culture
Reel Toronto: Suits – Season 4 (Part One)
Toronto’s extensive work on the silver screen reveals that, while we have the chameleonic ability to look like anywhere from New York City to Moscow, the disguise doesn’t always hold up to scrutiny. Reel Toronto revels in digging up and displaying the films that attempt to mask, hide, or—in rare cases—proudly display our city.
Man, Suits is just the gift that keeps giving. It’s not the biggest, most famous show in the world, but it’s actually pretty good and they’re already starting to shoot Season 5, not too long after Season 4 was gifted to us.
As that first shot reminds us, Suits uses the financial district — and the Bay Adelaide Centre, in particular — in recreating its version of Manhattan. But the show does sometimes venture beyond that little area.
In the first episode of Season 4, we hang out with former Family Ties dad Michael Gross in this handsome boardroom…
…which, as you can tell by the ROM and Royal Conservatory outside the window…
…is actually in the Telus Centre, on Bloor.
But it’s not all legal adventures and trysts on Suits. No, these people eat out a lot and keeping track of all the eateries they visit is an increasingly time-consuming part of our lives.
This attractive, wood-panelled restaurant is Hy’s Steakhouse.
And a constant joy for us, throughout the series’ run, has been watching these fictional characters flout our draconian street food laws, whether getting a coffee on York Street…
…or the amazingly exotic kosher bagels on Wellington Street. Gosh, they live out on the edge down in New York City. Those bagels are totally within 50 metres of another eatery, you just know it.
Oh, good. Another restaurant. A fancy one.
It’s all pretty and the squid on the window tells us it’s The Chase, on Richmond’s downstairs sibling, The Chase Fish & Oyster.
This restaurant is also nice…
…and we confess we’re not sure on this one.
But we do know this one, mostly!
The exterior is definitely Bardi’s, down at York and Front…
…but the interior seems to be from somewhere else.
Possibly it’s another steakhouse, Jacobs & Co.
Eric Roberts is in the cast now and, what a shock, he also eats out all the time.
Here he’s chowing down at The Swan.
He also has this really swank boardroom.
It’s hard to tell precisely where it is…
…but based on the view we’re guessing it’s the Thompson Hotel or thereabouts.
One character manages to venture slightly farther north…
…running into Eric Roberts outside the Windsor Arms.
And also, not too far away, is quad of Victoria University…
…the main building of which is just sort of visible in the back there.
Oh, and we go back to Hy’s, because it feels like precisely the place these characters would go.
Here’s University Avenue taking an easy turn as a bit of New York. Pffft, that’s just par for the course.
We still have the back half of the season to look at; wonder if there are any fancy restos in store?