NOW Magazine "When NOW readers voted Allen's backyard weeping willow Best Tree, was I the only one who wondered what other arboreal favorites were nominated? Well, this Irish-leitmotifed saloon on the Danforth wins another accolade - Toronto's best patio grub. There are no mere charred hamburgers or tofu dogs for the gang that packs Allen's piazza. Upscale favourites from steak to lobster - even the burgers are transcendent - hit the grill Tuesdays through Saturdays. So sup a lager and lime while you feast on the barbie, and check out that awesome award-winning willow!"

Eating Well In Emerald Style by Patricia Holtz The Globe and Mail

....In Canada, where Irish food means pub grub to most, there is a move afoot to freshen up familiar fare. At Allen's Restaurant on Toronto's Danforth Avenue, the menu features oak-smoked Irish salmon sandwiches, Kilkenny-ale battered halibut, Dublin lamb shanks braised in Guinness and mussels steamed in Smithwick's ale. Allen's manager, Julie Gagne, says the restaurant offers a traditional Irish menu, with an emphasis on freshness and preparation. "Everyone today wants food that is fresh and healthy," says Gagne. As for St. Patrick's Day, it's a huge event for them. "It's insane. And I have to say that eating is not the main pre-occupation on that evening."

From P.J.'s to the Unicorn, with all stops in between by Scott Mitchell, The Toronto Star

...First off, there's the type of pub that keeps Celtic tradition going in this wintry land, those like the three owner, or co-owned by John Maxwell - Allen's (143 Danforth Ave.), next-door Dora Keogh (141 Danforth Ave.), and the above mentioned P.J. O'Brien (39 Colborne St). Maxwell, son of an Irishman, keeps his cric in the old-world way. "There is no outside stimulation. The stimulation comes from that which the customers themselves provide," he says. "The greatest interactive game ever invented is conversation." Of course, the art of the Irish pub is not all about this - you need liquidation to get the words lubricated. Look for true Irish beers - think Kilkenny, Smithwicks and grandpappy Guinness. Change pace with a glass of Irish whiskey. Settle into live music, if there's some around - Allen's and Dora Keogh feature plenty this week...

