Lunch Tuesday: Buster’s Sea Cove

It’s a short walk from the bright sunshine of Front Street to the south wall of the St. Lawrence Market. While it’s easy to get distracted by the peameal bacon and pretzels with mustard, stay focused: Buster’s Sea Cove is just a few steps away.

The restaurant – more of a long counter with a booming take-out business – has occupied the spot furthest from the doors for 15 years. Tom Antonarakis has owned it for the past four.

“Nice Irish name, eh?” he jokes, clearly comfortable with a crowd.

Antonarakis has been working in restaurants since he was 12. His parents owned Arnold’s at Lakeshore and Brown’s Line in Etobicoke.

“That’s where I was raised,” he smiles.

After that, Antonarakis opened a series of CocoBerry Cafes. The next stop in his 33-year (and counting) career was Buster’s, a place known for its seafood.

“We’ve changed it up a lot since we took it over. It mostly used to be fish and chips. We do a lot of grilled fish,” he said.

We’re sitting at a table just steps from the main counter and Antonarakis’s eyes keep flickering to the lineup of customers.

“A lot of our clientele is geared towards healthy eating, salads too. But we still have our share of fried food,” he described.

“We put about 20 different grilled items on the menu and people just go crazy. We still sell a fair amount of haddock and halibut. It’s all fresh – we get it in that morning and it’s either breaded or battered. All of the fisheries come here every morning, so we just get it from the same suppliers,” he said.

On my visit, that includes calamari, crispy and hot on a bed of fries, and sandwich that’s been pressed thin on a panini.

I eat half of them there and get a take-out box for the rest. Unsurprisingly, the fried food doesn’t survive the walk, losing crispness. But the panini is unharmed.

Next time, he says, I should get the curly fries.

“The curly fries, we’re right into that. We’ve got the machine here so we make them ourselves.

“Personally, I love halibut. I’ve got my little boy hooked on halibut. He’s six years old and that’s his favourite food. That’s what his teacher said, ‘his favourite food is halibut!’”

If he could change one thing about the place, Antonarakis would make it bigger.

“We’re always looking to expand but within here, there’s no room. I wish! I wish I could build another line so we could service people a little faster, but there’s no room. If we were to expand, it would have to be in a good location, like this one.”

And as for the competition, he’s not concerned.

“I’ve been to a lot of other fish and chip places in the city and they’re great fish and chip places, but that’s all they are. We’re way more than fish and chips. We do stuff you would find at a nice, sit-down restaurant, except it’s less than 15 dollars. That’s what attracts people to come down this way …We’ve never done any sort of advertising. Out clientele is our advertising. It’s word of mouth. It’s all word of mouth.” 

Image credit: Peter Friese (Flickr)