Cindy & Louis welcome you in.
Our story starts back in the '80s with Chick 'n Deli — one of the first restaurants in Toronto to serve chicken wings, a recipe Louis brought back from Buffalo. It grew into one of the city's most successful bars, and Bistro on Avenue opened shortly after, first at 1678 Avenue Road, where it quickly became a neighbourhood classic. Cindy joined the business after a career in the exciting world of banking, trading spreadsheets for sauce pans — and she and Louis quickly became a dynamic duo. Her contributions include resurrecting the Steak Pit back from the dead after nearly 70 years in business, giving a neighbourhood landmark a second life.
We later moved up the street to 1988 Avenue Road to make room for redevelopment, and kept building from there. Louis went on to be part of what became St. Louis Bar & Grill, but chose to stay small with Bistro on Avenue — it gave us more control over the food, the quality, and the people we're cooking for. In 2025, that same thinking led us to close the bar and dining room and hyperfocus on what we do best: the food. Today we're a small, family-run restaurant with a lot of history and even more character behind every order.
