Dining Out in Toronto, Canada
Louix Louis at the St. Regis Toronto features a two-story bar.
TORONTO, CANADA
Restaurant: Louix Louis, louixlouis.com
Hotel: The St. Regis Toronto, stregis.com
Architecture & Design: DesignAgency, thedesignagency.ca
Square feet: 3,720
Number of seats: 137
Chef: Guillaume Robin
The spirits (metaphysically speaking) of William Gooderham and James Worts live on in Toronto, where in the 19th century, Gooderham & Worts distilled half the alcohol in Canada. When confabbing about the design of Louix Louis, the new 31st-floor restaurant with a two-story bar in the St. Regis, Allen Chan, principal of DesignAgency, recalls someone asking, “How do you make a space feel like you’re looking out from the inside of a whisky bottle?”
The answer? A swirl of warm caramel and gold tones, walnut-wood paneling, and smoked, beveled glass panels that look like cut crystal. “It should be like a warm embrace,” says Chan, “like when you’re cradling a whisky glass in your hand.” The liquid quality of a great single malt comes through in the Roma Imperial marble bar (“The movement of the stone was very important”) and overhead in an abstract Bouquet of Whisky mural by local artist Madison van Rijn.
