Emad Yacoub spent years getting pushed aside by bigger players in Toronto’s commercial real estate market. Every time the Glowbal Hospitality Group CEO tried to secure a downtown lease, a larger company would swoop in and take the deal.
“The greatest locations always come with a big price tag,” Yacoub said. “And if the big towers downtown don’t know you, they won’t even take your call. Every single time I tried to put a deal together, one of the larger companies would come in behind me and take it.”
That changed when COVID hit and nobody was signing deals. Yacoub secured the Black+Blue Steakhouse location, and the restaurant became what he calls Toronto’s highest-revenue restaurant. Suddenly, landlords across the city wanted Glowbal in their buildings.
Now he’s bringing Riley’s Fish and Steak to the former Shore Club space at Wellington and York—an 8,000-square-foot location beneath RBC Tower that includes a mezzanine for back-of-house operations and a patio. The February 2026 opening will mark Glowbal’s second Toronto restaurant, four years after Black+Blue opened in the city.
“I wanted to come home for years,” Yacoub said. “My family lives here—my brother, my sister. I wanted to bring my company back to Toronto.”
The Shore Club location hits what Yacoub calls his five essential criteria for restaurant real estate: near a hotel (the Ritz-Carlton sits next door), in a business district (directly beneath RBC Tower), weekend brunch potential from the hotel and nearby residential, Sunday-to-Wednesday evening traffic from business areas and executives closing deals, and Monday-through-Friday theatre traffic from King Street—Toronto’s Broadway corridor—which sits directly across the street.
“That means we can operate seven days a week with lunch and dinner service,” Yacoub said. “When a location hits all five of those criteria, that’s when you know you’ve found something special. This location delivered on every single one.”
What sealed the deal was the kitchen—three times the size of Riley’s original Vancouver location, which converted a former pub with limited back-of-house capacity.
“In Vancouver, we renovated an existing pub kitchen and turned it into Riley’s,” Yacoub said. “But there was constant pressure between our seating capacity and what the kitchen could actually produce. We couldn’t expand the kitchen footprint. Here in Toronto, we’re walking into a space with three times the kitchen capacity. Now I can finally execute everything I originally envisioned for the concept.”
Riley’s Vancouver has earned Michelin Guide recognition for four consecutive years, including 2025. Yacoub sees the Toronto opening as a chance to elevate the concept further.
“We’re incredibly fortunate to have received Michelin recognition for four consecutive years,” he said. “But coming into Toronto, we asked ourselves whether we could do it even better. That’s why we’re relaunching Riley’s here with elevated service standards and a completely reimagined design.”
The concept positions itself as the complement to Black+Blue, which focuses on steaks and sushi. Yacoub describes the two restaurants as “yin and yang.” Riley’s is a chophouse featuring great steaks alongside extensive seafood and raw bar service.
“Riley’s is built on comfort cooking executed with proper technique and quality ingredients,” Yacoub explained. “It’s about sourcing the best fish and the best beef, then letting the quality of those products speak for themselves.”
Yacoub visited the space multiple times when it operated as Shore Club and felt the previous operator missed the location’s potential.
“David Aisenstat is a brilliant restaurateur,” Yacoub said, referring to the founder who built Keg into 120 locations. “What he accomplished with his company is remarkable. But I see restaurants differently. When I visited Shore Club, I watched how people moved through the space, where the bar was positioned, how energy flowed through the room. I always felt the restaurant needed a complete redesign to unlock the space’s full potential.”
The Wellington and York location wasn’t actually Yacoub’s first choice for Riley’s Toronto. Glowbal originally had a lease for space near the Hockey Hall of Fame in Brookfield Place, where the plan was to split the restaurant into two concepts—Riley’s on one side and a Mediterranean concept called Gigi on the other.
“The New York-based landlord pulled our lease because they wanted to bring in a TopGolf simulator,” Yacoub said. “That deal fell through and they came back to us, but by then the split configuration no longer worked for what we were trying to build.”
