistics tell us that a large percentage of new restaurants fail within the first year (the exact percentage depending on which stats you choose to believe. Making it to five years is impressive. Ten years, really impressive. Twenty years? To many, that's a minor miracle.

If so, then some higher power or other must be smiling onto the corner of Yonge and Dundonald, where Ralph Morana has just passed his twentieth anniversary as owner of Volo, an unexpected success story if ever there was one. And to be clear: The "unexpected" descriptor is not meant as a criticism of Morana or his restaurant, but rather commentary on how someone with absolutely no restaurant experience can take a struggling Italian restaurant, keep it going through times thick and thin, and eventually turn it into an indispensable destination for lovers of local beer, wine and cheese.

Back in 1988, owning a restaurant was the last thing on the mind of Morana, who'd spent the preceding eight years building a successful business as a landscape architect. But with some coaxing from his wife, Ina, and sister, he took over Volo from some family friends who had opened it several years before. "It was tough," he remembers. "Gasworks on the other corner attracted rock and roll people and bikers. Across Yonge Street was Café New Orleans which had a clientele that was half gay and half trendy. I was in the middle, and didn't know what I'd got myself into."

Still, he made a go of it, first as owner, and then as chef when he called the bluff of a cook who constantly threatened to quit. Through the 90s, he kept the doors open and seats of the cozy space filled by offering a menu of simple Italian fare and a variety of events including poetry readings, art shows and live music.

The evolution of Volo to the truly unique place it is today started in earnest in 2003, when Morana's nascent interest in better beer led him to the now defunct St. Lawrence Craft Beer Festival. He had featured some of the area's better known microbrews such as Upper Canada and Cameron's on tap over the years, and his wife had been suggesting that he further improve the beer selection, but it took a taste of Denison's Weissbier to convince him to start on the track to becoming an establishment free of fizzy yellow macrobrews.

It wasn't long before his new beer selection caught the attention of the local beer community. (Coincidentally enough, it was a post by yours truly on the discussion forum at The Bar Towel that sparked that attention.) "People were telling me, 'Have you heard that they're talking about you on Bar Towel?', and I said 'What's Bar Towel?' Right away there was interest from this beer community out there about which I had no idea."

As the interest of craft beer drinkers in Volo grew, so too did Morana's interest in the many facets of craft beer. More trips to more beer festivals followed, and then he discovered cask conditioned beer, the traditional style of ale that is popular in England but rare in Toronto, at least at the time.

"To learn more about cask conditioned beer," he says, "I went to England. At first, I didn't understand why cask beer didn't take off here, but then I figured it out: bars just weren't serving it properly. People weren't educated on it. How do you serve it properly? You let people know when you tapped it, and serve it at the right temperature." It wasn't long before he installed a pair of cask beer engines at the bar, and cask beer aficionados soon discovered that he served some of the freshest pints in the city. In 2005, he took it a step further with Volo Cask Days, a now annual event that features numerous cask ales from the craft breweries of Ontario and beyond, many created especially for the event.

In tandem with Cask Days and Volo's other beer-related initiatives, Ontario's craft brewing scene has taken some great leaps forward in terms of the variety and quality of beers being brewed. Morana is flattered by the suggestion that he is at least partially responsible for the changes, although he is quick to note that he considers it just a part of doing business. "When I started here, there wasn't much happening in Ontario brewing, it was pretty stagnant. But now I like what a lot of the brewers are doing. You see a lot more experimentation in the States, but I think it's getting better here. And look at all the beer dinners and other events. It's a two-way street between the brewers and the restaurants & bars to do things like that."

And while the beer may be the biggest attraction for some people, Volo is also becoming known for having a solid wine list and great cheese boards, both with a strong Ontario focus. This triple focus adds to the uniqueness of Volo, a fact that Morana is well aware of. "I think I'm one of the few beer bars that has a good wine list, or wine bars that has a good beer list. Not too many place do both."

As the success of Volo's beverage program has increased, Morana has chosen to change the focus of the food menu as well, dropping all but a few of the main courses and replacing them with cheese boards, charcuterie plates and other dishes conducive to sharing. He's also reduced the business hours considerably, no longer opening on Sundays or for lunch during the week. "I've lost a lot of clientele," he admits. "But I'm better off right now. I don't have the same overhead and food costs have gone down. More people were coming here for the beverages, not for the food, and I thought that what goes good with beer and wine is food that people can share. Plus I've been here for 20 years, I don't want to cook any more!"

Looking to the future, Morana's thoughts turn back to beer - or more specifically, the pilot brewing system that he plans to install later this year once the legislative red tape is sorted out. The system will be used to brew small batches of cask ale for the bar, and also for beer and brewing classes. "I'm going to get other people to brew, but I'm the type that needs to know how to do things, so I'm taking a brewing course in June at UC Davis in California. Eventually, I want to brew as well. To be ahead in this industry, you need to constantly learn, and you have to continue to reinvent yourself."

Revisiting the past twenty years, it's obvious that this reinvention and thirst for knowledge has been the key to Morana's success. And while he's unsure how much longer he and Volo will be there, he seems pleased with what he's accomplished, and where it has all lead. "I've done everything here, but the beer thing has definitely been the best. It put Volo on the map. I still fill the place. I complain a lot, but I'm having fun doing it."