After 43 years at the the corner of Dupont and Howland, the Indian Rice Factory has shut its doors. A note posted to Twitter yesterday broke the news. "To our dearest guests & friends: We have closed our retail operations. Thank you for over 43 years of wonderful memories. Namaste." No additional information has been offered about the closure, which also includes the adjacent Chai Bar, and the restaurant's Facebook page was deleted shortly thereafter. That said, residents of the neighbourhood had long noticed the declining busyness of the restaurant, which put Indian cuisine on the map in Toronto back in the 1970s.

The closure comes just over three years after the death of Chef Amar Patel, who opened the restaurant in 1970. An important figure in the Toronto restaurant scene, the story of her career and how the restaurant came to be is both fascinating and inspiring. It is perhaps too easy to forget just how influential this little restaurant on a lonely stretch of Dupont was to our city's culinary development. James Chatto's touching tribute to Patel is worth a read for anyone interested in what was one of the city's most innovative restaurants.