Toronto: G Goes Back

G went back to Toronto in mid-April for about two weeks. She stayed at The Drake Hotel on Queen Street West, which is one of those hotels that functions more like a cultural outpost than a place you sleep. Art on every wall, a live music venue in the basement, a rooftop patio that fills up the moment the temperature hits 15 degrees, and a lobby crowd that skews creative. It's the kind of hotel where the person next to you at the bar is either a documentary filmmaker or a tattoo artist or both. G loved it.

The Drake sits at the western end of Queen West, in the stretch that still has independent shops and galleries and hasn't fully surrendered to the chain-store creep that's taken over the east end. The neighborhood is walkable in a way that most of Toronto's interesting areas are, and Queen West in April is one of the better walking streets in the city. The trees are just starting to bud. The patios are opening. People are outside for the first time in months and the energy is almost giddy.

For anyone visiting Toronto and staying in the Queen West area, Trinity Bellwoods Park is about a ten-minute walk east from The Drake. It's the park where everyone in their 20s and 30s goes on a sunny afternoon to sit on the hill with takeout and a discreet tallboy. The west side of the park has a hill that fills up on sunny afternoons with people doing exactly nothing, which is the correct use of a Toronto park in spring. G would bring a coffee from Jimmy's and sit on that hill for an hour watching people pretend they weren't also doing nothing.

G spent most of the trip catching up with friends from when we lived there. Toronto friendships are specific: they're built around neighborhoods and restaurants and knowing which streetcar to take and which one is broken this week. When you move away, those friendships don't disappear, but they go dormant until someone comes back and reactivates the whole circuit. That's what this trip was. Two weeks of "we have to go to that place" and "remember when they opened that spot on Dundas."

For food in the Queen West and Dundas West corridor, Pai Northern Thai Kitchen on Duncan Street has been one of the best Thai restaurants in the city since it opened. The khao soi (northern Thai coconut curry with egg noodles and crispy shallots) is the dish that put them on the map and it's still the thing to order. The line for dinner starts before the door opens. Weekday lunch is easier. Churrasco of St Clair up on St. Clair West is a Portuguese chicken spot that G made a special trip for because she'd been thinking about their peri-peri chicken since we left. It's a counter-service place with no atmosphere and the best rotisserie chicken in Toronto. The secret is the charcoal and the peri-peri sauce, which comes in three heat levels. Get the medium. Take the chicken home with a side of their rice and a Portuguese custard tart (pastel de nata) for dessert.

Bar Raval on College Street is worth a stop even if you're not eating a full meal. The interior was carved from a single piece of mahogany by a team of European woodworkers and it looks like the inside of a Gaudí building. Pintxos (small bites on toothpicks), vermouth on tap, and a standing-room-only energy that forces you to talk to whoever's next to you. G went twice in two weeks. The octopus pintxo and the anchovy toast are the moves.

Kensington Market is still Kensington Market. Vintage shops, produce stands, the smell of incense and empanadas, pedestrian-only on Sundays in summer. Seven Lives inside the market does Baja-style fish tacos that have had a consistent line for years. The gobernador taco (shrimp, cheese, chipotle) is the one the regulars get. Jimmy's Coffee on Portland has the best flat white in the neighborhood and a back patio that's hidden from the street.

Beyond eating, the Art Gallery of Ontario on Dundas is free on Wednesday evenings and the Frank Gehry redesign of the building is worth seeing from the outside even if you don't go in. The Galleria Italia on the third floor is a long glass and wood corridor that runs the length of the building and the late-afternoon light through it is one of the most photographed views in the city. The Distillery District in the east end is a former whiskey distillery converted into galleries, restaurants, and shops in Victorian industrial buildings. It's touristy on weekends but worth walking through on a weekday morning when it's quiet.

G came back to Fort Lauderdale after two weeks with a suitcase full of stuff she'd left at friends' places when we moved ("I was just holding it for you" is the universal friend excuse for keeping your things hostage for a year), a list of new restaurants she wanted to remember, and that specific energy you get from spending time in a city that used to be yours.

If you're visiting Toronto for the first time and want to understand the city beyond the CN Tower and the ROM, spend a day walking neighborhoods. Start in Kensington Market in the morning, walk south through Queen West to Trinity Bellwoods, then east along Queen to Ossington, north to Dundas West, and loop back. That route takes you through the heart of what makes Toronto interesting: the density, the food, the mix of old and new, the fact that every block has something you didn't expect. The TTC streetcar along Queen or King is the way to extend the range without getting on the subway. The 501 Queen car runs from Neville Park in the east to Long Branch in the west and passes through more distinct neighborhoods than most cities have total. Ride it end to end on a rainy day. It costs $3.35 and it's the best tour of Toronto you'll find for any price.

Toronto in April is unpredictable. It can be 18 degrees and sunny one day and snowing the next. Pack layers. Bring a rain jacket. The cherry blossoms in High Park bloom in late April and the whole city shows up for about a one-week window. The trees are near the south end of the park and the timing depends on the year. G missed them by a few days. She's still annoyed about it.