The Oxley

121 Yorkville Ave

Toronto, Canada

Tel. +1 647 3481300

The dishes

Baby Romaine, Zucchini and Parmesan Salad with Croutons, Soft Herbs and Preserved Lemon-Fenugreek dressing

Rilette of Rainbow Trout & Gougères with Aleppo Pepper Pickled Cucumber

Parmesan Crusted Brick Half Chicken with Confit Baby Carrots, Fingerling Potatoes & Tarragon Remoulade

Grilled 6 Oz. Butlerr’s Steak with Scallop Potatoes, Fine Green Beams & Confit Shallot Juice

British And Canadian Cheeses with Accompaniments

The wines

Silver Heights 2023 PetNat Brut Bloom Ningxia

A blend of 80% Chardonnay, 12% Pinot Noir and 8% Rice Tea.

Silver Heights 2022 Chardonnay Reserve Ningxia

Silver Heights 2023 Barbera Jiayuan Ningxia

Silver Heights 2022 Pinot Noir Jiayuan Ningxia

Silver Heights 2021 The Last Warrior Red Ningxia

Silver Heights 2021 The Summit Ningxia

Silver Heights 2017 Emma’s Reserve Ningxia

Editor’s note: These wines have been previously written up in a recent article on Silver Heights: For a full description and scores of all these wines, please see the Ian D’Agata Wine Review , July 4, 2025: Silver Heights: A Rising Star Combining the Best of China, France and Italy.)

The Oxley is fairly unique dining destination in Toronto for various reasons. The most obvious is that it sits smack-dab in the middle of Yorkville, once the centre of the city’s countercultural scene (in the ‘60s) but that soon morphed into yuppie-central, the city’s trendiest, most fashionable, and unabashedly pro-Euro spot. And yet, The Oxley is a bastion of “normal” Britishness, a pub that evokes an atmosphere far removed from Yorkville’s modern-day very fashionista vibes. Even the establishment’s full name, The Oxley Public House, strides somewhat with its surroundings, but that suits well the relatively dark populist haven it is, one in which to kick back and relax while enjoying a pint (or in a sign of the times, a glass of good wine) immersed in a capitalist/private/high rollers district that really couldn’t be anymore “bright lights, big city” than it is. Not that there is anything wrong with that: The Oxley offers very good food and wine, a nice ambiance and good service at prices that won’t gouge you like most other establishments in Yorkville (where the passage of Ferraris and Lambos is de rigueur). To someone like me, who well remembers how different Yorkville looked back in the 1970s when growing up there (the mind flies back to images of restaurants, lounges, clubs, shops and art galleries such as the Boa Café, the Lothian Mews shopping complex, L’Aiglon, Eve et Lui, Brave New World, Maxwell’s Plum, The Copa, Marché Movenpick, the Marianne Friedland Gallery, and others, that have all long since been gone) it is remarkable how The Oxley has survived in an environment that doesn’t seem like its own. But then again, when a restaurant avoids gimmicks and high prices, and delivers good food in the solid British tradition that “has stood the test of time”, while touching on cool, carefully sourced and often very local ingredients, not to mention a menu that changes seasonally, thereby branching into the category of gastropubs, it follows that its placement in Yorkville isn’t as anachronistic as it might seem at first glance. Packed to the rafters full of happy patrons who keep flocking back, The Oxley’s success cannot really surprise.