Côte de Boeuf : A Slice of Paris in a Toronto Butcher Shop

Part butcher shop, part wine bar, part Parisian bistro, Côte de Boeuf has spent over a decade proving that the French way of eating (unhurried, unbooked and proudly meaty) feels right at home in Toronto. With a French chef in the kitchen, a longtime Parisian restaurateur running the show and not a single non-French bottle on the wine list, a meal here feels like a trip to Paris, minus the plane ticket.

A butcher shop with a wine habit

Chef Teo Paul opened Côte de Boeuf in 2014 as a butcher shop for Union, his restaurant down the street, whose basement could no longer keep up with all the butchering. To turn it into a true restaurant, he called on Eamon O’Dea, a British-born restaurateur who spent nearly three decades in Paris and gave Paul his first chef job in France. O’Dea landed in 2015, lined the window with wine bottles alongside the cuts of meat hanging there and furnished the space with antique-market finds, upturned wine barrels for tables and a classic zinc bar. French chef Damien Cochez later took the helm in the kitchen, where he makes his own charcuterie, foie gras and cured hams.

The butcher shop never really left. By day, carcasses still make their way past diners, meat still hangs in the window and guests can leave with a vacuum-packed steak or a wedge of cheese under their arm. Nothing feels too polished, and that’s precisely what makes stepping inside feel like a detour through Paris.

The great French classics

The menu reads like a greatest-hits album of the French bistro, and that’s exactly the point. The steak frites with peppercorn sauce isn’t going anywhere, and neither is the tartare de bœuf au couteau with heritage egg yolk and duck fat toast. Escargots in garlic-parsley butter and a terrine du jour with pickles and mustard keep the classics company. Big appetites can go straight for the namesake: a 42-ounce dry-aged côte de bœuf with duck fat potatoes and seasonal vegetables, built for sharing. Dessert stays loyal to tradition with a Tahitian vanilla crème brûlée and a 70% chocolate mousse with fleur de sel.

Then there’s the chalkboard. At least three plats du jour appear every day, giving the kitchen room to play and to put its zero-waste philosophy to work. The wine list is strictly French: think Chinon, Beaujolais, Jura and a Châteauneuf-du-Pape for big occasions, with plenty poured by the glass or the carafe. The bar sticks to the classics too, with spritzes, a French 75, a Negroni and an Americano.

When the patio closes, the butcher’s table opens

From late fall until the patio returns in spring, the table where the team butchers meat by day becomes a family-style dinner for four to six guests at night. It’s the only reservation in the house: one seating per evening. The set menu typically moves from oysters to house charcuterie and pâté, then on to a dry-aged côte de bœuf, before a big bowl of chocolate mousse makes its way around the table. Holiday dates go fast.

Everywhere else, it’s walk-ins only, Parisian style. O’Dea insisted on it from the start, because it keeps things spontaneous and convivial. The reward for showing up? Nobody hurries you out the door. No two-hour limit, no polite tap on the shoulder before dessert has even landed. In France, anything else would be close to sacrilege.

The team has since opened Brasserie Côte in the Annex, a roomier little sister co-owned by Teo Paul and run by O’Dea, with Cochez overseeing both kitchens. On Ossington, though, the meat still hangs in the window, and the spirit is as French as ever.

Written by Marie-Ève Godin
Photography by Daniel Neuhaus and Cynthia Magocsi

Updated on November 13, 2026

Make a suggestion