Short Turn: The All-Day Diner by 416’s Team

Walk fifty steps around the corner from 416 Snack Bar, past Queen and Bathurst, and you’ll find Short Turn, a narrow, candlelit room that started as a cocktail bar and has quietly become one of Queen West’s most interesting all-day restaurants. Named after the TTC manoeuvre that every Toronto commuter dreads, Short Turn has taken a few turns of its own since opening in 2023. Each one has made it better.

A Cocktail Bar That Wanted to Be More

Adrian Ravinsky and Dave Stewart, the duo behind 416 Snack Bar, had a problem they didn’t mind having: too many people and not enough seats. The 40-stool original on Bathurst was packed every night, with long waits and guests spilling onto the sidewalk. When the space around the corner (same landlord) became available, they saw a double opportunity.

“One problem that we had had for many years was that we had to turn lots of people away at 416,” says Adrian. “And at the same time, some of our longest-serving people wanted to be making nicer cocktails. They were really passionate about it.”

Short Turn opened in early 2023 as a cocktail bar with a handful of 416’s greatest-hit snacks on the side. The idea was partly overflow, partly creative outlet, a place where the team could finally build a real drinks program. But it didn’t stay in that lane for long.

Streetcar Romance in a Narrow Room

The name is a love letter to Toronto transit, specifically, the vintage CLRV streetcar that passed right by the door before being retired in 2019. Adrian and Dave worked with contractor and designer Colin Sims of CutConcepts to build a room inspired by that streetcar: long, narrow, with three distinct zones: seating, passage, and service.

“We took the space and sort of made it feel like a more mature, a more grown-up 416 Snack Bar,” Adrian explains. “It’s candlelit and warm, but it’s long and narrow and a little bit more designed. Whereas 416, me and Dave built it ourselves. Short Turn has some more elegant lines.”

The result feels like a dusk-lit, romanticized version of the city. Curved millwork, warm banquettes, soft lighting: intimate but never cramped. The front seating area in particular has a social quality to it, the kind of layout that naturally draws people into conversation. It’s no surprise that Short Turn has become a go-to for first dates. Unlike its louder sibling around the corner, you can actually talk here.

From Waiting Room to All-Day Destination

About a year into the cocktail-bar era, Adrian and the team realized Short Turn had more potential than being 416’s anteroom. In late 2025, they shifted the concept: new hours, new menu, new identity. Short Turn now opens at 11:30 AM with an all-day menu that runs through dinner, the same dishes available morning to night.

“You can come at 9:30 on a Wednesday night and have a really, really good omelette,” says Adrian. “I don’t eat 416 food every week anymore because it’s been many years of Korean fried chicken, but Short Turn’s menu is still quite new for me. I’m still eating that lunch a few times a week. It’s really, really good.”

Diner Soul, 416 DNA

Chef Kevin Lo, previously of Aburi Hana and Mimi Chinese, leads the kitchen, bringing the same globally curious but rooted-in-Toronto philosophy that defines 416 Snack Bar. The menu reads like a diner reimagined through the lens of the city’s diversity. A jian bing omelette borrows from Chinese street food. A Reuben-inspired hash is built on house-cured meat from 416. The Singaporean chicken rice reflects the chef’s own heritage.

“Similarly to 416, the food is true to its origin, but diverse,” says Adrian. “Our chef is Singaporean and he wanted to do a really banging version of chicken rice on the menu.”

There is no greasy-spoon posturing here. The cooking is precise, the ingredients are considered, and the portions are satisfying without being excessive. It’s a diner in spirit (accessible, comforting, all-day) but with the care and craft you’d expect from the 416 team.

Cocktails That Earned Their Own Room

The drink list that originally justified the space hasn’t gone anywhere. Short Turn still makes proper cocktails, the kind 416 deliberately never put on its own menu. Classics are built with care, and the list includes inventions that the Snack Bar’s format never had room for, like a Garibaldi made with whipped orange juice and a blend of amari.

Happy hour runs from noon to 6 PM with the full cocktail list at ten dollars, a detail that underlines the same value-first philosophy Adrian brings to everything. No pretension, just good drinks at a fair price.

Two Rooms, One Idea

Short Turn and 416 Snack Bar sit around the corner from each other, share owners, share DNA, and feed each other’s energy. But they’re not the same place. Where 416 is raw, self-built, and loud every night, Short Turn is more polished, more daylit, more designed. Together, they cover almost every mood a neighbourhood could ask for, from a Tuesday lunch omelette to a Friday midnight snack with a DJ in the background.

“They work very well in tandem with one another,” says Adrian. “If you can’t get into 416, you can go to Short Turn, and vice versa.” After 15 years of making rooms that feel like home, the instinct is always the same: keep it warm, keep it interesting, and make sure it feels better than your living room.

For more Toronto bar suggestions, check out our list of the best bars in the city. 

Written by Daniel Neuhaus
Photography by Scott Usheroff / Short turn

Updated on September 09, 2026

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