Dream team of Toronto chefs and restaurateurs launching new neighbourhood seafood restaurant
One Toronto neighbourhood is about to get a new go-to seafood restaurant, and it’s coming courtesy of a local culinary dream team.
If you find yourself faced with some serious seafood cravings this month, set your sights on Summerhill. There, sometime around mid-August, you’ll discover Seahorse, a new seafood restaurant by a team that can only be described as Toronto’s culinary Avengers.
Individually, though, they’re known as Richard Renaud (Piano Piano, Speducci Mercatto), Simon Bower (Lucien, Mercer Street Grill), and 11-time oyster-shucking champion Eamon Clark, who also just so happens to be a member of the Rodney’s Oyster House family. We mean that literally, the titular Rodney is his father.
Bower told Dished Toronto that, when it came to assembling the group, so to speak, the key players were a no-brainer. It also helps that both Renaud and Clark are longtime friends of Bower’s.
“I met Richard [Renaud] about six or seven years ago and we just naturally clicked as friends,” he explains, “so after a while we started talking about doing a small hospitality project together.”
As for Clark, Bower tells Dished Toronto that the two have known each other for decades and, once the seafood concept was settled upon, he was a “natural fit as a partner, as there’s no one more talented and experienced in the oyster and shellfish world.”
Two high-power restaurateurs and an oyster-shucking champion walk into a vacant restaurant space in Summerhill. What now? It may sound like the setup for a joke, but there would be nothing funny about it if they couldn’t find the right chef to bring it all to life.
Enter Federico Garcia, a former sous-chef at Toronto’s Michelin-starred Quetzal, who was introduced to Bower through friends in the industry, and has officially signed on to the project as Seahorse’s executive chef.
Bower told Dished Toronto it’s a team that he couldn’t be more excited about. “Working together with this talented team has really put a bounce back in my step, and we are all so excited to open our doors later this month,” he says.
As for what diners can expect from the restaurant, Bower describes it as a “small, cozy seafood-focused spot,” dedicated to sourcing fresh, sustainable seafood and shellfish — where Clark’s expertise will undoubtedly be put to good use — with locally sourced produce.
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Think crudo, seafood towers, mussels and pasta, all wrapped up in a palatial package inspired by the French countryside with eclectic art pieces and vintage lighting.
Summerhill, Bower points out, sits at the intersection of several midtown neighbourhoods, making Seahorse a not-too-distant beacon for interested eaters, which, he told Dished Toronto, was all by design.
“We’ve had an eye on this location for over a year,” he says, and now, with an opening date roughly positioned for mid-to-late August, it’s almost time for this seahorse to make its splash.
Seahorse
Address:Â 1226 Yonge St.
Opening:Â Mid-to-late August 2025
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