East of Eden

I found myself early Saturday morning at St. Lawrence Market. Though I've lived in Toronto for decades, this might be only my second time here. After wandering around for a bit, I finally found Scheffler's Delicatessen. Despite the sticker shock, I got 100g ($35) of Iberico Ham as an early Christmas present for a family member who raved about it after a recent trip to Spain.

I grabbed 2 bagels with cream cheese ($2.86/each) from St. Urbain. I hope that the original location in Montréal is better because these were underwhelming. But I had a number of errands to finish elsewhere before 11 am. It wasn't just to take advantage of the 2 hour travel limit of a TTC transit fare but also to get to a movie at the Paradise Theatre.

I had spent many evenings at this movie theatre at Bloor and Dovercourt as well as The Royal on College St. After the Festival chain of repertory theatres closed, The Royal and The Revue stuck around due to neighbourhood support. But The Paradise has been shuttered since 2006. After laying derelict for more than a decade, construction started up a few years ago. A passion project of mogul Moray Tawse, he has likely sunk tens of millions into its full renovation.

Stepping inside the main entrance, everything was both 1937 retro and spanking new. The seats were rich leather and shiny wood. This might be a problem because people were already dirtying up the seats in front of them: cross-legged sitting and muddy winter shoes were the culprit. The screen here was never large and the architects didn't expand it. In fact, they shrank most things including reducing seating to 200 from 600 to get more leg-room.

The movie itself was the excellent drama Marriage Story. I could see it on Netflix but there was something wonderful about seeing movies on the big screen. In fact, I intend to see many movies here, as well as live shows, and visit the restaurant when it opens. Mr. Tawse will likely never make back what he poured into this place, but hopefully my patronage (and optimistically the rest of the neighbourhood) will cover operating expenses.