Fresh on Front is the newest and largest Toronto outpost in the vegan-friendly fast-casual Fresh eatery chain, with a seating capacity of 100 and, for the first time, a cocktail bar. The décor conveys style on a budget, which suits Fresh’s customers, who seek out its $10 Buffalo cauliflower and $17 phytosalad. Tongue-in-cheek retro touches take inspiration from mid-century Danish modern, with dining chairs featuring chunky tapering wood-dowel frames. There’s Fifties dinette-suite kitsch in the thin shiny-tubular-metal-framed seating at the cocktail bar, and the glass-globe lighting suspended as pendants from the pergola and atop the banquettes. The salmon-upholstered chairs, curving pergola frame and the turquoise banquettes come straight out of the Eighties PoMo colour palette. Additional lively details include the long carpet runner with intriguing colour variegations (blue fading to complementary pink) and the jazzy-patterned ceramic tile on the cocktail-bar floor and on the wall with the kitchen pass-through. And nothing says “vegan” like actual vegetation, here evinced in the backlit ferns draping the cocktail-bar shelves and the living-wall mural.
