Farside

Neighbourhood: East Chinatown / Dundas East · Address: 600 Gerrard St E, Toronto, ON · Hours: Mon–Thu 5PM–1AM | Fri–Sat 5PM–2AM | Sun 5PM–12AM · Price Range: $ · Phone: (647) 867-3012 · Website: https://farsideto.com

Why Visit

Because no other Toronto bar is this unpretentious about fun. Whether you're meeting friends or just want somewhere to drink and chill, Farside makes everyone feel like they belong.

What Makes It Unique

Farside’s door policy is literal: everyone’s actually welcome, no matter what. The room doesn’t take itself seriously, and neither does the event calendar—it’s not curated, it’s chaotic in the best way. It nails the dive bar thing without any of the ironic try-hard energy you get downtown.

Farside is the kind of Toronto bar that makes you remember why neighbourhood bars matter in the first place. It doesn’t try to impress you with polished interiors, bottle service, or some carefully curated “concept.” It just gives you a place to land. The room feels like somebody turned a basement rec room, a thrift store, and a house party into a bar and then had the good sense not to overthink it. You’ll see mismatched couches, old wood paneling, a few pieces of furniture that look like they’ve been rescued from three different decades, and, because this is Farside, a working CRT television that’s actually used for VHS nights instead of being there for fake nostalgia. The whole place has that slightly chaotic, lived-in charm that makes it feel immediately comfortable, even if it’s your first time walking in.

What stands out most is how easy it is to relax here. A lot of bars in Toronto want you to pick a lane: chic date spot, craft-cocktail temple, clubby social room, or aggressively cool downtown lounge where everything feels a little too intentional. Farside is basically the opposite. It’s welcoming in a way that isn’t performative. The staff are friendly without making a production of it, and if you go a couple of times, there’s a good chance they’ll remember your drink or at least your general vibe. That sounds like a small thing, but in a city where plenty of places seem designed to make you feel underdressed, rushed, or slightly in the way, that kind of familiarity matters. People come here looking to have an uncomplicated night, and the bar seems built for exactly that.

The drink list matches the room: straightforward, affordable, and not trying to be precious. Tall cans are a big part of the appeal, and the classic move is still the tall can plus shot combo if you want to do Farside properly. There are easy cocktails too, the kind you order because you want something cold and reliable rather than a story about barrel aging or clarified milk punch. It’s not a place where you need to study the menu like you’re taking a test. You can show up, get a drink quickly, and settle into the night without spending half your budget before the second round. That matters a lot in Toronto, where “casual bar” can sometimes be a lie with a $19 cocktail attached to it.

The food and snacks are in the same spirit. You’re not coming here for a serious dinner, and nobody expects you to. The offerings are more like bar snacks that make sense when you’re staying a while: something to keep you going between rounds, something salty enough to pair with beer, something uncomplicated that doesn’t interrupt the flow of the night. That’s part of the charm. Farside knows exactly what it is, and because it isn’t trying to be a restaurant or a nightlife destination in the glossy downtown sense, it can focus on being a good place to hang out. You can actually stay for a while here without feeling like the room is begging you to move on.

The crowd is one of the best parts. On an average night, you’ll get a mix of regulars, people from the surrounding neighbourhood, Toronto folks who know the bar by reputation, and the occasional visitor who heard it was the anti-King West and wanted to see if that was true. It’s pretty close. The door policy is genuinely open in a way that feels rare enough to mention, and the room has a come-as-you-are energy that makes everyone look like they belong there, whether they’ve been going since it opened or they found it ten minutes earlier because a friend dragged them over after dinner. You don’t have to dress for Farside, and you definitely don’t have to perform a version of yourself for the room. That’s a huge part of why it works.

The programming is where Farside really separates itself from the standard neighbourhood bar formula. VHS movie nights are the obvious example, and they’re one of those small Toronto pleasures that sound gimmicky until you actually do it and realize the appeal is real. A real tape, a real CRT TV, cheap beer, and a room full of maybe forty people who are all in on the same low-key weirdness is a better night than it has any right to be. It’s not about pristine projection or curated film-bro theatrics. It’s about the atmosphere: people leaning into the format, laughing at the analog weirdness, and treating the event like a shared ritual instead of content. Trivia nights have the same homemade feel, and the DJ Fridays can turn the room into something more energetic without losing the loose, friendly tone that makes the bar work in the first place. Even when the music gets louder and the crowd gets denser, it still feels more like a great house party than a scene.

The neighbourhood matters here, too. East Chinatown and the Dundas East area have a very different rhythm from downtown Toronto’s nightlife corridors. It’s more grounded, more local, and less obsessed with looking like a social media backdrop. You’re not coming here to be seen in the same way you might on King West; you’re coming because the area still has enough real-life texture to make a bar like Farside feel at home. The surrounding streets give the whole place a slightly off-center feel in the best way. You can grab food nearby, wander in from the streetcar, or make it part of a broader night out that doesn’t need to follow the usual downtown script. There’s also something nice about a bar that feels tied to the neighbourhood instead of floating above it. Farside seems to understand where it is, and that makes the experience feel more honest.

That honesty is also why it works better than a lot of bars that try to recreate the same casual, alternative vibe but end up feeling packaged. Some places put in vintage lamps and call it personality. Farside actually earns its atmosphere through use. The furniture looks used because it is used. The events feel homemade because they are. The room has that slight scatter of things that accumulate in a real community spot: flyers, regulars at the bar, people catching up in corners, someone half-watching the TV, someone else talking too loudly after their second shot. It’s messy in a human way, not an expensive-design way. Toronto has plenty of bars that promise “authenticity” as a brand. Farside doesn’t advertise authenticity; it just behaves like a place where people are allowed to be comfortable.

If you’re planning to go, the practical advice is simple: don’t overcomplicate it. Friday is usually your best bet if you want a livelier room, and VHS movie nights are absolutely worth timing your visit around if you want the bar at its most distinctly Farside. Those nights can fill up, so showing up a bit early is smart if you want a seat or a decent view of the screen. The same goes for DJ nights if you actually want to hang out rather than bounce from one standing spot to another. The room isn’t huge, and once it gets busy it can feel tight in the best possible way, but still tight. If you arrive late, expect to hover a bit, wait for a table, or make peace with standing near the bar. That’s not a flaw so much as the natural result of the place doing exactly what people come for.

The honest reality is that Farside is popular because it’s good at being simple, so it can get crowded in exactly the moments you’d hope it would be crowded. If you want maximum ease, go on a weeknight before the late crowd arrives. If you want the full energy, go Friday and accept that the room will have a little more churn, a little more noise, and a little more of that pleasant, communal buzz that makes the bar feel alive. Service stays pretty steady even when it’s busy, but patience helps, especially if you’re ordering rounds for a group. The best strategy is to keep your expectations aligned with the place: this isn’t a sit-down, linger-over-a-long-menu kind of evening unless you get lucky with space. It’s more of a low-stakes, good-times, maybe-stay-longer-than-you-planned bar. Bring a friend or two, order something cheap, and let the night unfold.

That’s really Farside’s gift. It gives Toronto something that can be weird without being exclusionary, casual without being careless, and fun without feeling forced. You can go there on a random Tuesday and have a quiet drink, or show up on a Friday and get swept into a room full of people who are all there for the same reason: to have a good time without pretending it has to be a big production. In a city that sometimes makes even a simple night out feel like a logistical challenge, that kind of place is worth knowing.