The Four Seasons brand was born in Toronto but its first-ever hotel was looking a bit tired, especially as so many shiny arrivals were opening in the city. So the company spent $500 million on a new flagship, and from the moment it opened in 2012, soaring high above the Victorian houses of Yorkville, it has felt relaxed, refined, spot-on.
The lobby is divided into gallery-like spaces with velvet chairs and wood-panelled walls covered in Canadian Modernist art. The rooms are not only beautiful (the half-moon corner sofas are ingenious) but also have all the five-star toys, such as TVs embedded in bathroom mirrors and i-Pads to order room service or book a treatment in Toronto’s biggest spa.
The menu in Café Boulud is sassy French (lobster salad with coconut shavings; an exquisite grapefruit givre with halva candy floss); in the new Buca Yorkville, the look is distinctly Milanese but the menu is more coastal (the salumi de mari is a favourite).
