Cocktail Bar: One of The Best Bars in Toronto

Before Grey Gardens, before Le Swan, there was Cocktail Bar. It opened around 2011, originally as a place for people to have a drink while waiting for a table at The Black Hoof. The Hoof is gone now. Cocktail Bar is still here, and still one of the best places in Toronto to drink.

“Cocktail Bar is the old lady in the group,” says restaurateur and designer Jen Agg, with evident affection. “Classics are classics for a reason.”

Salvaged Cupboards and the Start of a Design Language

What makes Cocktail Bar matter beyond the drinks is what it represents in Jen Agg’s trajectory as a designer. The Black Hoof was built on almost nothing: pure will and very little money. Cocktail Bar had a bit more budget, though still not much, and it was here that Jen first realized she could make something beautiful out of old things.

The defining element is the row of salvaged cupboards behind the bar, all fitted with leaded glass. They hold the spirits, and they anchor the entire room. “That was one of the first things I made ever as a designer that I thought, oh, wow, I can make something very beautiful out of nothing, or out of old things,” Jen recalls.

That leaded glass became a signature. It shows up, in small and large ways, across every restaurant Jen has built since. “If you see all of my spaces, you’ll start to connect the dots and see that they’re all in conversation with each other, even though they’re all very, very different,” she says. Cocktail Bar is where the conversation started.

Low Lights, Classics, and Nothing to Prove

The room is small: a wood-topped bar that takes up half the space, about a dozen stools, and a handful of tiny tables. The lighting is low. The mood is romantic. Large windows let in the street during the early evening, but as night settles, the room turns inward and the glow takes over.

“It’s a really classic and comfortable space,” says Jen. “It’s beautiful. It’s romantic. The lighting’s really low.”

There’s no need for spectacle here. Cocktail Bar earned its place on Canada’s 100 Best Bars list, ranked number six in 2025, by being exactly what it is: a proper cocktail bar that takes its craft seriously without making a performance of it.

House-Made Liqueurs and a Menu Built on Backbone

The cocktail program was originally developed by Jen and beverage director David Greig, who oversees drinks across her entire restaurant group. Today, the bar is run by Juliana Wolkowski, who arrived with experience from Bar Raval and Dreyfus. She updated the program with a light touch, keeping beloved house classics like the Absinthe Whip and the signature Manhattan while introducing her own esoteric riffs on the canon.

The menu is organized into clear categories: Seasonal, Bold & Citrusy, Liquor Forward, and Wild Cards. All liqueurs are now made in-house by Wolkowski and Greig, a detail that speaks to the bar’s commitment to doing things properly, even when no one’s watching.

There’s no food program here beyond what the drinks themselves deliver. This is a bar in the purest sense, a place to sit, to drink something well-made, and to let the night unfold.

Fourteen Years and Still the Best Seat on Dundas

Cocktail Bar doesn’t compete with the newer, flashier additions to Jen’s portfolio. It doesn’t need to. While Grey Gardens is the crown jewel and Le Swan is the Lynchian fantasy, Cocktail Bar is the quiet constant, the room that proved a salvaged cupboard and a well-made Manhattan could be enough.

More than a decade in, the stools are worn, the leaded glass has only gotten more beautiful, and the drinks are as sharp as ever. For a bar built on the idea that classics endure, it’s the most convincing argument on the street.

Written by Fabie Lubin
Photography by Cocktail Bar

Updated on October 08, 2026

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