We took some photos of the menu for your reference. You can also stop in and taste for yourselves! Let us know if you do go: we have some holiday parties this weekend, so won’t be able to try right away.

There may be some renovations required before they open. We’ll keep you posted, and if you know anything, pass it along.

We know there are a lot of pet owners in this neighborhood, and it seems like a needed addition to the Dundas strip.

Eagle’s Nest is on the south side at 1199 Dundas Street W, just next door to The Garrison, and serves coffee and espresso drinks, pastries, and ice cream. As it was the morning, we had some coffee and pain au chocolat. The pastries come from Circles and Squares, which supplies a lot of the fine coffee shops in Toronto with tasty treats, and they were tasty!

There were at least 12 flavors of ice cream available for scooping into sugar or wafer cones, including Caribou Tracks, Heavenly Hash and Espresso Robusto. It’s the perfect time of year for ice cream, and not a lot of places to get it nearby. Stop in and say hello to friendly owner, Claudio, and try some for yourself!

If you are free right now, head over there (until 4PM) to meet Gabriella and the chef, Rod, and try some of their delicious pasta. We did that, had a cappuccino and some pasta with pesto, and learned a lot about this new addition to our neighborhood.

More Than Pasta is the retail shop for Hollywood Foods, which makes pasta and prepared pasta dishes, some of which are available at Fiesta Farms. At 121 Ossington, you’ll be able to get a wide variety of products like these, plus some sauces like pesto and others.

We took some photos of the food, the front of the house, and the kitchen, including their older pasta machine. They are going to replace that soon and make more than double the pasta.

They still have some paperwork to complete with the city before their grand opening, but stop in and see what we’re talking about. We consider this opening a neighborhood enhancement, another daytime addition, and a welcome option for good food to bring home for dinner.

This year brought a lot of new businesses and faces to Ossington, all of which we welcomed, and many of which we covered. We look forward to frequenting many new shops, galleries, restaurants and more to the strip in the year ahead.

Let’s start with February 2010 – Angell Gallery moved from Queen Street West onto Dundas. Angell took over the space of Lennox Contemporary in February 2010, and has hosted a plethora of exhibits ever since.

There was a bustle of activity and then Bohmer launched in March 2010. The beautiful space and delicious food has led more people to Toronto’s new “Restaurant Row.”  March also saw the opening of “Oz Boutique,” an art and design hub which has housed Evan Biddell’s clothing line, but focuses on photographer Joe Fuda’s work and curated exhibits.

We started April with City Store Grocery opening on Dundas, and Crepes and More on Ossington. 8 months later, both are still open and catering to the daytime crowd in our area. That month’s other opening was the weekend-only bar, OurHouse.

May brought pop-ups to Ossington with the short-lived but fun launch of 1st Run Art Gallery, which featured the work of it’s creators. In June, LAB Consignment opened with a splash, sharing space with Silver Falls Vintage on Ossington near Queen. In other just as popular fashion news, TOPSHOP came to Toronto by way of London, and opened within Jonathan + Olivia’s space.

The lazy days of summer were anything but for entrepreneurs on Ossington when several businesses opened their doors, starting with Crafted by Te Aro, a coffee shop from Leslieville branching out. Another import from within Toronto was Goed Eten, which started serving coffee, waffles, poutine and more this July.

For a very short time this summer, Salt opened, then closed. Now it is finally open again for good, serving Portuguese wines and tapas.

This fall we supported the opening of Beau Lieu Bistro at 59 Ossington and also Telegramme Prints and Framing at 194 Ossington. O’born Contemporary is also a new gallery to the strip.

We don’t want to forget all the new openings on Dundas (part of that “Ossington triangle” mentioned earlier) that we covered a couple of months ago about Dundas’ evolution: Bunda Lounge, Churchill, Brockton General, Academy of Lions, Port, and Enoteca Sociale.

Finally, let’s look forward to the continuing growth with new places set to open soon: Pasta and More, Fish Bar, Lakeview Convenience and The Saint are the ones we know about, but we’re sure there’ll be more. Here’s to a happy and healthy Ossington Village in 2011.

What was once a mixture of Portuguese sports bars, hair salons and video stores is now a booming strip of fine dining restaurants, hipster bars, and a new gym. Let’s explore Dundas just east and west of Ossington.

While some of the better known spaces have been around for years, such as The Communist’s Daughter and The Lakeview, many of the go-to places opened less than 2 years ago: The Red Light, Show and Tell Gallery and Opera Bob’s come to mind. Continuing that trend, The Garrison took over a huge sports bar and turned it into one of the better live music venues in the city, with on-the-verge acts playing most every night. Enoteca Sociale is an expansion of Ossington’s Pizzeria Libretto family, and the rustic Italian wine bar is packing them in after approximately 6 months in business. Loop Gallery opened a year ago just west of Dovercourt, adding to Dundas West’s cachet in the arts’ community.

One of the more recent newcomers is Brockton General, which is getting rave reviews for it’s small menu of daily specials on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights.  Academy of Lions, a cross-fit gym, just opened in a former auto service station on Dundas a block east of Dovercourt. Churchill, a lounge-bar, opened last month at Dundas and Lakeview, and Bunda Lounge is opening soon just east of Ossington.

Since Dundas doesn’t have a moratorium, it is much easier to open a restaurant or bar there than on Ossington. We’re not going to get into the fact that maybe they should be revising some bylaws so there are different licenses for bars as opposed to restaurants, and that we don’t need to force bars to serve food because we are all adults and smart enough to know when we need to eat. Ok, maybe I did go into that. Seriously, it’s 2010, can our government treat us like grownups? Anyway, the point is, we assume the tough restrictions on Ossington have caused some of the spill-over onto Dundas, and we see so many “for lease” and “for sale” signs that this will probably continue for some time. We’ll be here to cover it.

Our guess is it will open soon. The threshold is tiled “2010″ and as that isn’t the address, it signals they want to establish themselves before the year is out.

They have “gone back home to Italy and are producing…unique pasta on an old artisan machine.” As we any food stores, especially gourmet, on Ossington, we consider this a welcome addition.

Besides creating “homemade Italian pasta, whole wheat, spelt, and high protein, high fibre, low carb/low calorie vegan products” they will also offer frozen products for take-home.

According to their website, these products are currently available at Fiesta Farms and The Health Shoppe, among other retailers. We will soon be able to purchase them on Ossington.