With indoor dining, gyms and galleries on hiatus and the weather cooling down, fun weekend activities seem to be few and far between this fall. But don’t despair — luckily there’s a new heated patio in town dubbed the Marquee where you can drink hot toddies and eat buttermilk fried chicken to your heart’s content while staying safe and social distancing.
On Oct. 24, Cabana Waterfront Patio is set to open the Marquee: a new pop-up dining experience featuring food by Oliver & Bonacini and an Insta-worthy art installation by Bruno Brillio, the resident artist at the Gladstone Hotel and the brains (no pun intended) behind the Brain Project. With 5,400 square feet of heated patio space and tented dining areas, the Marquee is the place to be to forget your pandemic woes.
“We reinvented Cabana this summer as the city’s largest outdoor restaurant patio to allow for a fun and safe dining experience,” says Charles Khabouth, CEO, INK Entertainment. “As we enter the colder seasons, we are excited to do it again with a new dinner and Sunday brunch menu, and Bruno Billio’s interactive art installation. It is a stunning body of work that creates an incredible, photo-worthy art scene inside the tent. With minimal entertainment available in the city right now, the activation creates a fantastical and elegant dining experience unlike anything else in Toronto.”
With unexpected twists on old classics such as a fireball hot toddy, espresso martini and a T.O. mule, the Marquee drinks menu alone is worth the visit. But if you’re looking to stay for a bite too, be sure to keep warm with highlights like the Wellington County French onion beef burger, charred eggplant with ricotta and tomato fondue, or the maccheroni al forno with truffle mornay. Or, choose from a variety of steaks such as the 16-ounce Canadian prime rib eye served with dressed watercress and roasted tomato.
The Marquee outdoor dining space will feature bright yellow and pink neon string that creates a large-scale ceiling installation. The sunset colours will wash along the sides through colour-filtered moving projections that sound ideal to forget about the cold wintry weather outside the door.
Make reservations at the Marquee for this weekend by visiting cabanawaterfrontpatio.com or via OpenTable.