A Hyderabadi Mandi Kitchen Just Took Over the Danforth’s Toughest Restaurant Address

Shaaz opened at 417 Danforth Avenue on August 1, its first room outside Scarborough, in a space where Dhoom lasted seven months.

Updated August 24, 2026Canada · India

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A shared platter of Hyderabadi chicken mandi with roast chicken quarters, fried onions, and a bowl of chile sauce — Photo: Kavali Chandrakanth KCK · CC0 1.0

Shaaz opened at 417 Danforth Avenue on August 1, its first address outside Scarborough. The card travels with it: mandi platters built for a table, Hyderabadi dum biryani in several styles, weekend haleem with sheermal, and mutton roasted in ghee. For a strip better known for souvlaki, it is the most specific Hyderabadi menu within walking distance of the Greektown patios.

Shaaz is young for a restaurant taking on downtown rent. City of Toronto licensing shows a small Shaaz on Lawrence Avenue East, capacity under 30, cleared in May 2024, then the larger Eglinton Avenue East room in July 2025. Two years in, the Danforth is the bet, not the victory lap.

The address has eaten a lot of restaurants

417 Danforth has churned through tenants for more than a decade. A run of short-lived restaurant and nightlife concepts passed through in the early 2010s. Louis Cifer Brew Works lasted about ten years, which still counts as the record. Then came Dhoom, a self-described modern Indian journey that opened in December 2025 and closed roughly seven months later with no announcement, just a deleted Instagram and a locked door. The complaint that keeps coming back from neighbours is size: the room is big enough to punish a slow Tuesday.

Shaaz arrives with an advantage Dhoom did not have. The Eglinton room already runs noon to midnight most nights and until 2 a.m. Friday through Sunday, and the menu sells biryani in two- and five-kilo trays, which is the shape of a business that survives on families, parties, and late orders rather than a full dining room every evening. Whether that stamina transfers to a bigger space on a festival street is the open question.

The practical gain for eaters is distance. Riverdale, Playter Estates, and Leslieville households get mandi without the drive east to Eglinton. Danforth hours were still settling at launch, so check before you go.

Mandi and biryani are not the same order

Mandi is Yemeni: meat and rice cooked in a pit or tandoor, with the meat hung above the grains so its fat and juices drip down as everything smokes. Hyderabad has served it for generations through the Chaush, descendants of Hadrami soldiers the Nizams recruited from the late 1700s and housed in barracks on the city’s southern edge. The neighbourhood still carries the name locals made from that English word: Barkas. Mandi stayed a Barkas dish until roughly the late 2000s, when restaurants there turned it into a citywide craze. It now shows up next to biryani at Hyderabadi tables, which is exactly how Shaaz presents it.

Hyderabadi biryani works the opposite way. Partly cooked rice and marinated meat go into a sealed pot so trapped steam finishes both, usually with fried onions, mint, and saffron layered in. Shaaz runs several lanes of it: zafrani dum, Kattappa mutton, Telangana boneless chicken, and a gutti vankaya version built on stuffed eggplant. Order mandi when you want smoke and a platter to reach across. Order biryani when you want separate grains and the perfume that only comes off a sealed pot.

What to order on a first visit

The Scarborough menu is broad. Alongside the Hyderabadi core sit Karnataka-style Chickpet donne biryanis, Hakka Chinese plates, shawarma, and a chaat corner. That range is normal for a GTA room feeding a mixed crowd, but it means you can order badly here and leave thinking the kitchen is ordinary. Stay in the Hyderabadi and mandi columns on a first visit.

Chicken or mutton mandi, the dish the restaurant leads with, and the clearest read on whether the pit-style rice is doing its job.
A dum biryani on a return trip, for the contrast in grain and spice.
Chicken lollipop masala or ghee-roasted mutton if you want the snack-and-roast side of the kitchen.
Haleem with sheermal on weekends, patthar ka gosht, or the whole grilled chicken with roomali roti when you want the deeper Hyderabadi card.
Vegetarian diners: the paneer and kaju paneer ghee-roast mandi keep you in the same named lane instead of defaulting to a generic curry.

This is opening coverage, not a review of the Danforth kitchen. Toronto’s South Asian density still sits in Scarborough, Mississauga, and Brampton, and the interesting part of this opening is a regional kitchen betting it can hold a downtown-adjacent room without flattening the menu to please everyone. Ambica Jain’s Raani is planned for Bay Street on a much grander budget. Shaaz is testing the cheaper, harder version of the same idea, in a space that has beaten better-funded tenants.