Elephant & Castle, Toronto

This is a pub which tries really hard to be typically British and while it does do a fairly good job of it, it is located in a bad area of town.

It’s got a fair menu, the beer is pilled well but I wouldn’t dwell here for very long.

The Elephant and Castle is a pub in central Toronto. Part of a small chain of pubs and restaurants of the same name across Canada and the U.S., the first E.&C. was opened in Vancouver in 1977. We went to the one in Toronto for a light lunch and a beer towards the end of November. The pub interior is not unlike that of a typical Scottish or British pub. E.&C.’s vision emulates British pub style offering a range of beers and traditional meals like fish & chips.
The customers present seemed quite a varied bunch. The atmosphere was relaxed and quite pleasant. My partner and I ordered some beef barley broth. The soup was great with plenty of beef chunks, so many in fact that it resembled an Irish stew. On a cold Canadian late-November afternoon it was just what we both needed. The soup was very reasonably priced too. My partner had a half pint of Guinness and I was going to have a Guinness too until I spied Kilkenny on tap. Not having had a pint of Kilkenny ale for a good while I decided to try one. The creamy head is similar to that of a Guinness but the beer is more like pale or red ale. The prices of the beers were on a par with those in pubs in central Glasgow or Edinburgh in Scotland. We were served with typical Canadian civility.