For the last 43 years, Charles Khabouth has been shaping Toronto’s nightlife and high-end dining, from Rebel and the former Government to restaurants like Sofia Yorkville, Akira Black and Kost. Now, the hospitality mogul is trying something different: a quick-service Lebanese restaurant called Little Baba on Portland Street, designed for diners seeking quality meals without breaking the bank.
Little Baba marks Ink Entertainment’s first foray into fast-casual dining, a shift Khabouth said reflects how Toronto’s restaurant scene is evolving. Rising costs, tighter household budgets and changing dining habits are forcing even high-end operators to rethink their approach. While Khabouth hopes Little Baba will bring back frequent visits from diners, other well-known Toronto restaurants, including Mimi Chinese, are making similar adjustments to attract a broader audience.
“It’s a sign of the times”
The restaurant’s interior reinforces an approachable, warm vibe, with rosy walls and murals reminiscent of a Gauguin painting. Cushioned barstools add comfort, and Little Baba even has a mascot (a cartoon man in a traditional Lebanese hat) featured on takeout boxes designed to keep falafel wraps intact during delivery. Khabouth and his son, Charlie, mentioned having the company’s driver test the packaging to ensure the food holds up for Uber Eats.
“We’re calling it quick service but it’s the same rice, potatoes, beef and salads at Amal,” said Khabouth, referring to Little Baba’s parent restaurant, a stylish Lebanese sit-down restaurant just south of Yorkville that opened in 2020. There, the average price of a skewer platter that comes with rice, grilled vegetables, a side of hummus and pita is $30. At Little Baba, a base combo box of rice (given a faint purple-red hue from beet juice to match the restaurant’s branding), a dip like hummus or muhammara and a skewer or falafel averages $23 with options to add more sides like fries and pickles.
“The idea behind this has been in the works for two years. It’s a sign of the times. People aren’t going out as much or spending as much. We looked at per-head spending at our restaurants and there’s been a bit of a decline every year. People are ordering less, drinking less and not being as aggressive in terms of ordering a lot of items,” said Khabouth.
He said people used to go out two or three times a week, one place where the food is great but the atmosphere is lacking, and then make up for it by going to a place where the vibe is excellent and makes up for average food. “But when you’re limited with budget constraints, you want that place to cover everything you’re looking for. I think that’s where dining is going,” he said, adding that he’ll be hiring a nutritionist to assess the menu, as healthy eating is also a part of the value diners seek out. “People want the full experience of food and quality, but some life to the place. Little Baba is going to be that place.”
To maintain prices, Khabouth said selling by volume will be the key. Two more Little Baba locations will be opening in the city by the end of the year. If the Toronto locations do well, he hopes to start a franchise.
Making the celebratory Saturday a Tuesday staple
Mimi Chinese owner and chef David Schwartz also hopes diners will go to his Yorkville restaurant more frequently this year. The restaurant reopened on Feb. 6 after a monthlong renovation of the space as well as the menu. Last year the restaurant leaned into tasting menus. Moving forward it will be more a la carte.
“We wanted to be more neighbourhood-y, a place that people can come on a Tuesday or Wednesday, not just on a celebratory Saturday,” said Schwartz. “We’re reorientating the menu a little bit, and bringing in people who can eat here three times a month. We added a grill into our kitchen to do Canadian beef steaks with Chinese sauces, like a 13-spice garlic butter. We’re excited about more familiar staples and you can still get our belt noodles. We’re also doing pre-ordering like steam crab, pork and shrimp stuffed chicken wings, and stir-fried lobster… Maybe when we started six, seven years ago we were focused 80 per cent on discovery, and now we’re shifting that a bit more.”
He said one of the biggest ongoing challenges is a growing divide between what diners think a dish should cost and how much it actually costs for a restaurant. He gives the example of a pastrami sandwich at one of his other restaurants, Linny’s Luncheonette, where he charges $16.60 for a pastrami sandwich. “That’s probably the thing we get the most complaints about, but on the back end it costs us $15 to make. As it relates to Mimi’s, we want people to feel like they’re getting their money’s worth but we’re not going to let go of paying people properly or using good ingredients.”
“This won’t be a restaurant where you can eat for $20 a head, but maybe under $100 per person,” said Schwartz. “I’ll never waver on our restaurant’s point of view, but we also need to open things out to a broad enough audience. The perceived value of a dish and its actual costs is widening, not just at my restaurant but the jerk chicken spot around the corner too. It makes it very difficult to operate a restaurant when pricing a dish based on the perceived value rather than the actual costs; it leads to an unhealthy profit and loss.”
Austin Chen, owner of the Michelin one-starred Enigma Yorkville, also announced a similar change in January. “As the new year begins, Enigma has adjusted certain menu prices in response to current economic conditions,” stated a post on its Instagram page. “The intention is to maintain quality and experience while allowing more guests to comfortably enjoy dining at Enigma…”
An eight-course tasting menu was $280. Now it’s $223, while a four-course meal is $123. Like Mimi Chinese, Enigma Yorkville will shift more onto a la carte dining. The post also listed that a dining lounge area will have an “expanded menu selection” and “slightly bigger portions” designed to get people to come back more often.
“We didn’t cut the quality or size; it’s the same standards but we just want to give more people the chance to come in to balance the costs,” said Chen. “Before, the restaurant could accommodate 30 to 40 customers every night, but now we combined the lounge and the dining room so we can fit 80-something people. It’s too early to see, but the numbers look good and we’ve gotten emails from people saying they’re looking forward to it.”
Aside from the affordability crisis making people eat out less, other factors combined to make this yet another difficult year for people working in restaurants, said Kelly Higginson, Restaurants Canada president and CEO, an advocacy group for the country’s restaurant industry. Restaurant owners still have debt from the pandemic, but now face increased commercial rent, labour and food costs. Restrictive immigration policies combined with many people leaving the restaurant industry altogether during lockdown mean fewer skilled workers able to work, especially in fine dining, which requires staff with more experience. Alcohol, a major part of fine dining, is often used as a way to balance out other operating costs, but with fewer people ordering wine, beer and cocktails, there’s less of a buffer to absorb — say — the higher prices of meat.
“We can’t pass all that down to the consumer,” she said. “We see more chains and fewer independent restaurants on the market, and a higher percentage of quick-service restaurants, which needs fewer staff than a full-service restaurant.” Higginson also said when the restaurant industry, the fourth biggest employer in the country, hires fewer people, in particular those just entering the workforce as youths or newcomers, it creates a cycle in which they in turn don’t have money to spend back into the community, such as going to a local restaurant.
“I live and breathe restaurants. I just want the culture of restaurants in the city to continue to grow and get better, but it feels like it’s coming to a head. The costs are ballooning, and something needs to be done to provide some relief if people still want cool restaurants,” said Schwartz, who marked the reopening of Mimi Chinese with a sold-out dinner featuring the Los Angeles-based chef and Top Chef winner Mei Lin. “The costs of doing business are just so high, and understandably, people are at their limit of what they can spend because wages haven’t kept up. What’s the next logical step?”
