Back in January, Hilary Duff asked Toronto one very important question: what should she eat? Ahead of her Small Rooms, Big Nerves shows, she posted her “first-ever mukbang” from London’s Beigel Bake, digging into a salt beef bagel and asking, “What do I need to try in Toronto?” Torontonians and local restaurants had plenty of answers, but a polar vortex meant Duff never got to eat her way through the city. Now she’s returned to Toronto and gets a second chance. And we’ve done our research. Since January, Duff has revealed plenty about her palate through Last Meals, Hot Ones, taste tests and mukbangs. The verdict? She likes things salty, saucy and very specific.
Last Meal picks include caviar-topped Ruffles, a mustard-fried In-N-Out cheeseburger with grilled onions and extra pickles, Petit Trois fries, a fountain Diet Coke, an extra-dirty blue cheese martini, corn agnolotti, her mom’s chicken and dumplings, pineapple upside-down cake and Cadbury Mini Eggs.
Add in her love for New York’s Russ & Daughters and Jack’s Wife Freda, where her orders involve smoked fish and decadent notes, and we think we’ve cracked the code. Duff is a true savoury girl. She likes salt. She adores mustard. She eats pickles, smoked fish, caviar and scary dirty martinis. Toronto is one city that can work with that. So Hilary, if you’re reading this, here’s what you need to try.
1. Linny’s Luncheonette
If a salt beef bagel was good enough to inspire Duff’s first mukbang, Linny’s Luncheonette is a non-negotiable. The Ossington deli, sister to the steakhouse next door, serves the pastrami that made chef David Schwartz’s Linny’s an instant hit in late 2024. After a year and a half of perfecting the recipe, Schwartz brines the brisket, seasons it with salt, pepper and secret spices, then smokes it for up to 15 hours before slicing it thick and stacking it high with mustard. Start there, but don’t stop: the potato knish with puréed potato, fried onion and gravy is a sleeper hit, as is the smoked sea bass sandwich with mayonnaise, watercress and hot bonnet hot sauce, or the potato and pickle sandwich with cream cheese, dill pickles, cucumber and a crispy potato latke.
2. Primrose Bagels & Schmaltz Appetizing
As previously mentioned, Duff has documented some of her favourite New York eats, too. Her go-to at Russ & Daughters is an everything bagel with whitefish, cream cheese and tomato, and Toronto has a few spots to scratch that itch. Primrose Bagels is the obvious first stop, with its retro New York-style neighbourhood bodega vibe and hand-rolled bagels. The shop also went viral for its Tuna Melt Bagel Saturdays, featuring tuna salad, marble cheddar, pickles, crispy onions and Spanish paprika. But if Duff is strictly a whitefish girl, Schmaltz Appetizing on Dupont is the move, with bagels, schmears, gravlax, smoked whitefish, pickles, capers and onions.
3. Rose’s Pantry
You, Ms. Duff, have the privilege of trying one of our newest additions to the city’s food scene. As per your Last Meal, it’s clear the egg-ick is no match for you. While Toronto may not have an oeuf mayo from Rory’s place, Rose’s Pantry on Harbord Street may offer something better. Rose’s is a new daytime pantry concept from Maven chef-owner Shauna Godfrey. Her specialty surrounds comforting, nostalgic, and simple home-cooked foods that feel perfectly safe in your hands. It may not be the exact jammy French egg you’re looking for, but her dill-forward egg salad sandwich made with both soft and hard-boiled eggs atop Maven’s famous challah bread could make a case for a switch on your Last Meal.
4. Olde York Tavern
This neighbourhood wine Tavern is a 50-year-old romantic diner recently revamped that feels like it could fit right in with Duff’s favourites. The French onion dip with house-made chips is the immediate starter. Duff’s liking for elevated classics, the intersection of luxury and nostalgia, is perfectly at home with this dish, and it’s the sort of thing I imagine disappearing not-so-surprisingly quickly at Duff’s table. However, Olde York is also where I’d start leaning into her Jack’s Wife Freda order, one that includes fried eggplant and zucchini, and Fish a la plancha. Here, I’d have to recommend the salmon tartine or the black cod. This tavern has a unique ability to take something that you’ve eaten before and transform it into something you’ve never imagined.
5. Emma’s Country Kitchen
There’s one item on Duff’s Last Meal that Toronto simply can’t replicate: her mom’s chicken and dumplings. For everyone who isn’t Hilary Duff, though, we need someone to take on chicken and dumplings. The dish is essentially a chicken pot pie, with tender shredded chicken simmered in a rich, savoury broth and topped with soft dough cooked right in it. While we can’t give Duff her mom’s version, we can give her a taste of Southern comfort at this St. Clair West brunch institution, where buttermilk biscuits are smothered in creamy sausage gravy and served with two eggs. It’s not home cooking, but it could hit the same comforting spot for our Texas-born pop star. And the famous cinnamon bun pancakes wouldn’t hurt on the side.
6. Powder Room
This one can double as a post-show celebration spot, as well as a late-night bite. One thing evident in Duff’s preferences is her urge to blend the two parts of herself that exist. Her country-girl palette, with the elevated worldly adult that’s grown out of her. Her food preferences tend to reflect it; her dream meal begins with Ruffles, freme fraiche, and caviar. I take Ruffles, and I raise you chicken nuggets. Powder Room in Yorkville is an upscale cocktail lounge with live music that serves those same high-low dishes Duff gravitates towards. Here, Duff could toast to a successful night in Toronto with a glass of champagne, free-range chicken nuggets with thin golden crusts, served with a 30g tin of caviar, chives, and crème fraîche.
7. Matty’s Patty’s
You cannot come to Toronto without trying a Matty Matheson restaurant. The Queen West Burger Shop, opened by The Bear’s Matty Matheson, brought smash burgers to popularity in this city in 2020. What originally started as a pop-up in 2018 grew to fame in this city with its ultrathin patties on perfectly soft buns. Toronto may not have In-N-Out, but for the girl who loves a mustard-fried burger, Matheson’s specialty sauce tastes like an elevated Big Mac sauce with a heightened mustard-forward note. If that’s not enough, the Matty is a 7 oz thick-cut patty served pink, topped with a mustard sauce.
8. Slice of Life & Library Bar
Now we arrive at perhaps the most important thing Duff has told us: she loves an extra-dirty, filthy, stinky martini. Her usual is made with Grey Goose and three blue cheese-stuffed olives, but Toronto can take things even further. At Slice of Life on College Street, the blue cheese martini puts the cheese in the drink itself. Owner Eric Pan’s deliberately polarizing cocktail combines Ramsbury gin and blue cheese, which are sous-vide together, frozen and centrifuged to intensify the flavour. It’s then stirred with dry vermouth and Pernod and finished with shiitake oil, caramelized onion oil and an olive. Hilary, you’re going to want this one.