“Just be nice and you can stay”
Behind the Boîte with the owners of queer-positive, vegetarian “barstaurant” Lipstick & Dynamite
By MARTA S
Lipstick & Dynamite is a magical, velvet painting-adorned dive bar and restaurant located at the corner of Queen West and Ossington. And although Celeste Toledo and Steve Cann are two of the sweetest boîte owners I’ve had the pleasure of meeting, be warned — they’re trying to fool you.
In the best way possible.
“We wanted to be innovative with our food and kind of trick people into eating things that they might not otherwise try,” Steve says, smiling slyly.
Don’t worry — this Queen West “barstaurant” (a term coined by Celeste) isn’t doing anything Fear Factor-esque with their food. The trickery is that every item on their sharable, bar snack menu is vegetarian or vegan.
“We don’t often tell people that what they’re eating is vegan and they don’t usually notice,” Celeste — a vegan herself — explains.
“People always enjoy our bar snacks when they have them,” Steve — not a vegetarian himself — adds. “It’s disguised cleverly, like ‘chilli cheese fries’ or ‘nachos’, things that people would expect to see in a bar anyway.” While it’s Celeste’s preference to not have meat or dairy served at her bar, Steve insists, “Our food was never meant to be a political issue here.”
Rather, they view the menu — which they created together with their kitchen staff — as a way to have some healthy fun and elevate their offerings beyond booze. Everything — right down to the bread and sauces — is made in-house.
Another thing that might fool you? These two aren’t romantically involved.
“People mistake us for a couple all the time,” Celeste says.
“Either that or brother and sister,” Steve laughs. “She got married about four months ago to her partner Nelson, although I do consider myself the third partner in their marriage.”
“Steve and I like to say we’re an ‘alternate reality husband and wife’,” Celeste adds.
Steve agrees. “We’d be a couple in, like, another world.”
Fleeing adversity, seeking diversity
Steve and Celeste are as unique, individualistic, and accepting of others as Lipstick & Dynamite is itself. How they each found their way to Toronto paints a clear picture of why they — and their place — are the way they are.
Each had to overcome being marginalized and threatened due to their sexual orientation and, in the end, neither could stand the small-mindedness of the small towns they grew up in.
Steve is from Oshawa. “After I finished high school, my mom was like, ‘Well, you either need to work at GM or you need to go to college,’ and I didn’t know what I wanted to do,” Steve tells me. “I had a secret boyfriend at the time because I hadn’t come out yet. So him and I applied to the same college and decided, ‘Let’s go there together, we’ll have each other.’” Steve and his secret boyfriend ended up studying at Loyalist College in Belleville. Unfortunately, he didn’t find it much better than Oshawa.
“There’s a lot of homophobia [in that town],” he shares. “It’s almost unsafe, so I was never planning to stay. But I met a lot of my best friends there [at school].” In 2002, Steve and his friends “decided to move to Toronto because it was the closest major city. We were all broke so we just headed this way.”
That was the year he met Celeste.
Celeste’s story of how she ended up in the city is one of struggle and perseverance. “I ended up in Toronto because I ran out of money here while living in my van,” she says rather matter-of-factly.
“My partner at the time and my daughter — who was four — and I lived in Windsor. We were a queer couple and [Windsor] was a very homophobic place. Our house was getting broken into all the time.”
The torment she experienced due to being in a same-sex partnership made her fear for her — and her daughter and partner’s — safety. “One day we just thought, ‘Why are we doing this [staying here]? It’s horrible.’”
Celeste’s little family emptied their house of all of their worldly possessions. A few days later, they sold off everything they could. Using the money they made, they packed up their minivan and hit the road in search of a better life.
“We drove around for about six months. We made it all the way to the west coast. It was really amazing to see that much of Canada,” she says, smiling at the memory. “We ended up in Toronto [in 2002] to visit some friends. We pulled into a lot and used the last of our money to pay for parking. We were like, ‘Okay, well, let’s just get jobs here and make gas money.’ I had no intention of staying.”
But Celeste fell in love with the city. “We made friends really quickly,” she recalls. “I feel like Toronto’s a really friendly, welcoming place, so we stayed.”
So in 2002, freshly landed in Toronto, Steve and Celeste met after each found work at Exile, a vintage clothing store in Kensington Market. A love of second-hand shopping and queer rock and roll made them click instantly.
