Award-winning restaurant from renowned Toronto chef has permanently closed

A celebrated Toronto restaurant that once brought life to a now-buzzy neighbourhood has quietly closed its doors for good.

It’s easy, in the year 2025, to take the cool kid mecca that is Ossington Avenue for granted, with its deluge of designer stores and swanky eateries all populated by people whose rolled-up wool beanies probably cost more than your weekly grocery budget.

It hasn’t always been that way, though. 

It was only, really, in the late 90s that things really started to heat up on Ossington which, prior to that, had been little more than a dumpy North-South artery in the west end.

As, slowly but surely, new life began to crop up on the street, it came in the form of restaurants — a lot of them — and, by the 2010s, the blueprint for the Ossington we now know and love had been set in stone.

One restaurant that played a particularly powerful role in cementing Ossington’s reputation as one of the coolest streets in the world, according to Time Out, was Boehmer, the first restaurant by larger-than-life (literally, he’s 6’7″,) Toronto chef and Iron Chef Canada winner, Paul Boehmer.

Opening its doors in 2010, the restaurant featured its fair share of rich, intricate dishes, crafted with absolute care an attention amid refreshingly minimal (by 2010 standards, at least) interiors that wholistically contributed to a truly singular dining experience.

Just last year, the restaurantreceived a DiRoNa award, which celebrates and honours exceptional restaurants across North America.

Suddenly, though, and without any notice on the restaurant’s or Paul’s behalf, Boehmer is gone, and has seemingly been closed since late November, according to a comment on the restaurant’s Instagram account from Alex Mayhew, an artist who frequently showcased his work at the restaurant.

While there’s no word on what will be replacing Boehmer, and whether it’ll be a new concept by the chef or undergoing a complete change of ownership, it does strike as a particularly poignent reminder that, on a street where “trendy” is the motto, even the biggest players have an expiration date.

At the time of publication, Boehmer has not responded to blogTO’s request for comment on the reasons behind the closure and whether Boehmer, or any other concept from the chef, for that matter, are on the way in the near future.

Boehmer was formerly located at 93 Ossington.