If you went downtown with a parent or grandparent to shop in Toronto, there's a fair chance the outing came with a proper sit-down lunch upstairs. Not a food court tray, but chandeliers, fashion shows and dishes that stayed on the menu for decades. For much of the 20th century, Ontario's stores weren't only places to buy a coat. They were places to eat.
Eaton's and Simpsons had both offered tea rooms and casual spots for shoppers in their Queen Street stores as far back as the late 1800s. But in the 1920s and 1930s, they went much further.
The Georgian Room
Eaton's opened the Georgian Room on the ninth floor of its Queen Street store on March 10, 1924. Lady Flora McCrea Eaton designed it, taking inspiration from the Georgian Restaurant at Harrods in London. Picture cut crystal chandeliers and blue velvet chairs.
The room served lunch, afternoon tea and dinner, and it staged daily fashion shows. The menu was put together by a dietician, Violet Ryley. By the late 1920s a cake counter on the ground floor was selling the store's red velvet cake. The Georgian Room lasted more than fifty years. It closed on Christmas Eve 1976, as the old Queen Street store came down to make way for the Eaton Centre.
The Round Room
At its College Street store, Eaton's went bigger again. The seventh floor, which opened in 1931, held an auditorium and the Round Room restaurant, designed in the Art Deco style by the French architect Jacques Carlu. Lady Eaton oversaw it too, along with Le 9e at Eaton's in Montreal. The Round Room eventually went dark (sources differ on exactly when), and Parks Canada named the seventh floor a National Historic Site in 1983.
The Arcadian Court
Simpsons' answer opened on March 11, 1929, in the store's new Art Deco addition at Queen and Yonge. The Arcadian Court ran across the eighth and ninth floors, with 40-foot ceilings and room for about a thousand diners, which made it Canada's biggest dining room at the time. Lalique chandeliers hung overhead until they were sold in 1968.
The Toronto Symphony Orchestra did its first radio broadcast from the room in 1929, and through the Depression the Arcadian Court held its own against the Royal York and the Round Room as one of the city's top places to dine.
Roast beef, salads and desserts were all on offer, but the star was the chicken pot pie. In the early 1980s the kitchen was making about 1,500 portions a week. Not every tradition deserves nostalgia, though: for decades, the mezzanine was reserved for men.
The dime-store counter
Not every store lunch came with chandeliers. The five-and-dimes fed shoppers too. Woolworth's downtown Hamilton store, rebuilt after a 1947 fire, reopened in 1949 as the largest of the chain's 147 Canadian stores, according to a history from the Downtown Hamilton BIA and Hamilton Public Library. It describes an 82-stool lunch counter with a microwave for "atomic-age" service, and a main-floor restaurant pouring everything from a coffee to a full meal. The store closed in 1990.
Woolco had the Red Grille. Toronto historian Jamie Bradburn, writing in Torontoist, described it as Woolworth's cafeteria concept, found in Woolco and the bigger Woolworth's stores, often with flip-down red seats that kids loved to play with. A 2024 Walmart Canada staff profile still lists the Red Grille among one long-time employee's early jobs at Woolco. In the same 2007 piece, he noted that Toronto's last surviving five-and-dime counter, in a former Kresge at Coxwell and Gerrard, had closed that year.
The Zellers diner
For many Ontario families, though, the restaurant that mattered was at Zellers. The Canadian Encyclopedia dates the first Zellers Restaurant, with a tearoom, to Ottawa in 1932. In 1960 the chain launched a lunch counter called The Skillet, which later became the Zellers Family Restaurant. blogTO's history of the diners lists the Big Z Burger, fries with gravy and a triple-decker club sandwich among the staples. Most closed with the stores in 2013.
When HBC revived the name in 2023, it said a diner wouldn't fit in its small in-store sections and sent out food trucks instead. The new owners kept the idea: their Toronto store at 80 Orfus Road opened in June 2026 with a "Zellers Diner on Wheels" truck serving a Big Z Burger, pitched as a modern take on the old diners. Their announcement for a Windsor store promised snacks and grab-and-go drinks, not a restaurant. The only Zellers restaurants we found still serving are in Quebec, where, The Canadian Press reports, the Moniz family runs three, amid an ongoing court case over the trademark.
Can you still eat there?
Sort of. The Round Room survives as The Carlu, an event venue at 444 Yonge Street run by Oliver & Bonacini. Restored between 2000 and 2003, it's booked for weddings and galas rather than walk-in lunches. In July 2024, local history enthusiast Michael Binetti hosted a "Lunching with Lady Eaton" afternoon there, which Retail Insider reported sold out soon after it was announced. The menu used restored recipes, including Eaton's chicken pot pie and Round Room red velvet cake.
The Arcadian Court became an events venue too, reopened by Oliver & Bonacini in 2012 with the pot pie still on offer. Hudson's Bay closed the store beneath it on June 1, 2025, but the room has carried on: in late September 2026, Oliver & Bonacini's website was still taking holiday-party bookings for its Arcadian venue, listed at the eighth floor of Simpson Tower, 401 Bay Street.
Details checked October 2026. Hours and seasons change — confirm with each business before you go.
