Sure, we lost Kawhi. But, after decades of being on the losing end of the “brain drain,” Toronto is clearly starting to attract global talent. The latest example? International bar stars Kelsey Ramage and Iain Griffiths, who moved here last year and will soon open Supernova Ballroom, a disco-themed, inclusive, sustainability-minded, high-volume cocktail bar, all housed in a dramatic, semi-hidden space at Bay and Adelaide. A new bar opening might sound kind of trivial compared with, say, Google’s interest in building a digital city within a city, but to the spirits community, it’s a big deal because Ramage and Griffiths are high-profile folks with a rep for executing creative concepts. Before settling here in Toronto in the spring of 2018, they were better-known as the Trash Tiki couple—which was a zero-waste cocktail pop-up that went to 30-something cities on five continents over 18 months. Prior to that, Ramage was head bartender at Dandelyan, a swanky and super-stylish South Bank London (England) hotel bar that took the top spot in the World’s Best 50 Bars list for 2018. Griffiths was a co-founder of Dandelyan and, despite having a thriving business in the U.K. and offers in New York and Los Angeles, it was Toronto that won them over. “I was a complete stranger to Canada before meeting Kelsey and going on tour,” says Griffiths, who grew up in a remote and rural part of Australia and met Ramage (originally from Salmon Arm, B.C.) in London. “But when we were here, everything was so lovely and we could see that Toronto was about to explode, so we definitely wanted to be a part of that.”Prior to that—and Trump’s election in 2016—the couple had been seriously considering the United States. Griffiths recalls Ramage texting him the night of the election saying something to the effect that their American prospects had suddenly become a lot less attractive. Because of Ramage’s B.C. root ...
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