Best for
- Dinner before a Queen West night — the timing and location are perfect
- Heat-seekers who want Thai food at Thai spice levels
- Late Friday and Saturday dinners when everything else has closed
Skip if
- You want DJs, dancing or bottle service — this is a restaurant
- You can't do heat and won't ask for guidance — the fiery dishes are fiery
- You need a Monday or Tuesday table — it's closed both days
Nana comes from Toronto Thai royalty: the family behind Khao San Road, the downtown institution, opened this Queen West sibling at 785 Queen West and named it after Bangkok's Nana entertainment district. The room says it plainly — cobblestone details, mint-green shutters, strings of miniature Thai flags — a street-market set built inside a Queen West storefront. Toronto Life covered the opening and, later, the food's genuine fire; both write-ups aged well.
The menu digs into all four regions of Thailand and deliberately picks dishes North American Thai menus skip: laab seasoned with herbs and toasted rice, pork satay sweetened with palm sugar, and boat noodles — the intense, broth-dark soup traditionally sold off riverboats in Northern Thailand. The kitchen's defining trait is that it doesn't tone the heat down. Ask your server to calibrate and they will; order the fiery dishes blind at your own risk, which is exactly how it should be.
Why it's on a nightlife site: geography and hours. Nana sits mid-block between The Dog's Bollocks and Desi Bar & Grill, opens for dinner only Wednesday through Sunday, and on Fridays and Saturdays serves until 1am — a rarity that makes it both the ideal first stop of a night out and the answer to "where can we still eat properly?" at midnight. The room hums on weekend nights without ever pretending to be a bar: no DJs, no dance floor, no bottle service, and reservations happen by email, 24 hours ahead, with seats held for walk-ins.
Bottom line: start your Queen West night here. Share the laab and the boat noodles, respect the spice, and walk out the door into one of the city's best bar strips. If you came looking for a party venue, this isn't one — it's the reason the party starts well-fed.


