Toronto's Favourite Bbq Pop-up Is Finally Opening A Permanent Restaurant

For the past six years, Ruben Silva has been keeping Toronto residents' fingers greasy and their bellies full with the droolworthy delicacies of Crosstown Craft BBQ, his beloved pop-up barbecue business. This summer, he's finally settling into permanent digs.

Silva tells blogTO that, when he first began his adventures in barbecue as a pandemic hobby, he never expected anyone to take much notice, much less that his creations would become some of the city's most sought-after Texas-style barbecue.

Perhaps you could call Crosstown's meteoric rise to city-wide recognition destiny, then. A bite of his supple beef cheek or juicy brisket certainly feels divinely ordained.

Intentional or not, Crosstown Craft BBQ has smoked its way to an evangelical fan base: 11,000 followers on Instagram and pop-ups that sell out in hours, all without a permanent restaurant space for Silva to call home.

 

 

 

 

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Until now, that is. Coming summer 2026, Crosstown Craft BBQ has officially secured a permanent location in Scarborough's Golden Mile, ushering in a new era for Silva's barbecue sauce-covered baby.

"We honestly started thinking about a permanent space not long after our first few pop-ups," Silva tells blogTO. "The idea was always there, and once we saw the same people coming back again and again, and the lines kept growing, we knew this had the potential to be more than just a pop-up."

But if a vacant space in the city that's appropriate to house a restaurant of any kind is like finding a needle in a haystack, finding one that can support a barbecue restaurant specifically is like looking for a grain of rice in a shag carpet.

"Barbecue is a different beast. You need serious ventilation, space for wood-fired smokers, proper fire safety, and enough power and gas to handle long cooks and heavy equipment," Silva says.

On top of that, he says, he was specifically searching for a space that felt akin to true Texas barbecue joints, had enough space to store wood, meat and equipment and a layout that allows for lengthy overnight cooks without, y'know, burning the whole place down.

 

 

 

 

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"Finding a place that checked all of those boxes, while still being accessible to customers, and had parking, was definitely one of the hardest parts of this journey."

Eventually, though, Silva and his team did land on the perfect spot.

"It's not far from where our very first pop-up started, which makes this feel full-circle for us," Silva tells blogTO.

"We chose this neighbourhood because it reflects who we are: a hardworking, diverse, food-loving community with a lot of character. It’s an area that’s growing fast, but still feels local and real."

After spending so long cultivating Crosstown as a pop-up, Silva describes soon moving into a permanent home as "surreal," and the start of a new chapter for the business that'll allow him and the team to start cooking on a far greater scale.

To christen the space, for example, Silva has invested in a new 750-gallon smoker that'll allow him to cook a staggering 1700 lbs. of meat at a time, but more than the sheer volume of meat he'll now be able to smoke, the new location represents an opportunity for continued growth in the city.

"More than anything, it means we can keep doing what we love, in one place, for the community that helped make this possible," Silva says.

Crosstown Craft BBQ will be located at 51 Comstock Rd., and is expected to open this summer.