From the ashes of The Social rises The Dog & Bear

Richard Lambert at The Hoxton

Decked out in a Tijuana t-shirt and rocking there-was-no-water-in-my-apartment-this-morning hair, Richard Lambert taps his foot on the hardwood floor of The Hoxton. Between chats with his landlord and phone calls from contacts he reassures are not being purposely ignored, Lambert mulls over what exactly The Hoxton is. Situated at King St. W and Bathurst St. in a building with no street number (the address is 69 Bathurst St. for the curious), The Hoxton will mean many things to many people.

“It’s an event space. It’s a nightclub, it’s a corporate event space, it’s a concert hall, it’s all of the above and that would be perhaps the reason for its possible success,” Lambert told OurFaves last week. “You’re not leaning on just one concept. ”

If you’ve never heard of Lambert, you probably know him through his food, club and vintage fur coats. The nightclub impresario is behind the uber popular Parts & Labour, 69 Vintage and The Social (now defunct). Up until about six months ago, Lambert was an ever-present figure at his beloved Parkdale restaurant, Parts & Labour, but most recently, he’s been logging long hours in the west end at The Hoxton prepping it for its opening just in time for the Toronto Film Festival.

Once The Hoxton is up and running, Lambert won’t have much of a break. With the closing of The Social comes a new project – The Dog & Bear pub – slated to open in November. It’s an homage to an identically-named pub in Canterbury, England owned by Lambert’s father.

If you’ve ever wondered where one of Toronto’s most prolific trendsetters dines, drinks and rests his head, read on.

The Drake Hotel’s Anthony Rose dishes on the Dining Roadshow and the secret to his famous burgers

Later this month, The Drake Hotel is hitting the road but isn’t leaving its backyard. Beginning June 23, Chef Anthony Rose and his audacious posse of cooks are taking the dining room on a field trip to a mess hall and Chinatown. The “restaurant-within-a-restaurant” concept will come complete with ketchup and mustard squeeze bottles, cafeteria trays and tomato alphabet soup. In September, the restaurant will transform yet again into circa 1940s Chinatown in Los Angeles. Just in time for TIFF, The Drake Hotel will be dishing out pork belly fried rice, firecracker maple shrimp and oxtail wontons.

BIXI bike share program launches in Toronto

It wasn’t quite bike weather on Tuesday morning in Toronto as rain fell, puddles formed and the clouds obscured the sun. You wouldn’t know it, but a new biking revolution was brewing on Yonge and Gould Streets. BIXI has rolled into town and today marked the launch of its bike sharing program. With 300 shiny new black bikes lined up neatly in their docking stations, it’s going to get a lot easier for Torontonians to hop on a bike and take a tour of their city.

Q&A: Illustrator Jack Dylan preps for the Drake Spring Market

Hailing from Montreal but now happily entrenched in Toronto’s Trinity Bellwoods neighbourhood, Jack Dylan is an illustrator whose work has graced the pages of Toronto Life, The Walrus, Maclean’s and The Globe and Mail. Best known for poster art reminiscent of what you’ll find on the cover of The New Yorker on any given week, Dylan’s wares are on display this weekend at the annual Outdoor Drake Spring Market. Alongside handmade jewellery, one-of-a-kind art pieces and vintage furniture, Dylan’s posters depicting the Trinity Bellwood’s gate and a Mount Royal beach scene are up for grabs.

If you’ve ever wondered what went on inside the head of a talented illustrator with a penchant for podcasts and sandwiches, look no further. We cornered the busy artist recently and asked him about the most scathing criticism he’s ever gotten and his favourite place in the city to put pencil to paper.

Where to go on St. Paddy’s day in Toronto

Chris Taylor was already decked out in his St. Paddy’s day garb on Thursday morning as he worked feverishly behind the scenes fielding phone calls and making last minute arrangements for the biggest day of the year for Grace O’Malley’s pub in Toronto’s entertainment district. Taylor, O’Malley’s general manager has been in the bar business for the better part of 20 years. He sat down with OurFaves half an hour before the bar’s doors opened to welcome St. Patrick’s Day revelers to talk about green beer, St. Patrick and the Irishman’s drink of choice…Guinness.