Having lived in Toronto for a few years at the turn of the millennium, I’m almost ashamed to say what I’m about to say…

…I only recently discovered the St. Lawrence Market area of Toronto (and a really cool place in it) on a business trip there.

To all of you that aren’t familiar with what I’ve just said, it’s like meeting a long-time resident of New York who only recently found out that there are a lot of tall buildings there.

To my credit, allow me a second to provide you some context so I don’t totally feel like I was living with my head in the sand back then. At the time, I was working on Bay Street as an Investment Banker for one of the largest Canadian bank-owned dealers and probably worked over 100 hours per week, 12 months out of the year (wasn’t counting as I didn’t have the energy and thinking back to it now doesn’t necessarily bring up those puppy dogs and ice cream feelings).

So where do we go from here?

We go to a really cool joint in the St. Lawrence Market area in downtown Toronto that’s perfect for getting together after-work or on the weekends with colleagues, friends, enemies, small animals, soccer teams, what have you.

It’s called C’est What at 67 Front St East, right smack dab in the epicenter of the St. Lawrence Market area in downtown Toronto.

Why is it such a good place to go and why am I telling you about it on a site that’s dedicated to relaying good/bad customer service experiences?

Here’s why:

• the laid-back environment is disarming in the everyday hustle n’ bustle of Toronto’s downtown business circus (I don’t know about you, but I like to relax after a long day, week, couple of hours, etc);
• the servers we ran into were great at making drink and food recommendations (C’est What Toronto also is a great microbrewery) and gave me the impression that you didn’t have to rush your evening along (reminds me of a experience I had at a Vancouver lounge that didn’t quite have this down);
• the food was excellent (Le Grand Shepherd and Red Thai Curry are must-haves);
• the live music adds another angle to your overall experience…and…it’s good music, from what I heard;
• and they’ve got a really huge fireplace with massive comfy couches in front of it…yeah, we took them.

All in all, we were very impressed…and with that, I’m not longer feeling so ashamed at saying what I what I just said about C’est What!

darren