In those days Toronto had a French restaurant, La Chaumiere, a spaghetti house, George’s, and a fish restaurant, The Mermaid, several steak houses and, of course–the backbone of Canadian dining since the last spike was driven into the Trans-Canada Railroad bed–the dining rooms of the major hotels, the railroad hotels. And the Park Plaza. Most of the other eating places in those days competed in offering the cheapest breakfast in town. Now there are sixteen Yellow Pages of restaurants offering a range of cuisines from couscous to curried goat, a choice as varied as that on the West Side of New York below 120th street. Most of the dining rooms of the sixties are gone now, but Harry Barberian’s has kept its place of honor among the local steak-eaters, and visiting actors still recommend it to each other. An earnest discussion of how long the restaurant had been there, and how much a twelve-ounce rib steak had cost the first time they had been there, and when that first time was in each case, took Salter and Marinelli through the awkward time, until the predinner scotch took hold and they could come to the point, whatever that was.
