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In 1985 the federal government told Toronto’s Jamaican bakeries that they were not allowed to sell a beef patty. The Meat Inspection Act defined the term as shaped lean beef and nothing else, inspectors issued violation notices, and bakeries were given three months to rename it or face a $5,000 fine.
They fought it. Michael Davidson, who ran Kensington Patty Palace with his parents, led the resistance alongside other bakery operators including Patty King. A patty summit was convened on 19 February 1985 with federal officials, the Jamaican Consul General Oswald Murray and lawyer Lloyd Perry in the room. The compromise let the bakeries keep the word as long as “Jamaican” went in front of it. Davidson threw a party at his shop on 23 February, and Toronto has marked Patty Day on that date ever since.
The thing Ottawa was objecting to had arrived by a long route, and we are not just talking the 401 and 416. The patty descends from the Cornish pasty, reshaped by African and Indian Caribbean cooks in Jamaica, and carried to Toronto by Jamaican migration through the 1960s and 70s. By 1985 it had been sold here for two decades. The Act had simply never been written with it in mind.
So the seven below are grouped by where they are, not ranked. Ranking them is a fight nobody wins, and this city has already had one.
Little Jamaica, Eglinton West
1. Randy’s Patties, Oakwood Village
Randy’s opened in 1979 and ran for more than forty years before closing on 26 February 2022, beaten by the pandemic and by the Eglinton Crosstown construction that hollowed out the strip.
Then it came back! Randy’s reopened at the same address on 23 August 2024, with a renovated kitchen and a queue that bent around onto Oakwood Avenue. Whatever you think of the patty, the reopening is one of the better Toronto stories of the last few years, and the shop’s operators were among those who stood up in the 1985 fight.
Spicy beef is the order. Go early; they sell out.
The Crosstown deserves its share of the blame for the closure. As most Toronto Jamaican patty lovers know, Eglinton West spent the better part of a decade as a construction site, and Little Jamaica lost a long list of Black-owned businesses over those years. Randy’s coming back is the exception, not the pattern, which is worth holding in mind while you’re standing in the queue.
Address: 1569 Eglinton Ave W • Neighbourhood: Oakwood Village • Price: $ • Website
2. Kingston 12 Patty Shop, Eglinton West
Opening a patty shop a few blocks from Randy’s takes some confidence. Kingston 12 did it and built its own following anyway, which is the strongest recommendation available on this street.
Golden and flaky instead of dark and toasted, and a good control sample if you’re doing the obvious thing and eating at both in one afternoon. The two are close enough to walk between in under fifteen minutes, which is the single best hour of eating on this list.
The wider point about this stretch: patty shops here are not interchangeable outlets of one recipe. Crust colour comes from turmeric or curry in the dough and the shops pitch it differently, so two patties from two blocks apart can look and taste meaningfully unalike.
Address: 1808 Eglinton Ave W • Neighbourhood: Little Jamaica • Price: $ • Google Maps
Downtown and west
3. Golden Patty, Kensington Market
A patty, coco bread and a can of pop for $3.75. In this city, in this decade, that sentence is the entire review.
Coco bread is the part people skip and shouldn’t: a soft, faintly sweet folded roll that you put the patty inside, making a carbohydrate sandwich of a carbohydrate parcel. It is not a balanced lunch and nobody claimed it was. Baldwin Street, so you’re a minute from the rest of Kensington, and the cheap eats list has the rest of that block.
Address: 187 Baldwin St • Neighbourhood: Kensington Market • Price: $ • Google Maps
4. The Caribbean Queen of Patties, Bloordale
A small Bloor Street counter west of Dufferin doing one thing. There’s no dining room to speak of and no reason for one.
This is the west-end default for a lot of people with no interest in driving up to Eglinton. It’s the kind of shop where the useful question is what came out of the oven most recently, not what’s on the menu. Ask, and take whatever the answer is.
It also sits on a stretch of Bloor that has changed hard in ten years. A counter selling a $3 lunch on that block is doing something increasingly difficult.
Address: 1294 Bloor St W • Neighbourhood: Bloordale • Price: $ • Google Maps
5. Chubby’s Jamaican Kitchen, King West
The outlier, and included deliberately. Chubby’s is a full restaurant on Portland with cocktails and a room you’d take a date to, not a counter with a warming cabinet.
That makes the patty here a menu item, not the whole business. It’s a real difference in kind and worth knowing before you turn up expecting $3 and a paper bag. It’s the version of this food built for a night out, and our 23 restaurants that earn the hype has more in that vein.
Address: 104 Portland St • Neighbourhood: King West • Price: $$ • Google Maps
North and east
6. Patty King Bakery, Scarborough
Baking since 1981, and the operators were part of the group that faced down the federal inspectors four years later. That is about as much Toronto patty history as one shop can hold.
Progress Avenue, near Scarborough Town Centre, and it’s a bakery rather than a restaurant, which means volume, freshness and a counter that moves. Buy more than you meant to. They freeze well and reheat in an oven far better than the microwave instructions suggest, which is the single most useful thing to know about patties as a food group.
Address: 321 Progress Ave • Neighbourhood: Scarborough • Price: $ • Google Maps
7. Allwyn’s Bakery, North York
Underhill Drive, in the pocket of North York near the Don Valley, and the least central thing on this list by some margin.
It’s a neighbourhood bakery with a following that predates anybody writing about it. That’s the usual profile for the best version of this food. If you live anywhere near the Don Mills and Lawrence area you probably already know. If you don’t, it isn’t worth a special trip across the city when Eglinton exists, and saying otherwise would be dishonest.
That’s true of a lot of this list. Patties are neighbourhood food, and the right patty is usually the one within walking distance of wherever you already are.
Address: 81 Underhill Dr • Neighbourhood: North York • Price: $ • Google Maps
Patty Day
As local Jamaican patty enthusiasts know, Toronto Patty Day is February 23, and it is a real anniversary of a real fight about whether a food could keep its own name. Most locals mark it by going to Eglinton West, where the fight was loudest and where the Crosstown construction did more damage to these businesses than anyone ever imagined. Two of the seven above are located along that one stretch.
For the wider Caribbean calendar, our Carnival guide covers the weekend the city gives over to it.
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