One of Toronto’s most talked-about “tiny restaurant” concepts may have shut down.
Com Nuoc was a Vietnamese takeout spot operating out of a red shipping container in Riverside, and it now appears that the Queen St E eatery has closed just months after debuting in July 2025.
While there’s been no public statement confirming the news, the restaurant’s web presence has largely vanished and Google lists Com Nuoc as “temporarily closed”, and both its website and Instagram page have quietly disappeared. On DoorDash, the restaurant’s page says it’s “not active” and “not available…right now.”
When it opened last summer, Com Nuoc quickly became the go-to place to grab tasty Vietnamese dishes in Toronto’s east end. Customers ordered everything from rice and noodle dishes to the signature pork-chop-rice plate (cơm thịt nướng), as well as sides like spring rolls and even an egg “meatloaf,” complemented with sauces made from scratch. Part of the restaurant’s charm included ordering from a tiny service window tucked away in a laneway setup behind a Riverside hair salon. For customers who wanted to dine out, there was even a rooftop patio on top of the container!
If anything, the recent news is another reminder of just how tough the market has become. A recent analysis from the Toronto Association of Business Improvement Areas shows that restaurants are being squeezed by rising labour costs, climbing commercial rents, and price-conscious consumers who are dining out less, while a forecast from Dalhousie University’s Agri-Food Analytics Lab estimates that about 7,000 restaurants closed across Canada last year, with another 4,000 closures projected by 2026.
And while some restaurants are closing outright, others are following a familiar Toronto trend: choosing to reboot under a new concept, location or menu.
