Breakfast for dinner booms in uptown
[attach]2706[/attach]Tony Cappellano didn’t invent the concept of breakfast for dinner, but that doesn’t mean his latest business idea is poached.
The owner of Boom Breakfast and Co has recently extended the hours of his Yonge and Eglinton location from 4 to 8 p.m., meaning eggs are on the menu for supper.
“I think by 8 p.m. most serious diners are done,” Cappellano says.
The North Toronto was the best location to try out the new concept, he says.
“It’s one of the questions we keep getting, is when we’re going to open later.
“It’s a totally different world up there,” he says of the families, elderly people, and business people the uptown location attracts.
He would know.
Though he’s constantly shuttling between the three locations and his St. Clair Avenue West office, Cappellano has always been a downtown boy.
His restaurant roots began on College Street 25 years ago when he was in his 20s. He and some pals opened a dessert and coffee place called Sweet Dreams before those types of places became trendy, he says.
When Little Italy started getting popular a dozen years later, they sold.
After a stint at a big restaurant chain and doing real estate out of the country for a few years, Cappallano came back to Toronto. He saw an old restaurant on College Street called the Sunset restaurant, and it was for sale.
“It had been there forever,” he says. “I did everything I could to purchase that.”
Boom was born, followed by a St. Clair Avenue West location and then the Eglinton Avenue West one. He runs the businesses with his two sisters, who each own a location, and another partner at the Eglinton location.
Old-fashioned diners, he says, have never really died. The trick is to keep them modern-looking and do away with the old-fashioned meals like shepherd’s pie.
Breakfast can be great choice for dinner because it’s healthy, he adds. You can throw everything but the kitchen sink into an omelet and the end of a week, he says, but you have to be up for it.
“It’s a pain in the ass to make at home.”
If thoughts of breakfast after noon makes your stomach flip like a pancake, lunch and dinner-esque options like burgers are still on the menu, along with daily features, like special soups, pastas, sandwiches and salads.
The extended hours, and a liquor licence in the works and expected soon, should provide some extra zip in the form of wine and whatnot, to complement those omelets.