It featured a large image of Garfield pointing at an even-larger photo of Mazri. It started in 2019, when an ad for GarfieldEats suddenly appeared on a vacant storefront in Toronto’s West End. And while the legions of GarfieldEats obsessives have mostly moved on, social media is littered with fascinating detritus from the restaurant’s 18 months in business. “Most memorable restaurant” is not the same as “best restaurant,” but it’s hard to find a Toronto dining institution that’s made a bigger splash on the internet, spawning its own short-lived subculture that fixated upon the restaurant and the every move of its enigmatic owner and founder, Nathen Mazri. This an appalling choice for various reasons, perhaps especially because the restaurant’s entire raison d’etre was derived from the 43-year-old Jim Davis comic strip Garfield, which follows a fat orange cat who loves lasagna and hates Mondays. Yet ask me to name the city’s most memorable restaurant and I wouldn’t hesitate to offer a somewhat shameful answer: the now-defunct, lasagna-slinging GarfieldEats.
Toronto is a world-class food city, overflowing with top-quality dining options ranging from dim sum to curry-stuffed Caribbean roti.
