Che Restobar

The downtown London evening that ends at a theatre or an arena has to start somewhere, and Che Restobar is built to be the first stop. The Dundas Street dining room sits within a short walk of Budweiser Gardens, the Grand Theatre, London Music Hall, Centennial Hall, and the convention centre, which makes it a practical anchor for a night with a curtain time. It works as a full dinner-and-drinks destination rather than a quick bite — a Latin American restobar where a table can settle in for ceviche and cocktails or commit to steak and paella, with a seat reserved ahead through the restaurant's own booking page.

The menu rewards a table that orders with some intent. Yuca Poutine is the dish that reads most like Che: golden yucca fries under Monterey Jack, feta, and cotija, finished with aji amarillo, black olive, and mojo. From there the kitchen opens up — Ceviche Mixto brightened with passion-fruit leche de tigre, a hanger steak marinated in panka coffee and plated with fresh chimichurri and yucca fries, and Seafood Chupe, a Peruvian-style bouillabaisse carrying mussels, shrimp, rock snapper, calamari, chayote, and potatoes in a rocoto and aji amarillo broth. Tacos run from pork belly and chicken adobo to a vegan version built on sweet potato and black beans, and a saffron paella pulls chorizo, chicken, and shellfish into one pan.

What holds all of that together is range with a point of view. Che reaches across Latin America — Argentine empanadas, Cuban mojo, a Spanish-leaning paella — but the cooking keeps returning to Peruvian detail, to aji amarillo and rocoto and leche de tigre, which keeps the breadth from reading as a tour. The menu is accessible without being timid: a chorizo burger and yucca fries sit a few lines from charred poblano peppers stuffed with quinoa, sweet potato, and chayote, and the plant-forward dishes are genuine rather than obligatory. This is a kitchen confident enough to put comfort food and a serious seafood bowl on the same page and trust the table to find its order.

The breadth is what makes Che workable for a table that can't agree. The taco section does the flexible middle work — pork belly, steak carnitas, chicken adobo, a spicy calamari and cauliflower taco, and a vegan one — so a mixed group can share without flattening the order into one mild choice. Plant-forward plates — a watermelon salad with jicama and mora-mint vinaigrette, the Holy Guacamole with homemade tortilla chips — give vegetarians a real seat at the table rather than an afterthought. And the bar pulls its weight: a pisco- and agave-led cocktail list is built to sit beside the hanger steak or carry a slower evening on its own.

Che opened on Dundas Street around 2011 and grew into a fixture of the downtown core. The owner is Marvin Rivas, a name that recurs in local coverage of the area's restaurants. The dining room he built leans into its setting — exposed brick, contemporary art on the walls, a gallery feel that gives the upscale-casual format somewhere to land — and a patio carries that same setting into the warmer months.

The result flexes to the night around it. A date settles into the art and the cocktails; a group grazes from shared starters to bigger plates; a pre-show table books ahead, eats well, and still makes the curtain. The patio opens when the weather turns, and the kitchen's Latin American breadth holds steady whether the evening is a quiet dinner for two or a full table before a show. Downtown London has no shortage of places to eat before the lights go down; Che has made the case for arriving early and staying for the cocktails.