“They helped me name my tarantula…”

- Hank

As Above, So Below

The Mostly Painful Experience of Living Above a Restaurant

Words by Geo Peck, Art by Jovana Todorovic

To some people it sounds like the best situation the universe could offer them, and to others it is their own personal idea of hell. I’m talking about living on top of a restaurant.

When I was 20, my best friend and I moved into an apartment on the second floor of a mixed-use commercial building on Bloor street in Toronto. The business was owned and operated by a very sweet Egyptian couple, and they baked us banana bread when we moved in. Sure we had roaches, but the floor of our apartment that was right above their oven got really warm, which was nice in the winter. Not so much in the summer, but for that they had a pepper plant in the back alleyway that we were welcome to help ourselves to. My roommate would gossip with the wife about the husband. He was one of those business guys who can’t commit to one business so he’s got all these big ideas. Walking around with one of those bluetooth headsets, doing some kind of important pizza related wheeling and dealing. His wife was always complaining about him like, we opened a pizza place Daniel, let’s just stick to that for now. I liked them and was really sad when they closed down the pizza restaurant. After that I lived on top of a cheque cashing place.

I lived in apartments on top of restaurants and I’ve worked in restaurants underneath apartments. It’s always been somewhat fraught as a relationship, not the perfect symbiosis I imagined it would be when I signed the lease. I had some regulars from upstairs when I worked as a barista, and I think the familiarity made them forget themselves and they were really demanding. This is not the experience that Hank, a 30 year old dog groomer who lives in The Beaches in Toronto has with their downstairs cafe.

“The food is really good!” says Hank. “and they gave us a discount for living in the building. It’s nice being a regular where they know we’re going to order two flat whites, I’ll need a take away box, and we pay cash. And if anything changes, we get to make the silly dad joke of ‘what?! You’re throwing me off today’.” Well that all sounds quite pleasant, doesn't it? 

“Sometimes they give me wine in a coffee cup to go and they helped me name my tarantula.”

Hank’s situation is the outlier here, I fear. Svetlana, a graphic designer, lived in an apartment above a trendy bar with her Chihuahua, Mango.  

“The restaurant people used to rent the apartment that I moved into, and they used to sell coke off the rooftop patio, so I always had random people up there looking for drugs. One time their electrician tried to drill at my dog. They tried to get me to move out and get their apartment back by constantly blasting music, harming my dog by leaving questionable food around the patio, and intimidating me right outside my own door. This was all supposedly fine because they had a fancy chef and good food according to others. Eventually I complained to the city about the massive roaches from Doom Eternal. After that things chilled out slightly but I moved as soon as I could.”

Rachel lived above a Toronto institution. The red sauce joint, famous for it’s cheap pitchers of beer and huge screens on which the world cup would play, was on the same block as Svetlana and her nightmare roaches. 

“The apartment was really run down and my roommates worked at the restaurant and they would all party after work every single night. Climbing over patrons to get to my front door also really sucked.” 

This last bit is relatable to me. I recently moved to Manhattan and now live above a very very popular Thai restaurant. I can’t even throw out my trash in peace at 9 AM without making eye contact with every single patron in line already for lunch. I’ve never not had to tell somebody to move off my stoop just to get into my own building.

Anjali is an artist from Montreal and relayed to me a uniquely harrowing tale.  

“I lived on top of an independently owned pizza chain. The rat situation was so bad that I had rats coming in at night and burrowing in my mattress. And I could sleep through everything and that was fine, but I think the worst part is that the rats chewed through all my underwear. They would eat all of the crotch part of my underwear after they were used. It was like the most disgusting thing I’ve lived through.

And the worst part of it was, you know, I lived there above a restaurant, but when I woke up I had a job working full time back of house in another restaurant. And whenever I saw like any vermin, even though the place I worked at was super clean, I freaked out because I was just thinking about my violated laundry. “

If you appreciate drama, and like to have an adversary built into your living situation, I recommend living on top of a restaurant.