Uh Bar: a laboratory invaded by nature on Dundas West

A name born from a mishearing

The name started as a misunderstanding. Nick Hao meant to call his Dundas West bar A Bar — plain, unremarkable — until a friend asked whether that was “a bar” or “Uh bar.” A search on Google Maps settled it: there were already plenty of bars going by that name. “Uh Bar actually sounds kind of cool,” he decided, and the room under MSSM Ossington has gone by that name ever since.

Who’s behind the bar

Hao grew up in Shandong, in northern China, and has been quietly shaping how this city drinks for a while: he opened Slice of Life in 2023 and wrote the drink program at 915 Dupont. A year later he took the keys to an empty concrete box on Dundas, with Steven Lau as investor and Nigel Wang, founder of Rooms coffee, on design. The two met years ago behind the bar at Mother.

The feeling he’s chasing

What he was chasing wasn’t a concept. It was a shot of Jack Daniels he joked in high school, in a speakeasy hidden inside a residential building, ordered by copying his friend. He forced it down with his jaw clenched, and a few minutes later the room shifted — even the cheap speakers started to sound good. “That was the first time I felt the magic” he says. He can’t remember the bar’s name. “Maybe for me, it was just a bar.” Uh Bar rebuilds that feeling: somewhere you don’t have to think too much.

A laboratory invaded by nature

Three materials carry the space — concrete, wood and plants — wrapped around a bank of laboratory glassware. “A laboratory invaded by nature,” is how Hao and Wang describe it, and the raw edges are literal. He did much of the woodwork with his father and brother, tried cutting the concrete himself before conceding that job to professionals, and served the first guests while construction carried on during the day.

Familiar names, hidden twists

Nothing on the list needs decoding: gin fizz, margarita, espresso martini, vodka soda. The twists hide inside familiar names, on purpose. “I don’t want the customer to have pressure to order anything,” he says. The gin fizz is sweetened with melon, cut with basil and lime, washed with vanilla yogurt, then clarified and force-carbonated; it lands close to a retro Japanese melon soda, cherry and all. The margarita borrows from bingtanghulu, the candied hawthorn skewers sold on Beijing streets, infused with hawthorn berry and fermented cherry tomato — tart, savory, faintly jammy.

Drinks worth ordering

The Uh Good Martini comes wet, with a little sherry, and something salty alongside: corn in season, sometimes candied artichoke, sun-dried tomato, olives. “Take a sip, take a bite, your martini will feel different,” Hao says. He’s right — the corn rounds off the sherry. The espresso martini is the sleeper. Clear instead of dark, rum-based, with rooibos, almond, coconut liqueur and beans from Rooms, milk-washed and rested in the fridge for a day or two to drop its sediment. Light and nutty, closer to an aperitif than a nightcap.

Music does the heavy lifting

Music carries as much weight as the glass. There’s no house genre: bossa nova when the room is quiet, disco and funk once it fills. “Music is the most important part of the bar, I think.” Sunday live sets rotate weekly — they started with jazz, found that alone too boring, and now book flamenco, Latin, whatever fits.

The details

Uh Bar seats about 85, Wednesday through Sunday from 7 pm, walk-in unless you’re six or more. Hao already talks about it as a brand that could travel — Shanghai, Tokyo, Bangkok — with a couple of Toronto projects he won’t discuss yet. For now, there’s a stool, a good record and a clarified gin fizz that tastes like melon soda.

Written by Daniel Neuhaus
Photography by Daniel Neuhaus

Updated on August 07, 2026

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