If walls could act
The Epicure Café was the place to be for members of Toronto’s theatre scene
Unnoticed by passersby and often unmarked by plaques, numerous Toronto addresses with big parts to play in cultural history sit mostly uncelebrated. In the Star’s new series, Local Legends, we tell you about them and put them on your mental map.
The Epicure Café sits at 502 Queen St. W., a long, thin restaurant painted deep red with framed prints of French paintings on the walls and an upstairs floor some may not even know about.
It’s still something of a go-to place for the theatre community given its prime location near several major venues and more-than-serviceable food at decent prices.
But back in the day — from the late 1970s into the 1990s — “the Ep” was the place to be for Toronto’s theatre folk, the “clubhouse,” as many interviewed for this story called it, for those at the centre of the city’s burgeoning alternative theatre scene, in the red heat of establishing venues and companies that have since become mainstays.
Back then, the Epicure was located a few doors west of its current location, with a layout that’s a mirror opposite to the current place.
As befits a legend, details of the Ep’s origin have become hazy with time. Paul Thompson, who ran Theatre Passe Muraille from 1970 to ’82, remembers what preceded it: a place called Odessa with “the best pierogis this side of Saskatoon” that he and the Passe Muraille crew discovered when they came back from a stint out West in the mid-’70s craving great Ukrainian food.
Sometime between then and about 1980, real estate on Queen West started to pick up and a bright spark had the idea of buying out the Odessa and turning it into a theatre-friendly haunt. And it took off.
“The place was jammed and it had the good fortune of being where all the actors went after their shows no matter where they were working in the city. It was a kind of permanent Fringe tent,” says Layne Coleman, a regular at the Ep in its glory days and artistic director of Passe Muraille from 1997 to 2007. “Even the critics came and often, and who would blame them?”
Those critics included Coleman’s late wife Carole Corbeil, whose 1997 behind-the-scenes novel In the Wings features a place called Frieda’s, clearly modelled on the Ep. Robert Crew, critic for the Star from the Ep’s heyday through to 2015, remembers it as “akin to neutral territory, where theatre folk nodded amicably in my direction.”
More than a restaurant and a drinking hole, it was also a key place for meetings and interviews. Thompson didn’t keep a desk at Passe Muraille: “If I was going to meet someone I’d meet them at the Ep” or at the nowdefunct Oak Leaf Steam Baths on Bathurst.
There were internal territories, recalls Jackie Maxwell, artistic director of Factory Theatre from 1987 to ’95 (and later of the Shaw Festival).
“The Passe Muraille gang could be found at a big round table at the back
“It was a kind of permanent Fringe tent.” LAYNE COLEMAN ARTISTIC DIRECTOR THEATRE PASSE MURAILLE, 1997-2007
of the downstairs room, while the Factory types frequented one of the tables at the side that was slightly raised, giving us a good vantage point to sling insults over to the Passe Muraillers.”
But overall, it was a place where theatre people belonged.
“You could walk in and feel like you were part of the tribe, one of the cool kids,” says Bob White, Factory’s artistic director from 1979 to ’87 and now director of new plays at the Stratford Festival. “No matter if you were an artistic director or doing your first show out of school, traditional status markers didn’t count.”
The food was good; the Paris Burger and the Toronto Burger were favourites. Crucially, it was affordable.
“You could get a half salad and fries. That kept many a soul going,” Coleman says.
Regulars included Graham Greene, Linda Griffiths and Mary Walsh. Maxwell remembers a big conversa- tion with VideoCabaret’s Michael Hollingsworth about “wanting to write a very specific theatrical history of Canada” the legendary The History of the Village of the Small Huts series. Tomson Highway would come in and talk about a play he imagined about women on the reservation, which became The Rez Sisters.
Relations forged there could be more than friendly.
“Many times the ship of romance was launched,” Coleman recalls.
“People hooked up. People had passionate conversations about theatre. We trashed the big budget shows. We chain-smoked,” actor Nicky Guadagni says.
The Ep still supports the theatre scene, says Factory’s current artistic director, Andy McKim, and “people still go there, but now there are a broader variety of places people go.” It lives on in nostalgia. “Wouldn’t it be grand to walk in there and see some of those wonderful faces again?” says retired Toronto Sun critic John Coulbourn. “Forget if those walls could talk; I’d love to see them act. They would have learned from the best.”