Toronto’s newest weekend food adventure has opened at Exhibition Place at 15 Saskatchewan Road: Grand Bizarre Supper Club! This weekly dinner experience invites guests to its vast open dining hall, filled with live dancers, and aerial artist entertainment, without having to worry about difficult bill splitting at the end of the meal. Torontonicity was invited to the opening night on December 1, 2018 to see first-hand how the previous Muzik nightclub space has been transformed!
Grand Bizarre is a 500-seat dinner venue that uses chips (similar to those used at a casino) as currency. Guests can decide from a variety of chef stations, located around the periphery of the seating area, for what they’d like to have or try for dinner. The supper club is open only on Saturday nights from 8 p.m. to 2 a.m., making it an ideal event for large groups of friends and families to get together. If you reserve in advance, they can even host parties of up to 100!
The live entertainment at Grand Bizarre changes throughout the evening from a live DJ, to salsa or jazz dancers scattered throughout the venue on raised dancing platforms. The ceilings are quite high, and have been made to hold suspended platforms for aerial artists to perform impressive and incredibly graceful choreographed moved just above the crowd.
For the food itself, the chef stations are quite varied with pizza, steak, sushi, and Vietnamese options just to name the more popular options. We started with a slice of Blondies Pizza, the Scarlet Sunrise: mushrooms pickled onions, truffle butter, and baby kale. If you want a safe option, and feeling the need for comfort food, this is a good choice as the flavours go well together and aren’t too challenging for the palette.
A station that had a long line for most of the night was the Fried Chicken Bao station! This had that signature slightly sweet bao bun, with crispy fried chicken – and quite the generous serving of chicken chunks – served with pickles and a mild mayo based spice sauce. I would recommend this meal for anyone who wanted to have a beer kind of night, as it does come with a side of chips that make it a bit more casual.
Another very popular item was the sushi chefs station! Guests could be seen enjoying the salmon flower throughout the venue, along with their twelve piece sushi dinner. The twelve piece meal could be enjoyed by one, but is quite ideal for a small group that just wants a couple bites to share so that they can enjoy a few more options from other stations.
All the sushi is made fresh on the spot, so do expect a bit of a wait at this station. Keep an eye on the chef, as you might pick up a few tips and tricks for your next at home sushi dinner!
If you want something that’s a bit more vibrant in flavour, check out the Hamachi Crudo that came with watermelon squares, jalapeno, and pumpkin seeds. The jalapenos were pickled, removing their heat but maintaining their bright flavour. I have to admit that the pops of colours in this dish were what first caught my eye, and that absolutely paralleled the flavours of this dish!
The Steak Frite station served skewers of steak with potato chunks, and a chimichurri style sauce drizzled on top. The sauce elevated the heavier flavours of steak and potato making it lighter on the palette. I would recommend grabbing something like this earlier in the evening, as some of the chefs stations bring out their ingredients right at the start and then spend time constructing dishes over the course of the evening.
The dessert station is filled with baked goods and Cheesecake Factory slices, which is a nice way to try the signature cakes without having to stand in line for hours and hours at Yorkdale. I went for a decadent, rich, and moist chocolate cupcake though, as space was limited after all those dishes!
Grand Bizarre Supper Club plans on changing its chefs stations monthly, meaning that there are only four times a month that visitors can have the same dishes. That’s a pretty quick turnaround time for menus! This means that you can visit during the holiday season, and then in the new year, and have an entirely new selection to choose from for dinner for a whole new flavour experience. Check out Grand Bizarre Supper Club’s FAQ section if you have questions about parking or want to make a reservation. Enjoy!
