One of Toronto's best-known BBQ restaurants opened a new place for salad and sandwiches — here's what it's like
One of the city’s most celebrated barbecue restaurants has branched out with a new concept, but don’t worry: there’s still plenty of brisket.
Toronto restaurateur extraordinaire Yannick Bigourdan, the man behind The Carbon Bar, Lucie and Amano, among many more, has once again put his Midas touch on the city’s culinary scene. But his latest project is unlike anything he’s done before.
Meet The Carbon Snack Bar. Think of it like The Carbon Bar’s yuppie, spin class-attending little sister. We mean that in the most complimentary way possible.
Having officially opened its doors on Aug. 21, The Carbon Snack Bar takes over the historic building at the northwest corner of King West and Spadina, formerly home to Quantum Coffee.
Here, Bigourdan and his team serve up a diverse selection of sandwiches, salads, pastries, beverages and coffee, designed to appeal to the hustling-bustling King West crowd, a divergence from the sumptuous sit-down experiences he’s known for providing.
“The Carbon Bar is the mothership, that’s where it all started,” Bigourdan told Dished Toronto. “So when this location came up, we thought it would be a really fun concept to have a grab-and-go-style with the proteins from The Carbon Bar that people have been loving for 12 years now.”
Indeed, Bigourdan tells Dished Toronto that, when designing the menu for The Carbon Snack Bar, he wanted to ensure that all of the proteins people love from The Carbon Bar are available, but in the simplest format possible.
Not everything on the menu is a play on Carbon Bar classics, though. Take the delightfully salty Pastrami on Rye ($17) for example. There may not be any pastrami on The Carbon Bar’s menu, but you wouldn’t know it by eating this sizeable sando.
Our only gripe is that there wasn’t more pastrami.
The Brisket Sandwich ($17) was a unanimous favourite at the table.
A generous helping of supple, juicy beef dressed in The Carbon Bar’s Espresso BBQ sauce is sandwiched with cheese, sauteed onion, and pickled cabbage inside a crusty baguette for a droolworthy sandwich that, mercifully, maintains its structural integrity quite well.
We’re salivating just thinking about it.
The Brisket Breakfast Biscuit ($11) is the type of breakfast sandwich best reserved for the morning after a night of heavy drinking. Or just one when you’re really, really hungry, we suppose.
Be warned: juicy brisket, a pillowy biscuit, eggs, and a generous dose of mayo unfortunately meet a messy ending. A knife and fork are recommended, and be prepared to load up on napkins.
We’re salad fans over here, but we’ll be the first to admit that not all lettuce-based dishes are created equally. Thankfully, those at The Carbon Snack Bar fall on the more flavourful side of the spectrum.
Topped, similarly, with Carbon Bar-inspired proteins, the salads boast a satisfying protein-to-vegetable ratio that won’t leave you choking down leftover greens at the bottom of the bowl.
The Smoked Chicken Caesar Salad ($18) breathes new life into a classic with the help of pickled onions, juicy shredded chicken and tender greens. There are, give or take, a thousand places where you can get a chicken Caesar salad in the immediate area, but this one is among the better ones.
The Gravlax Nicoise ($19) is a spin on the classic French Nicoise salad (go figure), which replaces the typical tuna with satisfying hunks of cured salmon, paired with salty capers and kalamata olives, crunchy romaine, green beans, and potatoes.
It’s a salad for salmon-lovers, that’s for sure, but if you frequently find your morning lox leaves you still wanting more, this is the one for you.
Toronto’s king of cookies, Craig’s Cookies, has its own outpost inside The Carbon Snack Bar, along with the coffee bar and pastry cabinet and has, according to Bigourdan, been one of the most popular offerings at the snack bar since opening.
We don’t really need to tell you what we thought of the Craig’s Cookies, do we? If you must know, they’re just as sweet, soft and addictive at The Carbon Snack Bar as they are at Craig’s other 19 locations across Canada.
If you desire a bit of adult imbibement at the end of your workday (or to get you through the last few hours of it, we won’t tell anyone), The Carbon Snack Bar is also licensed.
You can find a broad selection of different alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages in the fridge, including canned wines from Rosewood Estates, seltzers, beers and sodas.
The snack bar opens bright and early for coffee, breakfast and pastry service. Positioned at the perpetually buzzing corner of King West and Spadina, it’s a shoe-in for becoming a non-negotiable element in the morning routines of downtown office workers.
At the snack bar, you can also find a selection of frozen, ready-to-eat and pantry items from Shop The Carbon Bar, from spices and sauces to swag.
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Typically only available online, the snack bar offers passersby the chance to pick up staples from the celebrated brand while on the go. At the risk of showing our Gen Z cards, they ate that one.
While the downtown core is certainly not wanting for quick-service restaurants, there’s always room for a new one, and, if Bigourdan’s portfolio across the city can provide any insight, The Carbon Snack Bar will surely get its due time in the spotlight.
The Carbon Snack Bar
Address: 460 King St. W.
Phone: 416-603-2249
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