When drunk texting actually leads to good decisions
The pair eventually wound up working in the hospitality industry — she at the Fresh Restaurant at Queen and Crawford, and he at the Done Right Inn. The idea to open a place of their own came up when Celeste sent Steve a text one night.
“I think she had a couple [drinks] in her when she did it,” Steve says, laughing.
“I did, yeah,” Celeste admits. “After having several drinks, I texted him, ‘Steve and Celeste open a bar together — good idea?’”
“I didn’t take her seriously at all! I just ignored the text!” Steve exclaims.
Celeste made it clear that she was, in fact, very serious; and Steve quickly realized that if he was ever going to run a place of his own, doing so with Celeste made the most sense.
“I think neither of us could ever go into business with any other friend,” he says kindly.
With their business ideas shared and sorted, the pair found themselves looking down the long and complicated road to small business ownership.
“It was tricky because poor people like us think they can’t do anything, even if they have a good idea,” Steve says wryly.
“Even with excellent credit and a solid business plan,” Celeste adds.
With extensive help and guidance from Steve’s college pal Leslie Bradt, the two worked out a highly detailed business plan over the course of a year, and saved every cent they possibly could. Yet even with their dedication, the banks denied them a loan.
“In the end,” Celeste says, “we got a personal loan from a family member.” The fiercely independent pair didn’t want traditional investors, “because that’s just one more person who has input into how things should run.”
One look inside Lipstick & Dynamite and it’s clear — it’s Steve and Celeste all the way.
Developing a velveteen habit
The perfect word to describe Lipstick & Dynamite’s décor is “eclectic”. A ventriloquist’s dummy hovers above the bar. Used board games are stacked in the back room, bathed in light from fringed lampshades. A pinball machine blinks away outside the bathrooms. Steve conducts bar business on a plastic telephone shaped like a pair of fire engine-red lips.
“We hired expensive designers,” Celeste tells me with a straight face. Then she erupts into giggles. “Just kidding!”
“[The design] is all us. It’s all DIY,” Steve shares with audible pride. They also had extensive help from friends and family, with painting and beyond.
“Our friend Scott Matthews built the booths, the tables. He used reclaimed wood from a church in High Park for the whole bar and everything,” Celeste says, running her hand along the table we’re sitting at. “Everything in here is second-hand, pretty much. It was really great — we got to go vintage picking. Go on all these road trips, and into these little shops.”
Due to this, there are very few places that look like Lipstick & Dynamite. And you’d be hard-pressed to find a place that houses such an impressive collection of velvet paintings.
“We have a problem,” Celeste laughs, looking at the vintage artwork that covers the walls and creeps onto the ceiling.
“The velvet thing we just kind of ran into,” Steve explains. “We found a couple, bought a couple, found a couple more. And now we have a policy where we trade beer and food for velvets if you bring one in. There’s 67 [paintings] as of now and the collection’s still growing. What makes it even better is that we’re in an art gallery neighbourhood.”
“I’ve had so many people come in and ask about the artists,” Celeste adds cheekily. “It’s pretty much throw-away art. Most people think it’s a joke, but we’re like, ‘We love them, please don’t touch them, they’re our precious, precious things!’”
“If it’s glitter or fringe or velvet, we love it,” Steve agrees.
Dealing with the lease, the landlord, and… Ali Baba’s?
Celeste and Steve have no qualms with the fact that they do not come from money. The pride they have in being self-made business owners is palpable. After everything, here they are, operating their boîte in what’s largely seen as one of the most desirable areas in the city for such a thing. How they landed the space that became Lipstick & Dynamite perfectly illustrates this pair’s tenacity.
Celeste recalls walking past the then-vacant space on her way to work at Fresh and ignoring it, assuming anything on Queen West would be far too expensive. But a quick phone call revealed the place was, actually, just slightly above their budget.
“And that’s how we learned the landlord is just slightly neurotic,” Steve jokes.
“Every single day I was either coming here or calling the landlord,” Celeste says incredulously. “He made us get all of these inspections. We had to get the roof inspected ourselves, well before we even signed anything. It was exhausting.”
After two months of getting the run-around, the pair nearly lost the space when their landlord appeared to develop cold feet. Celeste turns pale when she remembers it. “He said, ‘I don’t know if it’s a good idea to rent to you guys,’ and I nearly lost it.”
“It was tricky,” Steve chimes in. “He was also talking to Ali Baba’s, the shawarma chain. They offered him more money. He was showing the place to them the day before we signed the lease.”
“The day we actually signed the lease,” Celeste corrects him.
