The story of IX.

The address.

Nine King Street North is a small storefront on the quietest stretch of Uptown Waterloo, set north of the King and Erb cluster of restaurants and south of the row of pubs and music rooms that picks up at Bridgeport. The block does not have a patio bar and does not catch the spillover from the dance clubs. That is the point. The room sits where it sits because Uptown Waterloo needed a room that does not have to win the sidewalk to be full.

The Roman numeral IX is the brand mark for the same reason a good restaurant uses the street number on the awning. It does the work of the name without naming a category. From across the street the only thing you see is the numeral above the door.

The room.

The room is small. Eight couches, three banquettes, a fourteen-seat bar, two free-standing tables, a back booth, and a DJ booth set into the back wall. Three walls of dark wood, one wall of brick, a marble bar, brass at the rail. The light sits where it should sit at 10pm on a Thursday. The music sits at seventy-five decibels at the back banquette during peak. The door is enforced.

Every other decision in the room is downstream of those.

The team.

The team is small. A bar director who has run programs in Toronto and the West Coast. A kitchen lead who runs a tight late list and a tighter snack list. A doorman who has worked the door at two of the rooms that have set the standard for the segment in Toronto. The bar has reading hours where the staff sits down with one another and reads about what is in the glass.