Set Menu: 416 Snack Bar
Set Menu: “a limited menu offered for a set number of courses at a fixed price”
Or, in our words: You let us do what we do best – order for the table.
Welcome to the first instalment of Set Menu, an ongoing series in which we (hi) save you the time (and indecision) of ordering so you can focus on what matters: eating, gossiping, and eating.
We’ve selected a place near and dear to us for our inaugural SM (we nym, BTW):
416 Snack Bar
Feel free to save this so you can whip it out next time you’re there.
If you know us — six of you excluding our mothers — then you know there’s no menu we’re more qualified to ‘set’ than 416’s.
The Backstory:
Six? Or something? Years ago, the two of us boldly (and foolishly) attempted to go OUTout. Standing in a sticky-in-the-bad-way bar on King West, we quickly realized we just aren’t a duo built for ‘club bars’. You know the ones – neon signs, floors decorated with vodka soda limes, and crowds that confuse booths as platforms for standing and not seats for sitting…
((No hate to anyone that is, we just like to hear each other when we talk))
So:
We sat (another of our specialities), googled, found something called a SNACK bar, and hopped in an Uber to 181 Bathurst.
Like an epiphany, it dawned on us walking into 416 for the first time: we weren’t bar girls; we’re snack bar girls.
We sat at a community table, ordered the bottle, made one-night-only friends with the couples on both sides of us (we have the grainy film photos to prove it), and accepted round after round of mysteriously-funded tequila shots delivered in teeny, tiny porcelain cups.
We’ve never looked back.
How to Have (Almost) as Much Fun as Us:
As all the best ones do, 416's menu changes with the seasons. These are our staples:
Oysters
You can add a bottle of bubbles for fifty-five bones! This is the item we notoriously order whether we are two (2) or 6 people - this is usually met with mild objections that disappear by the first sip.
Special Thing - Its literally a special thing…
Steak Tartare
Octos Bravas
Korean Fried Chicken (minimum two orders)
Any Steamed Bun — trust us, it’s always worth it.
& like we've said before: Order Dessert. Do it. This ones called the snackers bar bite
Countless return trips included:
Discovering the mysterious “phone room”
One time after a Lumineers concert, before the world shut down,
“Don't order the bottle”, “We'll get the bottle!”
Being denied the purchase of their plates!
The inexplicable rounds of free shots (criteria still unknown).
Watching someone fall out the front window “table” in the summer.
Sitting at nearly every makeshift patio and street table they’ve set up during and since that pandemic summer.
If it isn’t obvious, we fall more in love with this place every time.
If we’ve ever brought you along, just know that you’re a special thing to us :)