He moved Riley’s to the Shore Club location instead. Gigi, which Yacoub has been developing for four years, will now launch in Vancouver first. The Mediterranean concept is slated to open in late 2027 in Vancouver’s Financial District with seating for 220 guests.
Riley’s Toronto will feature live music every night, spotlighting young emerging artists who will eventually establish regular weekly slots.
“We’ll start with different musicians each night,” Yacoub said. “Over time, we’ll establish regular slots—the same artist every Tuesday, another every Wednesday, and so on. They build their own following while contributing to the restaurant’s atmosphere. It gives young musicians a platform to grow their audience.”
Yacoub’s restaurant career started at Toronto’s Harbour Castle Hilton, then the King Edward Hotel and Aqua Restaurant, before he moved to Vancouver. In 1999, he returned to Toronto and opened his first restaurant, Brownstone Bistro on Yonge Street, with family members. Using profits from the café, he opened his second restaurant, Solo on Yonge, a higher-end concept next door. In 2001, he returned to Vancouver and launched Glowbal Restaurant Group, opening Glowbal Grill Steaks + Satay in 2002.
Today, Glowbal operates nine restaurants across British Columbia, including Glowbal, Coast, Italian Kitchen, Black+Blue Vancouver, The Roof, Five Sails, Riley’s, and Trattoria locations in Burnaby and West Vancouver. Black+Blue Toronto opened in April 2023 at 130 King Street West in the Exchange Tower, occupying 9,000 square feet across two floors with a 2,000-square-foot garden patio.
Yacoub’s hospitality philosophy stems from how he was raised.
“Cousins and friends would knock on our door—no appointment needed. Come on in, my mom is cooking,” he said. “Everybody was welcome. All my life there were people sitting and eating at our table with us. That’s what we built our restaurants on.”
That philosophy translates into how the team operates. Before every shift, they review the reservation list, noting whether guests are visiting for the first time or their fifteenth.
“When you’re there the first time, we say this is a new guest—let’s make sure we spend some attention and let them enjoy their evening so we could get another repeating customer,” Yacoub said. “And this guy who’s been here 15 times, just make sure to remind him how much we appreciate him being here and being regular for us. This is how hospitality should be.”
Yacoub said he’d rather schedule a server who generates unprompted guest reviews over one who maximizes check averages through aggressive upselling.
“If somebody decided to get into their office and write a review, that means you really genuinely connected with that waiter,” Yacoub said. “That’s what I’m looking for. I’m looking for genuine people who connect with guests so the guests keep coming back. It’s not the person that’s going to sell me the biggest bottle of wine. But how many times before you offended the customer and the customer stopped coming back?”
The restaurant is currently in demolition and renovation, with Yacoub targeting a mid-to-late February 2026 opening, scheduled for a week or two after Valentine’s Day. Riley’s will operate lunch and dinner seven days per week, plus weekend brunch service.
Yacoub sees Riley’s as the next step in gradually expanding Glowbal’s Toronto presence. “I would love to keep bringing my brands to Toronto,” he said. “It would be an honour.”
The Shore Club space has been vacant since the restaurant’s closure. Riley’s represents a premium repositioning with a tenant that brings four consecutive years of Michelin recognition and what Yacoub claims is Toronto’s highest-revenue restaurant track record through Black+Blue.
Dustin Fuhs is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of 6ix Retail, Toronto’s premier source for retail and hospitality industry news. As the former Editor-in-Chief of Retail Insider, Canada’s most-read retail trade publication, Dustin brings over two decades of expertise spanning retail, marketing, entertainment and hospitality sectors. His experience includes leadership roles with industry giants such as The Walt Disney Company, The Hockey Hall of Fame, Starbucks and Blockbuster.
Recognized as a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert in 2024 and 2025, Dustin delivers insider perspectives on Toronto’s evolving retail landscape, from emerging brands to established players reshaping the city’s commercial districts.