The Search for Public (House) Spirit by Jacob Richler National Post

Pubs vary a lot from place to place. But wherever you are - whatever local formula you stumble upon - the crux of the thing remains the same: Lots of good, fresh beer on tap and a short, unpretentious menu of simple, hearty fare. The bulk of it is intended for the pleasure of a loyal crowd of locals. A good pub is a beautiful thing, but in Toronto they are hard to come by. Too many of them are just another in a worthless chain peddling some sort of awkward hybrid of mock-English pub and American roadhouse family restaurant - two concepts that combine for a charm factor equal to the sum of their dreary parts. No, it is best to stick to the places that work from the traditional formula. "Well, that looks better than it did last week," says the fellow one table over at McVeigh's irish Pub (124 Church St), sizing up my date's fish and chips. "Could've bounced a bowling ball off that lot!" I like McVeigh's. It's convivial. The regulars here actually start up conversations with strangers, instead of just ignoring each other in favour of those ridiculous anti-social closed-circuit television trivia games so popular at places like The Spotted Dick (81 Bloor St. E.). But te food at McVeigh's can fairly be described as excessively authentic. It is not good. In a pinch, though, I'm perfectly happy with their Irish beef stew with Guinness. But nothing else. "Let me tell you about our specials today," volunteers the extremely friendly barkeep at The Brogue Inn, way out in Port Credit at Lakeshore Road and Highway 10, the geographical boundary of this particular quest. "We've got a tuna melt, on whole wheat, and..." A tuna melt? On whole wheat? This is pub food? This is what happens at the end of the pub spectrum opposite to McVeigh's: American family restaurant fare, the menu running the gamut from "Cheesy bruschetta" to the inevitable Caesar salad, with a handful of pub-like items tacked on as an afterthought. I went for the fish and chips. The fish wasn't too bad but the other half of the equation - the chips - were an affront. Surely the only thing worse than those old, fat pale frozen fries are these weird new-style ones with the crispy-battered exterior grafted over their slippery filling. What does it take to peel and slice a real potato? How much can it cost? Doesn't anyone care? Happily, one publican does. His name is John Maxwell, and he owns or has a stake in three separate places in Toronto - three pubs I really like, although each is completely different in style and nature. Allen's (143 Danforth Ave.) is meant as a New York bar, like the unpretentious and hospitable places one finds in the East Village and its environs. Dora Keogh Irish Pub (141 Danforth Ave.) next door is completely Irish. And the downtown operation, P.J. O'Brien's (39 Colborne St.), is deeply London, plucked straight from the City, or maybe Knightsbridge. Each succeeds. Mr. Maxwell is a New Yorker of Irish descent. The first place he opened here was a Joe Allen's on John Street, which was modeled on the famous New York saloon on 46th Street and also the London branch, in Covent Garden, where Mr. Maxwell worked in the 1970's. Allen's on the Danforth was originally intended to have a Joe in the name. Stroll in and you find that characteristically New York saloon layout: Bar up front on the right, dining room at the back. The bar is handsome wood, the tables at the back simply dressed with blue and white gingham clothes. The floor is dark wood. The walls are decorated with a nice combination of old theatre posters, Joe Allen-style, as well as a host of memorablia from Mr. Maxwell's other passion - the Jaguar motorcar company. The menu at Allen's features the very best hamburgers in town. You can start with an open-faced sandwich of good smoked salmon laid over pumpernickel and red onions, liberally sprinkled with plump capers. The chicken wings, pleasantly crispy and well dressed with a spicy brown sauce thick with Worcestershire, are the most pleasing I have come across in any pub in town. The chopped steak - 10 ounces of minced sirloin - lying under a thick gravy, mashed potatoes on the side, is delicious, and very likely the town's best hangover cure. The fish and chips - halibut on one side of the plate, real potato on the other - are as good as one will come across here. Next door, Dora Keogh is one of the most charming pubs in town. Unlike Allen's, which Mr. Maxwell owns outright, this one is part of his Irish Pub group, whose partners include the women who lends it her name, as well as Patrick J. O'Brien and Daithi Connaughton, who as yet is without an eponymouse watering hole. Dora Keogh is a wide open space, warmly lined with wood, a long bar running half the length of the room on its left. There are booths here and there, and a host of implausibly comfortable knee-high copper-covered tables. If you settle in here, remember that the service is authentically English pub, which is to say that you must serve yourself at the bar. Head for the back of the room past the fireplace and you will find a kitchen plucked from some rural Irish cottage circu-1952, sans earthen floor. An old radio sits atop the 50's fridge. The stove dates from the same era. So too the rest of the fixtures. This is yer ma's kitchen. Book ahead and you and a group of friends can gather here around the rustic wooden table and, for jus $25 a head, tuck into a meal of great rustic fare such as roast pork with craklin', leg of lamb with rosemary and garlic, a whole roast turkey or baked double-smoked Belfast ham. Any main comes with your choice oftwo potatoes and two vegetables. This seems to me to be a great idea. P.J. O'Brien's, tucked in behind the King Edward hotel, is the opposite sort of thing, an upscale financial-district pub for Irishmen who, unlike those at Dora Keogh, might have left their accents behind on their path to success. You will find the entrance on a street corner, as it should be with city pubs. The floors are wood, the walls, painted a handsome burgundy, the bar topped with copper. The place has warmth. Last time I passed by with a few friends we sat in a private booth, ordered a round of pints and quietly declared the Christmas season open. The special of the day was chicken pot pie, which was good, the morsels of chicken within tender and flavoursome but floating in a sauce a little overburdened with fresh taragon. The pastry overtop was pleasantly flaky. I had the steak and kidney pie, which is a rarity here, typically displaced by steak and mushroom presumably because people find offal icky. It was very good. Not superb, not a statement, just a good lunch meal in a handsome pub. Someone else had a burger which we found to be top-notch, meaty and robust, but like its accompanying fries one small notch below those at Allen's. P.J. O'Brien's has a bar menu that perfectly sums up the pleasantly-posh essense of the place. Where other pubs offer pizza-bits and orange coloured chicken wings and mucky nachos, here you can have an order of the house chips with garlic mayonnaise, battered shrimp with tomato horseradish sauce, or, best of all, broiled lamb loin chop available with mint and yogurt at $4.95 a piece. What a way to punctuate the end of the day. "A Pint of Harp and a lamb chop please." Now why didn't anyone here think of that before?

