At No Vacancy, Troy Gilchrist distills a lifetime of experience into flawless hospitality

Behind the wood at No Vacancy, veteran bartender Troy Gilchrist and his small crew of fellow bartenders Kat Yu and Nick Hurd embody the ethos that personal connection is the business they are in and everything else is simply implementation. The result is one of those places where entertainment, showmanship and finely crafted cocktails are born together, and live together, within its walls.

Gilchrist, general manager and beverage director at the nearly one-year-old Ossington cocktail spot, has been around long enough to witness Toronto’s cocktail landscape evolve into the rich patchwork it is today, a vibrant tapestry of cultures, each lending and borrowing from one another to deliver harmonious complexity in food, drink and beyond.

Among his experiences: On December 31, 1999, bartending a Y2K New Year’s Eve party at Toronto’s now-long-shuttered Purple Pepper Bar. In 2012, opening Lucid, which rivalled early cocktail-scene pioneers like BarChef, under industry veteran Moses McIntee. In 2023, joining the opening team at Overpressure Club, a venue that quickly earned a reputation as one of the country’s best—and faded just as quickly.

It’s fair to say that Gilchrist has seen some things.

And now, he uses all the hard-earned lessons of his career to raise the bar of hospitality and flavour at No Vacancy.

Ghosts of the past

The story of No Vacancy began when the founders of Ghost Chicken—a now-closed casual fried-chicken spot—decided to repurpose an underutilized dining area into a sophisticated, cocktail-focused venue. They partnered with Solid Designs to transform the space into a moody bar, where exposed brick walls are softened by warm lighting and a carefully curated colour palette. Clean minimalist lines and refined details, combined with deep reds, gold accents and dark wood, evoke the elegance of upscale Japanese izakayas and cocktail lounges.

The Asian inspiration carries into the cocktail and spirits program with an impressive selection of baijiu, sake and Japanese whisky, reinforced by a list of house cocktails where you would be hard pressed to find a drink that doesn’t include at least one Asian ingredient.

While creating the cocktail menu, Gilchrist took inspiration from No Vacancy’s chef, John Carlo Zabala, who is familiar with Peruvian Nikkei-style cooking, which blends traditional Japanese dishes with South American flavours and ingredients. (Think spicy aji peppers and fresh seafood in dishes like tiradito and ceviche.) Many of Gilchrist’s drinks combine Asian flavours with South American or Mexican ingredients—such as the Smokey Nagata’s Supra cocktail, which merges mezcal and coffee with plum wine, Asian pear sake, Hinoki bitters and a black walnut amaro from Dillon’s Small Batch Distillers for a local touch.

Behind the stick, Gilchrist is joined in cheerful energy by fellow bartenders Kat Yu and Nick Hurd. And beyond what first meets the eye at No Vacancy’s door, the true heart and soul of the bar is mentorship. An ethos of hospitality is shaped over time, through every interaction, and those lessons are passed to the next generation so they, too, can carve their own path.

“Troy taught me so much about the psychology of what it means to be in the industry and the etiquette for speaking with guests,” says Yu. “Others mainly spoke about techniques, but Troy also spoke to the logic.”

Gilchrist himself credits his own mentors, among them, spirits and mixology consultants Michelle Hunt and Laura Panter, who ran an events company back in the aughts called Martini Club International, and industry legend Renata Clingen, who championed the idea that hospitality isn’t just about making great drinks, but about developing the skill set to manage every aspect of an operation.

And then, of course, there’s the aforementioned McIntee, who along with Christina Kuypers of the now-shuttered Ursa, is industry titans whose mentorship can still be savoured within No Vacancy’s walls, lending further proof to a timeless truth: We are who we meet.

No Vacancy is located at 74 Ossington Avenue, Toronto.

—by Brenton Mowforth