Irie Restaurant in the good old days

End of an Irie

Carl Cassell takes his food joint underground

BY: Felicia Carty

Many Torontonians reminisce of late summer nights at Irie, a restaurant just west of Bathurst on Queen Street, in Toronto’s downtown core. Whether for poetry jams, live music or just a plate of hot food, it held its ground for just about a decade as one of the city’s premier social spots for the urban crowd.

But according to its hip owner, Carl Cassell, change is the one constant in the universe.

“Irie served its purpose for an entire generation of cats who needed access to the walls and to the stage; to show their stuff and to be themselves,” Cassell says. “Now we’re all older and doing different things. There needs to be a different vibe.”

The word Irie is a portmanteau derived from the Rastafari practice of referring to oneself as the I, and combined with the verb to relax, as in to be at peace within. The name succinctly describes the original purpose of the space. “It was built to be a good times summer spot and it worked on that premise,” says Cassell, who originally hails from Jamaica.

But good times aside, that philosophy now wanes in Cassell’s eyes. He says he recognized the changing market, and the need for him to change with it. “The difference between Picasso and some other guy is, Picasso understood the time he was living in,” Cassell says. “Queen West is now a youthful strip; 10 years ago, it was not what it is today.”

So Cassell has torn down the walls of Irie to rebuild and open his doors for a new generation.

Mirroring another restaurant he opened in 2006; Harlem, located on Richmond Street East; he is now tailoring the new building on the resting ground of Irie to what he envisions the future of Toronto to be.

“The idea behind Harlem is that there is a critical mass of artistic talent developing in Toronto that mirrors the Harlem of the 1920s &emdash; when the black man was becoming his own individual,” Cassell says, “Harlem Underground [his new restaurant] is created in the context of what Toronto is becoming.”

Cassell has built Harlem Underground to be a multidisciplinary space, carefully constructed to allow parties, live performances and dining to merge harmoniously under one roof ; a conundrum that Irie could not conquer due to it’s physical limitations. Most importantly, Harlem Underground, co-owned by chef Anthony Mair, will serve as a creative hub for what he says is a new wave of artists and intellectuals who are beginning to reside close to one another within the downtown core.

“I don’t want to conquer Scarborough or be in Mississauga. I want to be downtown,” he says. “That is my one requirement, to be in the core, motivated to do what I do; and the one motivation that brings me any joy is to change it.

“This is the most generic thing that I’ve ever done, creating one thing in two different places,” he continues, “but it was just such a good idea.”

Staying in line with the philosophy of change, you can expect a new idea influencing the cuisine of Harlem Underground…. Well, sort of.

“Harlem is a mishmash of Caribbean and Southern cuisine. Essentially it’s all the same; black people in all different places tend to cook the same way,” Cassell says. “When I opened Irie, it was my own perspective of my own cuisine. Ten years later, I realize my cuisine is everything.”

So perhaps those who are feeling a pang of sadness at the end of an era need not mourn. The spirit of Irie has not been lost, only reincarnated into a new philosophy, and dedicated to a new generation.

- Harlem Underground, 745 Queen St. West, 416-366-4743