By Heather Mallick, The Toronto Sun, March 8, 1998

Travel & Leisure, September 1997

"About a block west, Allen's (143 Danforth Ave.; 416/463-3086; dinner for two $40) purveys 90 kinds of scotch, ranging from $5 to $30 a glass. It has the lively atmosphere of a neighbourhood pub, a feeling reinforced by a menu that includes halibut in Kilkenny Ale batter and Dublin lamb shank braised in Guiness. "

Toronto Life, July 1997, By Margaret Swaine

"The place Yank-Irish saloon: oak bar and comfortable booths at front, tables in blue checks midway, backyard patio. Proprietor John Maxwell, a ninth generation Manhattanite, established Joe Allen's (1979), Orso (1985) and Allen's (1987), the first two since sold off. Noisy, for a hair-down of makin' whoopee. The neighbourhood Once a hardward store, on a Danny strip close to Broadview, amid an intermingling of restaurants, funeral homes, tiny law offices. Who goes there Followers of traditional Celtic music from all over. Medianiks who've been at the high end of the hog all week; restauranteurs relaxing after their own places have shut down for the night. Many show-bizzies, so let the names drop: Keifer Sutherland, Sean Connery, Bette Midler, Rita MacNeil, Eugene Levy, Keanu Reeves, the Kids in the Hall (practically lived here), Al Waxman, Atom Egoyan, Gordon Pinsent, Catherine O'Hara (celebrating her B-day). Oh, and Louise Dennys, Michael Ondaatje. Philosophy "Relentlessly old fashioned," says Maxwell, who considers most developments in restaurants in the last 15 years reprehensible - as in food that must be deconstructed before eating, the mixing of widely disparrate cuisines, the over-reliance on decor. As managing director at Winston's (post-John Arena, 1992-94), he should know. Spuds eight ways; lamb shank; halibut and chips; bumble crumble. Twenty-odd cigars on a separate menu, like Cuban Cohiba Lancero and Mexican Santa Clara cigarillo. The list Actually, several. Fourscore and all of single malts by the half-ounce or ounce shot; Balvenie 12-year Doublewood ($8.25), Glengoyne 17-year ($14.25), The '77 Macallan 18-year ($15), '72 Morlach 22-year ($26.50). Ten Irish whiskies (Bushmill's Black Bush at $5.65, Tyroconnell at $5.65); 15 bourbons (Basil Hayden eight-year at $6.20, Rebel Yell at $4.65). Blackboard beers by the hundred, the Belgians correctly in different-shaped glasses according to type - a coupe for Orval ($6.50), of heavier weight than Duvel ($6.50), which merits a cylindrical tulip. From hither and thither: Scotland's St. Andrew's ale ($6.25), England's Bass ($4.65), Germany's Aventinus ($6.00), wheats in summer. Twelve on draft - Guinness, naturally, the most popular (12 to 16 barrels of 58.8 litres a week), as well as such Canadian micros as Hart Dragon's Breath Pale Ale, Amsterdam nut brown, Muskoka Cottage cream. Among two dozen wines: those from Maxwell's own Italian Wine Agency, representing producers like Fattoria la Torre vernaccia di san dimignano '95 ($33), with a patriotic wave to Cave Spring gamay '95 ($30). Grappa (prosecco riserva venegazzu, $9.65) and brandy (Martell Nblige, $14.25) for the still-thirsty. Suggestions Go Tuesday or Saturday to hear the likes of Ceili House, live. Be prepared for standing room only and customers breaking into a jig. (If you want a full week of it, Maxwell is leading a bibulous visit to Ireland in September.)

