The word “bohemian” and Queen West have gone hand in hand for decades. From the original Bohemian Embassy in the 1960s (an artsy coffeehouse that was a launchpad for artists such as Margaret Atwood, Gordon Lightfoot and Lorne Michaels) to the various groups of artists, musicians, goths, punks and others who have frequented Queen West over the years (we’ll pointedly ignore the condo project at Queen & Gladstone with the same name, which is a sad riff on previous subcultures and is pretty much the antithesis of anything even remotely bohemian within the current definition of the word), it’s safe to say that Queen Street is where you’d find any bohemians in Toronto.
The recently-opened Bohemian Gastropub (571 Queen Street West), however, is not meant to reference the downtown sub-cultures, but is both a play on owner Paul Boehmer’s name and the actual region of Bohemia, part of the current Czech Republic, bordering on Germany. So a Bohemian Gastropub has hearty Eastern European food with influences of Germany, Poland and Austria.
Continue reading “Smörgåsbord – The Bohemian Gastropub”