stefano's diner

location: 1265 dundas west

ooooh, i love me a cute diner. stefano’s is an all-vegan one at the corner of dovercourt and dundas west. the owners also run gia’s restaurant, another veggie place just down the street.

adam and i were honestly pretty underwhelmed with gia’s when we went sometime last year, but i was so intrigued by stefano’s vibe (and frankly, instagram) that i still wanted to give it a shot. we used to go to hello123 for veggies meals, but it closed a year or two ago. that location now houses a vegan sushi place, which i’m also very curious/skeptical about. but it’s been a minute since we had a good veggie meal.

anyway, SO glad we took a chance on stefano’s. it’s a pretty tiny space, so i made a reso at the bar just to be safe. we shared the roasted cauliflower with basil pesto and sugo, and i got a faux-meatball sub that was out of this world. adam got a veggie wrap that was also amazing, and we swapped bites to get the full experience.

we were both pleasantly surprised by the quality, freshness and overall taste of everything — leagues better than gia’s, imo. we were also pretty full when we left (although i did get a mcdonald’s snack wrap about 2 hours later lol).

100% need to go again, this time ordering the “beef” burger, the eggplant parm, the fried brussel sprouts and the beet/pumpkin dip. you know it’s good when you already know what your next order will be.