THE GROVER ~ Toronto ON

I only had part of an evening, but I was going through Toronto and my 'Halifax Crew' (I call them this because when we all used to work together we went to a conference in Halifax and tore up the city. We do not collectively call ourselves this, and I don't think I've spoken it out loud to them, but this is externally what I call us) we up to the last minute challenge of getting together for dinner. Since we all seemed to like it, and it's close to 2 of 3 of their homes, we went back to The Grover.

We've been to The Grover before, back when I was just about to move from Toronto to Ottawa in 2016 - I didn't do a full review, just a mini one in my Year End Reviews, and I had the wings and they were pretty good.

History note - I was curious why the place was called The Grover and their logo has a telephone on it. Turns out they are named for the Grover Exchange Building which is the next building north, where Bell Telephone of Canada company had Canada's first automatic telephone exchange. Neat!

Heather, Helen, Me, Adam. Not clearly seen but present is little baby Miri.

The Grover is a very friendly, neighbourhood pub that want's to create a family feeling. Helen even brought her Baby Miri with us and she slept soundly the whole time, even with a crowd watching I want to say a hockey game? Some sort of sporting event anyways. Our waitress was Christine who was great. To accommodate our party of 4.5 she brought over a table and took good care of us. She brought us all waters, and re-filled my Diet Coke as necessary.

A happy coincidence was that we were there on Wing Night. Heather was coming from a work dinner so she didn't eat, but the rest of us all ended up getting wings.

In terms of the review, and I'm not too sorry about this, but I spent more time engaged with friends I've missed and chatting than taking photos for the review. I usually snap between 10-20 pics and edit out the best, but I was having such a good time that I barely got the basics. Sorry, but not sorry as friends are more important.

A usual order of wings comes with a choice of fries or veggie sticks and dip. But since this was wing night (Tuesdays, dine-in only with beverage purchase), they are only the pound of wings. A pound of wing here is roughly 7 or 8 wings.

I didn't take a photo to gauge the size of the wings, so I dove into my archives and found this photo. It was of a Hot wing from 2016, but you get the gist. The wings are about a medium in length and they are about a medium in meatiness too.

The wings are deep fried and are nice and crispy, however on this trip Helen correctly pointed out that they were a big overcooked. That didn't make them bad, but the meat was a bit tough. The sauce also had an almost baked on quality, but the wings were well coated in sauce.

Whisky BBQ

I decided to stray from my usual Hot since I had had it the last time, and while good, was just cayenne hot sauce. Whisky BBQ sounded interesting and I'm glad I got it. They were slightly sweet, but more of a savoury BBQ sauce. They were also sticky and thick. It was really good and had an actual BBQ kind of feel.

SUICIDE

Got this sauce on the side. It was a nice red sauce and you could see chili seeds floating around. It was cayenne based, but it might have had scotch bonnet peppers in it? It had a nice burn and was surprisingly a real suicide sauce.

Blurry secret photo I took. Adam is enjoying his wings, not angry, as it might appear.

FINAL SCORE:

The Grover is a cool little pub in the Upper Beaches of Toronto. Very welcoming place, friendly staff and good food. The wings were good and I would definitely get my combo of Whisky BBQ and side Suicide again. It was really great that my friends could all get together, catch up and enjoy some wings while I blew through the city!

The Grover
676 Kingston Road, Toronto ON
thegrover.ca