Luckily, their signed papers were enough to kick Ali Baba’s to the curb. Nothing deterred these two, even when a silly dispute over the number of chairs they were allowed inside (the city said 34; the AGCO said 30) nearly wiped them out financially.
Out of money, the pair launched a Kickstarter campaign. In the end, their friends’ donations helped save their business. “And our friends are not super rich. It was amazing,” Steve says emotionally.
“It was a really moving moment,” Celeste agrees. “Our friends helped us a lot.”
Taking care of their own
Their pals’ dedication isn’t surprising — these two are so genuinely kind. Their kindness is exemplified in how well they take care of their employees. They pay their staff above the industry standard minimum wage, and — a year and half after opening — have yet to collect paycheques for themselves.
“We just make tips,” Celeste shrugs.
“We’ve both worked jobs where we didn’t feel appreciated. We wanted to create a nice space where people felt comfortable,” Steve says passionately.
“I’m proud that our people are pretty happy,” Celeste adds.
So please, when you visit L&D — especially if Steve or Celeste is behind the bar — tip your bartenders well. And don’t break their one cardinal rule.
The cardinal rule
Despite their sweet demeanours, Steve makes it clear: “We’re not going to take any shit from anybody.”
These two have dealt with enough adversity throughout their lives and through opening their business. They’re hell-bent on keeping Lipstick & Dynamite as positive and inclusive a place as possible.
“The only time anybody is asked to leave is if they’re not being nice,” Celeste explains. “Just be nice and you can stay.”
They’re so serious that they had a friend make them a charming, hand-carved placard that hangs behind the bar and simply states:
Absolutely no assholes.
“Pointing to it shuts people down right away,” Celeste says with satisfaction.
“Our mandate was to create a place where all types of people can feel comfortable, not to market to one specific type of person,” she continues. “Toronto’s so diverse that it works. There are always a handful of people that are just looking for a place to relax. Like queer people with straight friends who maybe don’t want to hang out in the Village or don’t want to do something super mainstream. Places where we would hang out ourselves. We were hoping there would be enough like-minded people around, and it seems like it’s working.”
Since the narrow-mindedness of their small hometowns was enough to drive them both away, it’s heartening to know that the diversity of Toronto has ultimately helped them and their business thrive. Steve and Celeste are both grateful to call Toronto home.
“The fact that we’re running an independent business here the way we wanted to really is a dream come true,” Steve says. “I have no regrets about having done this for even a second.”
What the future holds
A year and a half later, this intrepid pair hasn’t finished growing their little barstaurant just yet. They’re currently working on opening a patio out back, hoping to capitalize on the last warm weeks of September. However, nothing — it seems — is free of bureaucratic troubles for them. The pair has had to go through a long, expensive process dealing with their building inspector, fire inspector, and the scary-sounding Committee of Adjustment (which deals with zoning issues).
Steve and Celeste aren’t giving up, of course. Fingers crossed!
If they could be doing anything else…
Celeste has always loved the idea of being a bartender. “When I was watching Cheers as a kid, I would think, ‘One day I’m going to be a combination of Sam the lady killer and Carla the astrologer with a sassy attitude.’”
Steve dies laughing. “And now you’re them! You’re that person!”
“I either wanted to be that, or an astronaut,” she giggles. “I like sci-fi a lot.”
Steve says he always knew business ownership was his direction in life. “So I do like the idea of running a full-blown vaudeville house in a mansion, with strip tease and burlesque shows.”
The two also share a dream similar to so many I’ve heard in these interviews.
“I’d want to [open another bar], but on a beach somewhere,” Steve says, eyeing Celeste.
“I do also love beaches,” she says, nodding. She leans in. “I met a Mexican couple recently. One of them works with my partner, who’s a shoe designer, and his partner owns a restaurant down there. So one night we’re talking, and eventually we were like, ‘Let’s open a place together in Mexico!’”
“After having had a few drinks, probably,” Steve says, nudging her. “That’s how all your good ideas happen!”
Lipstick & Dynamite is open from noon ‘til last call daily. But be warned: Don’t come in looking for cocktails. In true dive bar fashion, it’s beer and simple mixed drinks only. Escape the Ossington strip craziness for a night and curl up with a pint, a board game, and a plate of veggie deliciousness. Just bring cash — there is no debit machine.
Marta S is a freelance writer and bartender living and working in Toronto. If you or someone you know would like to be profiled by Behind the Boîte, email her at marta@behindtheboite.com.
She takes all kinds.