Forget the green beer - celebrate with dignity By Judy Creighton, The Canadian Press

Green beer, green plastic bowler hats and people running about saying "kiss me I'm Irish" is all just "paddy-wackery" and has nothing to do with St. Patrick's Day. That's the view of Toronto restauranteur John Maxwell, who says that "no self-respecting Irishman would hold a glass of green beer in his hands, much less to his lips." Maxwell, a native New Yorker whose father was born in Ireland, owns Allen's, a re-creation of the Irish-American saloons he remembers as a boy growing up in the Big Apple. "This is how the average Irish-American saloon looked back in the post-war era, around the 1950's," he says of his bar-restaurant located in the Danforth Avenue district of Toronto. "Today they are all but obliterated in New York; there are only a handful left." And to keep the memory alive, Maxwell's menu - especially around St. Patrick's Day - evokes his Irish heritage. For lunch he'll probably serve nraith prata'i, better known as creamy potato soup with chives, bacon, and corned beef and cabbage. The meal will also be accompanied by ara'n so'ide - the "champion" soda bread made by Joan Cowley-Martindale, mother of Allen's general manager Dora Keogh. For dinner, customers might expect mussels steamed with Irish whiskey, stobhach caoireola - lamb shank braised in Guinness stout - served with bruitin champ (buttered mashed potatoes) and Irish apple cake with Jameson cream sauce. The bar alone has every brand of Irish whiskey known, says Keogh, and possibly the largest selection of Scotch whiskey in Toronto, if not Canada. "The beverage of choice among our Irish patrons of course is Guinness dark ale," says Maxwell. "We take pride in it," he adds, noting that Guinness International has its own brewery in Canada now providing dozens of pubs across the country with its familiar strong, dark ale. Allen's doesn't advertise itself as an Irish pub or restaurant, but many of its patrons are drawn there by its Celtic nights featuring traditional Irish music played by bands with their roots in Ireland. "And if you come here Tuesday nights you will see people dancing in a very traditional Irish way," says Maxwell, referring to set dancing. The dancing style descended from the French quadrille and is the forerunner of North American square dancing. "And set dancing is a very rare and special thing," says Keogh, a native of Dublin.

Fox-trotting on a full stomach By James Chatto

It's TEN O'CLOCK on a Tuesday night, and all across town, cafes and restaurants stand forlorn and forgotten. Chefs have long since crept home to their garrets; waiters sit like patient nightwatchmen, gazing at empty rooms. On Tuesdays, a silent curfew sounds, and no one goes out to eat. But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? Up on the Danforth, something is stirring at Allen's. Out on the sidewalk, under the banners of Scotland and Eire, you can hear the faint sound of a fiddle. Push open the door, and you walk right into a ceilidh. Men and women of every age crowd tables and booths, laughing and talking above the Irish band.The scrum at the bar has pressed back to clear a space in front of the musicians, where five couples whirl in a waltz. It's a sight rarely seen in this city: dancing wiped clean of the sweaty subtext of sex. No one is posing, no one has dressed to kill. People are simply here to enjoy themselves. Now the fiddler quickens his pace, and four young women kick off their shoes to dance a formal reel. We are in the presence of royalty, for the most accomplished of the quartet, her black-stockinged legs flashing with more than mortal grace, is non other than Thomasina Reilly, last year's St. Patrick's Day queen. From his stool at the bar, John Maxwell, owner of Allen's, sips from a draught of Kilkenny cream ale and beams at the blarney. I had always considered Allen's to be a New York-style bar - and a fine one at that, with its encyclopedic selection of beers (104) and a remarkable list of single malts. "In fact," corrects Maxwell, "it was my intention from the beginning that we should be an Irish-American saloon - in honour of my late father, who came to New York City from County Antrim. We do this every Tuesday and Saturday evening and have done for four or five years. As far as public places go, this is the centre of traditional Irish music and dancing in Toronto." That in itself is a noble achievement, and it was with some excitement that I slipped back to Allen's a week later to eat......."

Secret Toronto by Scott Mitchell

The prime reason to visit Allen's (143 Danforth, east of Broadview, tel: 463-3086) is the fine selection of single malts and the long, long list of beers, both bottled and draft. Wooden booths at the front, a secluded, willow-draped summer patio at the back and plenty of tables with blue-checked cloths in between - choose a spot to sit and sip your Guinness or Glengoyne, and relax. The atmosphere is reassuringly old-fashioned, with a menu to match (the liver's a good choice). Allen's also serves a decent brunch, distinguished by peameal bacon, tea biscuits, and jam. There's a jukebox well-stocked with R&B, while live Celtic and East Coast music every Tuesday and Saturday evening draws a crowd that sometimes threatens to breakthe floor joists with stomping.