Neighbourhoods / Little Portugal
Little Portugal
Dundas West between Ossington and Lansdowne — charcoal chicken and custard tarts underneath one of the best restaurant and bar strips in the country.
Eat this first: A pastel de nata standing at the counter, then charcoal chicken to take home
Little Portugal at a glance
Character
Little Portugal is the neighbourhood where two eras of Toronto eating sit directly on top of each other. At street level it is still Portuguese: bakeries selling custard tarts warm from the oven, churrasqueiras turning charcoal chicken all afternoon, fish counters and social clubs that have been on Dundas for fifty years.
Layered over that is one of the densest concentrations of new restaurants and bars anywhere in the country — the Ossington and Dundas West strips have been the city's most-watched eating streets for a decade, and they show no sign of settling down.
The result is a neighbourhood where you can eat a two-dollar pastry and a hundred-dollar tasting menu within the same block, which is my favourite quality a place can have. It is busy, it is expensive, and it is very hard to be bored here.
Housing stock
Victorian and Edwardian semis and rowhouses on narrow lots, many with the tiled or brightly painted facades that give the neighbourhood its look — a Portuguese inheritance that buyers now pay a premium for rather than paint over.
Laneways run behind a large share of the streets, and laneway-suite potential is increasingly priced into what homes sell for. Verify feasibility rather than assuming it: access, setbacks and servicing all vary lot by lot.
New low-rise condo buildings along Dundas West supply most of the entry-level options, and the area's rental demand is among the strongest in the city.
Getting around
The 505 Dundas and 501 Queen streetcars run east into the core, and Lansdowne and Dufferin stations on Line 2 sit at the northern edge of the neighbourhood.
Bloor GO and the UP Express are the quiet advantage here: Union Station and Pearson airport are both roughly twenty minutes away, which matters more than people expect until they travel often.
Who it suits
- People who want to walk out the front door into the best eating and drinking in the city, and who will actually use it.
- Buyers interested in laneway-suite potential, provided they do the feasibility work before they commit.
- Frequent travellers — the combination of the UP Express and Bloor GO is genuinely hard to beat.
Eat your way somewhere else
Curious whether Little Portugal fits your life?
Tell me how you live and I will tell you honestly whether these streets match — and where else to look if they do not.