When Toronto’s Chinese culinary centre Lichee Garden closed the doors of their Thornhill location roughly a year ago, it was with the promise that a new, downtown theatre district restaurant was in the works.
Fast forward a year, and the state of the sanctuary’s new location seems a little, well, stagnant and uncertain.
A quick Google search offers a local telephone number for the restaurant — situated on "King Street West," with no street number listed. Calls to the restaurant, however, are met with an automated message stating that the number is no longer in service. Attempts to reach anyone attached to the restaurant via the email address listed on the eatery’s website likewise go unreturned.
An impromptu visit to the apparent new location — on the south side of King Street West, east of Spadina Avenue, across the street from Mountain Equipment Co-op —offered little in the way of additional information regarding the progress of the new space. A peak inside the locked front door, under red and black Lichee Garden lettering, reveal an "opening soon" sign posted on an inner door — but that’s about it. No additional dates, no additional details.
For a restaurant with a storied history of location switches since it opened roughly six decades ago — the Atrium on Bay, Dundas Street at University and Centre Street in Thornhill to name a few — it’s hard not to wonder if perhaps the luck has run out for the landmark eatery.
