Chez Wa: Natural Wines and Sakes Meet Chinese Cuisine in Little Italy

After years of bringing its pairings from one table to the next, the Chez Wa team finally has a roof of its own. Opened in the spring of 2026 in Little Italy, in Toronto, this thirty-seat bar brings together natural wines, sakes and Chinese-inspired small plates. A formula still rare in the city, carried by a duo that took the time to refine it.

It all starts with Tia Zhang. In 2023, she launched Wine Pairing Company and multiplied pop-ups across Toronto, pairing wines and sakes with the Asian cuisines of guest chefs. It was during a five-course dinner devoted entirely to eggplant, created with a Vietnamese chef, that Yuanxin (Kevin) Guo fell for the project. He volunteered to serve, never left, and the pop-ups grew into weekend takeovers of friends’ cafés. “After a few months, we decided that we needed our own space, to have control over what we wanted to do,” the duo recalls. They settled on Little Italy, an increasingly eclectic neighbourhood where they dreamed of putting down roots.

Little Italy Adopts Its House of the Frog

The name, for its part, was born on an evening spent laughing at frog videos. “Wa means frog in Mandarin. It’s playful and easy to pronounce,” the team explains. “And Chez Wa rhymes with chez moi. That’s exactly what we want to create: the feeling of having a drink at home, chatting with your friends.” That at-home spirit runs through the decor, designed by Tia, who draws on the interiors of Copenhagen and Berlin: walnut, stainless steel, clean lines. “We keep it simple, and we let the place grow.”

On the plate, shareable bites slip Chinese elements into bar classics. The beef tartare gets a lift from a spicy shaojiao sauce, while the hongsuantang mackerel reinvents a sour-broth Chinese hot pot dish as a cold plate, built around sushi-grade fish. Alongside them come creations like the mapo tofu campanelle, the drunken shrimp and the black-tea-smoked duck. The ideal scenario, according to the team: arrive as a group, order the whole menu and pair everything with the glasses.

In the cellar, the bottles are almost all low-intervention, sometimes biodynamic, without the house making a banner of it. “We want people to drink natural wine without knowing it, and to learn to love it.” The duo favours food-friendly cuvées with great stories behind them, often made by women winemakers. The same philosophy applies to the sake, served by the glass to shake off the image of a harsh, one-note drink: here, it comes fruity, dry or even sparkling.

Barely settled in, Tia and Kevin are already seeing regulars come back week after week, giving them carte blanche on the pairings. “They believe in our taste,” the team confides. In Toronto, the house of the frog has clearly found its pond.

For more recommendations, check out our list of the best Chinese restaurants in Toronto.

Written by Daniel Neuhaus
Photography by Scott Usheroff

Updated on September 12, 2026

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