balzacs coffee

Enormous rat spotted scurrying inside coffee shop in Toronto

While virtually any food business in a major city has the potential to attract rodents and pests, one video showing a rat scurrying inside a popular coffee shop for students is making rounds on TikTok. 

The video, uploaded by user @hirnitrivedi, was taken outside of a Balzac's location in the Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) School of Image Arts at 122 Bond St. 

The clip, which was captioned "Balzac's needs a health inspection asap," shows the cute (or gross, depending on where you stand) rodent scurrying around the floor of the coffee shop. 

Luckily, it looks like the lone ranger was on the hunt for food after the café had closed up for the night. 

While some regular customers at the coffee shop were disgusted by the video, others weren't discouraged by the presence of the rodent at all, noting that most food establishments in the downtown core see their fair share of rats and mice. 

"I'm gonna hold your hands while I tell you something about getting anything to eat downtown in any big cities," one comment under the video reads. 

"They're in every building in Toronto I promise, like everywhere," another person agreed. 

Others took the opportunity to compare the rodent to Remy, the culinary-obsessed rat from the 2007 Pixar film, Ratatouille.

"Leave Remy alone he makes great coffee," one user joked. "That's just little chef, he makes the pastries," another comment reads. 

In all seriousness, it doesn't look like customers of the coffee shop need to worry at all, since the location passed its last DineSafe inspection on April 24, with only one minor infraction observed. 

blogTO reached out to Balzac's for comment but did not receive a response back in time for this article's publication.

Lead photo by

@hirnitrivedi


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