Since I work nights, dinner for me is around 7am. Now my problem in Toronto: what good restaurants are open at that early hour? Hence I end up at timmies more often than I want to. Or Zet's on Airport Road--best burger I've had in Toronto!

30% + Torontonians work nights--so where's our 7am falafel fix going to be? :(

the whole thing started with me talking about my experiences moving from montreal to ottawa. toronto never came into it.

This is true. I never even singled out Toronto. I even hinted at the fact that its central areas are an exception to the rule (similar to parts of NYC, Miami, SF, etc.)

I've lived in Montreal and agree it's a late night dinner thing there. However, Toronto really has changed this past decade. Certainly south of Bloor the condo kids and million dollar home owner yuppies pack in the thousands--yes, that's 1000s!--of trendy restaurants and resto-bars/pubs into the midnight zone.

I can think of over 500 trendy restaurants I've never eaten in--mostly due to the fact I'm either asleep or at work, and perhaps because I'm just a cheap bastard.

Perhaps, but one thing is certain: speculating as to why is only going to get us into even more trouble!

You did in a thread not to long ago. I remember because it was so humourous.

Rosemont is the Venice of Quebec.

Nah, that's the breakfast of champions in St. Henri.

Giudecca is the Rosemont of Venice.

Prove it.

On the totally banal topic of dinner times...

I think that our globalized + PC era has led to a widely accepted mantra that, at least when it comes to big cities, everything everywhere is basically equivalent to everything else, everywhere else.

It becomes especially acute when people compare large Canadian cities, or so it seems.

But in the era of Inuit kids dancing to Gangnam Style K-pop, there are still major differences all over the place. Not everything everywhere is equivalent. In some cases it's better, in some it's worse and in many it's really neither, but just different.

What's ironic about the "civic equivalency" claims on a forum such as this one is that an extremely high percentage of SSP forumers could never accept the idea that a sophisticated and satisfying lifestyle could fairly easily be lived in many of Canada's smaller cities.

Indeed.

Retirees in Florida eat at 5-6. But everywhere else they eat 7-9 (and later). Like even Cleveland.

BTW some of my faves in Toronto include: Farmhouse Tavern, Hopgood's Foodliner, Fat Pasha.

People in Ottawa eat dinner very early compared to other Anglo Canadians. For reasons I don't quite understand, Ottawa overall is a very 'early' city. A place where people get up at five, get to work for seven thirty, leave work at four, eat at five, go to bed at nine.

You see it in traffic patterns too. The worst rush hour traffic and the worst transit congestion is always for those who work 7:30-3:30 or 8-4. I work 9:30-5:30 and the buses I take to and from work are basically empty, but on the odd day that I leave work at four, they're packed.

Ottawa has an odd commuting pattern. As far as the public service goes, support staff tend to start and end their days considerably earlier than does the executive cadre. Longer commutes to cheaper housing perhaps? :shrug:

I was told by a kid who did a year at a German university back in the 1990s that certain cafes there had two unique forms of breakfast for the late night crowd:

Weiss Frühstück: coffee with milk and a light cigarette
Schwarz Frühstück: black coffee and an unfiltered cigarette

Not for the faint of heart, but arguably healthier than the Vachon cake and Pepsi!

Shameful admission: I've always been a late sleeper and riser, so breakfast is always quick for me. One summer in Winnipeg when I was in my early 20s my breakfasts often consisted of a Crispy Crunch washed down with some kind of sickly sweet orange drink (zero actual juice, natch) carefully juggled and balanced over and on the gas tank of my motorcycle as I raced along the Disraeli Freeway to my job at a window factory.

Good times.

Arisu closed very recently, turning into a Cash Money almost overnight. There were two Jina's for awhile, with the original on King Street in Portsmouth Village, but after the illegal workers were caught that location changed hands and is now called Eunice Sushi. Not bad, but you have to keep asking for soya sauce, they don't have bottles on the tables.

The sushi and other Asian restaurants likely only exist because of Queens and the international student population. In fact one of the Asian restaurants, Green Tray, normally closes during May-August (though this year it did not reopen in September). Once you're away from downtown, you won't find much sushi in the Township, in Rideau Heights, or Kingscourt - instead you'll find the likes of Arby's, Raxx, or On Larocks Bar and Grill. Though the Township has a few good places too. (My least favourite restaurant here is Jiffy Grill.)

I've had a schwarma in Ottawa once, and it was the best I'd ever had. It was somewhere near the airport but I forget where exactly.

Being haughty about what time people sit down to eat dinner is about as petty as it gets.

I'm sure Andalucians eat dinner at 10pm because, historically, it was too damn hot before air conditioning and not because they are at the apex of human cultural development.

English Canadians: be proud of what time you eat dinner and don't apologize if you eat early. If the only spot available is for 6, I usually make that reservation. As long as the kitchen is open and they're able to serve you, who gives a shit?

FWIW, culturally, Montreal, especially the east of Mtl, is extremely comparable on nearly all counts to Venise(-en-Quebec).

Who said that there was a correlation between how late a given culture eats dinner and how "culturally developed" it is?

If anything, it's actually the opposite. You'll find as a correlation (at least in the Western world) that the later people have dinner in a given culture, the more likely people are to, for example, jaywalk all over, drive like maniacs, arrive late to appointments/meetings even after committing to a fixed hour for showing up, etc. All traits that I would consider culturally to be slightly barbaric, not refined.

Jaywalking sure isn't "the apex of human cultural development"...