The Ceili Cottage
1301 Queen Street East
416-406-1301
If there's one thing we've learned in our two and a half years of publishing this website, it's that new bars and restaurants very rarely open when originally planned. From shifty contractors to pain-in-the-ass inspectors to endless bureaucratic red tape, numerous delays both expected and unexpected are pretty much a given when opening a new establishment.
Another thing we've learned is that even when a place does finally open, things are bound to be bumpy for at least the first little while. New equipment can be flaky, as can new staff, and when a place is particularly buzz-worthy, the onslaught of eager patrons can often take them off-guard when they're still finding their feet. And then there are mini-disasters of various sorts caused by acts of God and/or city maintenance staff.
For a textbook example of a place that has suffered through much of the above, look no further than The Ceili Cottage, the recently opened Leslieville pub from Starfish proprietor and world champion oyster shucker Patrick McMurray.
McMurray's plans to open the Cottage were first revealed to the public early this year, but his desire to open a traditional Irish local extend back much further than that, and the location first caught his interest a couple of years ago. As he remembers, "I used to park in front of Sweet Bliss across the street to get cupcakes for staff parties. At the angle I looked at this building, it looked to me like Moran's of the Weir, a cottage pub in the west of Ireland, and I thought that the area out front would make a pretty nice patio. It just looked like it would make a great little Irish bar. So I told my wife Alison, and she said 'No! You're too freakin' busy!'."
Busy or not, serendipity struck last summer when the couple were helping scout new locations for The Gilchrist-Canavan School of Irish Dance, which both of their children attend. The building that McMurray had long admired came up on a list of possible locations, and while it was too large for the school alone, it was the perfect size to split into a pub in the front and dance school in the rear. Recognizing it as a great opportunity for everyone involved, McMurray and the school took on the lease late last summer, and work on renovating the former auto body shop started soon after.
"For months and months," McMurray says, "I'd work here all day and then go to Starfish at night. We didn't work with a designer or an architect, just a building, and all I said was that I didn't want to make the place look cookie cutter. I find that most Irish bars here are beautifully staged, as if a set designer came in, but when you go to Ireland none of them really look like that."
With its unfinished walls and ramshackle collection of church pews and other salvaged furniture, the main room of the Cottage is about as far from "cookie cutter" as can be imagined. McMurray admits that some customers and critics haven't been as enamoured with the look as he is, with "bomb shelter" being his favourite of the unflattering descriptions he's heard and read. But ultimately, he feels that "if people don't like it or think the place looks like a bomb shelter or whatever, I understand that, but this is what I like."
The Ceili Cottage opened in late June, three months or so past the original and optimistic St. Patrick's Day target date, and was immediately overrun by thirsty Leslievillians, Irish ex-pats, and others who had been eagerly waiting for the taps to start flowing. McMurray admits that it was a more overwhelming reception than he and his team expected, and the first little while found them to be victims of their immediate success.
We saw evidence of this on our first visit a week after opening when around half of the taps had run dry and several food items were unavailable as well. And then just after our pints arrived and we prepared to order some food, word came that the pub was being forced to close for the evening due to an emergency shut down of water service by the city.
Thankfully, things went much better when we returned a couple of weeks later. Starting on a spacious and bustling patio, we got in a couple of rounds of pints from the dozen beers that are available on tap - and only on tap. Aside from when they had to grab some cans of Guinness and Smithwick's from the Beer Store when the kegs ran out on opening weekend, McMurray has no bottled or canned beer available, as he feels that draught beer is both fresher and more environmentally friendly.
The beer list includes the big Irish brands - Guinness, Harp, Kilkenny, and Smithwick's - alongside a well-chosen selection of mostly local craft brews from breweries like Mill Street and Church Key. For cask ale aficionados, there's a hand pump that features a rotating selection of brews from County Durham Brewing. For those who prefer the grape over the grain, there's a short but respectable list of wines available, and for hard stuff, tipplers can choose from a selection of Irish and Scotch whiskies and other bar shots, as well as a specialty cocktail list developed by McMurray's old pal, Kevin "Thirsty Traveller" Brauch.
For the food, both McMurray and chef Kyle Deming made a concerted effort to once again avoid the "cookie cutter", skipping the quesadillas, nachos, wings and other typical pub grub in favour of Irish dishes (bangers and mash, mutton stew with champ, ham with soda scones) and other comforting fare (mac and cheese, mussels, onion soup) made with fresh and local ingredients whenever possible Diners can also choose from the unique "Weekly Roast" special, where a meat served as a full roast dinner on Sunday is offered as a sandwich on Monday, in a potato hash on Tuesday, and so on until the cycle starts again the following Sunday.
For the less peckish, bar snacks like pickled eggs, fresh bread and butter, and Ontario peanuts are also on offer. And of course, a variety of oysters are always available, including prized Irish imports from Clarenbridge Bay and Galway Bay (when in season). The oysters are shucked by McMurray himself when he's on hand to do so, and served across a bar built using a slab of stone from the Irish seabed that holds fossilized oyster shells and other sea-life from millions of years ago.
As the initial chaos of opening starts to recede, McMurray hopes that he and the Cottage will soon be able to settle into a groove. "My main goal is to have a place to come to after Starfish," he says. "My day will start here from 4 to 6, then I'll go to Starfish to shuck oysters and do my thing until 9 or 10, and then come back to the pub until close."
He also plans to start up weekly events like a Kilt Night on Mondays ("the men can wear their kilts, and the girls can have mirrors on their shoes to see what's going on down there…"); traditional Irish music sessions on Tuesdays; and a Shucker Club on Thursdays where both industry folks and customers can learn how to shuck. For singles, he's started a free matchmaking service, keeping details of lovelorn customers in a book behind the bar, and offering to hook them up with a (hopefully) compatible match over a plate of oysters. Longer term, he'd like to turn the patio into a community skating rink next winter, and is looking into setting up a sugar shack in the spring using sap from local maples.
From some bar owners, this deluge of plans and ideas might seem gimmicky and contrived, but with McMurray's natural enthusiasm and genuinely friendly nature, it's obvious that he's telling the truth when he says that it's all being done "for fun". His ultimate goal, aside from staying in business, is to foster the same sense of community that one finds in village pubs throughout Ireland.
It's hard to say if he'll be able to reach this goal here in Toronto, where the concept of a "local" doesn't always have the same relevance. But that certainly won't stop him from trying.
