From party themes to coordinated outfits, Toronto’s streets have been awash with various shades of pink, thanks to Barbie’s success. Now, with Rosedale’s latest martini bar, Le Tigre, the pink trend continues.
Before you even step inside, you’ll notice the distinct pink glow emanating from the window above the piano store on Yonge Street. At the top of the stairs, banana leaves serve as curtains, inviting you into the lounge where additional LEDs illuminating jungle and wild cat motifs pay homage to the exotic name of the bar.
“We really wanted to create a transportive space,” says Robert Granicolo, who coowns Le Tigre alongside Stephen Gouzopoulos and beverage director Andrew Foster. “We wanted to make it so aggressively different from other bars.”
With its vintage ceramic cats and tiger-themed artwork combined with unique and vintage drinks like the Alaska,
Le Tigre is certainly unlike anything else in the city.
Granicolo and Gouzopoulos are also the duo behind Cry Baby Gallery, a semi-secret cocktail bar with an industrial vibe in Little Portugal.
The ingredients and infusions used at Le Tigre are identical to those at Cry Baby.
However, the menu features a distinct selection of martinis and specialty cocktails. A significant distinction lies in the cocktail names at Le Tigre, including Silk Sheets, Dirty Dancing and the super popular Ashley Madison.
Although Granicolo and the team are currently concentrating on the bar’s soft launch, he says that they plan to introduce a small snack menu soon.
For now, Granicolo is thrilled to be doing precisely what they set out to do: provide a distinctive space centred on
excellent, classic drinks.
“We’re just happy to be in the neighbourhood and excited to give people an excuse not to travel to the west end for a
cocktail bar if they don’t need to,” he says.
Le Tigre is located at 1060 Yonge St.