Queen Street West

This guide to Queen Street West in Toronto starts at a diner once selling raw onion sandwiches for fifteen cents, bought in the 1970s by three young Torontonians who found old booths and fixtures gathering dust in the basement. Rather than toss them, they rebuilt the restaurant around that discovery, drawing crowds to a strip written off as cheap rooms and transient hotels. You'll hear how cheap rents nearby let art students turn the block into a scene. A young chef named Susur Lee learned his trade in that same kitchen.