The most charming small bar in Toronto — Big Trouble is an East Asian-inspired cocktail snack bar with theme nights (Wednesday baijiu and soju nights are legendary), cheeseburger dumplings, glass noodles, and cocktails with lychee and yuzu. Quaint, cozy, and always staffed by people who love their jobs.
Neighbourhood: Kensington Market · Address: 247 Augusta Ave, Toronto, ON · Hours: Wed–Sun 5pm–1am
Why Visit
Big Trouble transforms Asian-inspired cocktails and snacks into a quirky, irresistible combo, with cheeseburger dumplings and unique late-night events that you actually want to attend. The staff’s affection for the place lifts the experience beyond your average bar.
What Makes It Unique
Unlike most Toronto cocktail bars, Big Trouble’s drink menu leans into East Asian spirits like baijiu and soju, with lychee and yuzu appearing where you least expect them. The intimacy of the space and regular themed nights mean regulars and newcomers actually mingle. The food is inventive without feeling like a gimmick.
Big Trouble in Kensington Market is the most charming small bar in Toronto — an East Asian-inspired cocktail snack bar that exists at the intersection of craft, playfulness, and a very particular type of downtown Toronto cool that is hard to manufacture and harder still to sustain. The aesthetic draws on East Asian bar and izakaya traditions — warm wood, carefully curated decorative elements, intimate scale — without becoming a recreation or a costume. The cocktails incorporate Asian spirits and ingredients with genuine knowledge, and the snack menu reflects a similar thoughtfulness about East Asian culinary traditions.
The scale of Big Trouble is part of its appeal. It's a genuinely small room — capacity measured in dozens rather than hundreds — which means the energy when it's full is concentrated and social in a way that larger venues can't replicate. The bar staff work in close proximity to guests, which enables the kind of drinks conversations that are impossible when a bartender is managing fifty tickets simultaneously. Recommendations here feel personal because there's enough room for them to be.
The cocktail programme focuses on spirits that see less representation at most Toronto bars — Japanese gin, shochu, various Asian whisky expressions, and house-made infusions drawing on East Asian culinary ingredients. The drinks are technically accomplished without being ostentatious about it, which matches the overall ethos of the space. There's no performance here; just well-made things offered in a pleasant room.
Kensington Market is the natural habitat for Big Trouble — a neighbourhood that has long supported exactly this kind of independent, idiosyncratic bar and restaurant operation. The Market's evening energy, combining the residual activity of daytime shopping with evening bar crowds from the surrounding neighbourhoods, creates the social context that makes bars like Big Trouble thrive. Arriving via a walk through the Market itself, stopping at a few of the neighbourhood's other venues, makes a complete evening of it.