The Golden Pigeon Beerhall – 424 Parliament St, Toronto, ON M5A 3A2
Country: Germany       
Must-try dish: Braised Beef Cheek 
Seating: Large indoor and outdoor seating 
Dinner guests: Pornstar Sam 
The high: Good value for excellent food. 
The low: The location might be difficult to find unless you know where you’re going. 

The Pigeon is Toronto’s newest German restaurant. It opened in June 2023 with a menu concept built around recipes from a 1950’s German cookbook, so there are several classics to order down to the Black Forest Cake dessert. 

This basement space is large for busy nights and filled with a number of nooks for a little more privacy if desired. One such nook overlooks the street, and gets a lot of natural light during the daytime hours, but there’s also a room for shuffleboard, pinball, and other games as well as seating available around the bar. This beer hall has it all! 

Before committing to food, a round of Hefeweizens was ordered to help make decisions. Despite being a German restaurant, the majority of the beers on draft are from Canadian craft breweries, but the bottle list is more Central European focused, especially the German Hefeweizen, which is a citrus wheat beer. 

Once that was sorted, a Warm Pretzel was immediately on order. It actually is warm, almost hot to the touch with a fluffy interior that dips exceptionally well in the house-made honey mustard. If you’re looking for an extra treat, and we strongly recommend it, get the Beer Cheese. This melted hot cheese sauce would pretty much taste delicious with anything.

Our server Jack was helpful with the rest of the dishes – next up was the Braised Beef Cheek. The pieces of meat are so tender that they melt in your mouth without biting into them. It’s dressed in a hunter sauce that comes with mushrooms and shallots on top of soft and buttery spatzel. Spatzel is a noodle or dumpling variation heavily used in Germanic cuisine to soak up saucy stews. 

We couldn’t ignore the Schnitzel Dinner, with pork of course. This traditional plate has German food written all over it – potato salad, sauerkraut, mustard, and the schnitzel itself which was moist on the inside yet crispy on the outside. Such a balance isn’t the easiest feat to perform in the kitchen. Aside from the meat, the potato salad was a highlight and something new to our palates. The baby potatoes were boiled and then dressed in a creamy pepper sauce. 

OK, so as you all know, we aren’t the biggest fans of a platter. It feels like a lazy cop-out, and we would rather sample several traditional plates instead of a bunch of stuff thrown on to a platter. The We Have the Meats Platter is however an exception to our rule. 

This decked-out platter addressed all the German classics and favourites in one place, and it’s awesome. There’s an Oktoberfest sausage, crispy pork belly, beef brisket, pretzel, pickles, sauerkraut and mustard. It’s a meeting of great minds if we’ve ever seen it. 

The great thing about the Golden Pigeon is that you can make your own adventure. It can be the spot for a family meal, it can be the place to have a couple beers with friends, it can be the place to play a couple games late at night. The place is adaptable to the customers who choose to be there, and it helps that the food is amazing. 

Eat with you soon, 

Mandrea Bike
(Mat & Andrea)