Toronto spent a long decade being told it was getting a great design hotel and not quite getting one. The Ace, which opened on Camden Street in 2022, is the building that finally settled the argument. I checked in on a Tuesday in April, paid for two nights, and spent most of that time quietly impressed by a hotel that decided the architecture would do the talking.

On the Curb Score this lands at 8.5 — a properly designed, properly run hotel with a restaurant and a rooftop that would justify the visit on their own, held back from a higher mark only by a location that is convenient rather than scenic and rooms whose drama is more visual than functional.

Arrival

The building announces itself before you reach the door. The Ace is a board-formed concrete monolith dropped onto a narrow Garment District side street, designed by Toronto’s Shim-Sutcliffe, and the lobby is the best room in the hotel — a soaring, brutalist-warm volume with a sunken Lobby Bar, a long communal table, and the kind of considered material palette that you feel before you can name it. I have stood in a lot of hotel lobbies. This is one of the few in Canada that reads as a piece of real architecture rather than a furniture showroom.

Check-in was relaxed and competent. Camden Street itself is a quiet stub off the busier King and Spadina corridors, which means the front door is calm even though you are three minutes’ walk from the noise. The staffer walked me to the elevator, which is a small thing that the better hotels still bother to do.

The room

I had a King in the mid-tier band, facing the courtyard. The Ace room language here is concrete, leather, wood, and brass — handsome, masculine, deliberately spare. The custom furniture is genuinely good; the turntable and vinyl in the room is the brand’s signature flourish and I actually used it. There is a real sense that someone designed this room rather than ordered it.

Where it gives a little back is in the practical layer. The concrete-and-glass aesthetic means the bathroom runs cooler and louder than you might expect, and storage is on the lean side — Ace rooms are not built for the over-packer. Light control was good, the bed was excellent, and the soundproofing held against a quiet street, though I suspect a King facing Camden would hear more on a weekend. None of this is a flaw so much as a set of trade-offs the design makes on purpose, and mostly I was glad it did.

The block

The Garment District is a working location rather than a postcard one. You are west of the financial core, a few minutes’ walk from King Street West’s restaurant and bar density, and a short stroll to the Spadina and St. Andrew subway stations on Line 1. Rogers Centre is close enough that a Blue Jays homestand fills the neighborhood and, predictably, the room rates. The Entertainment District, the theaters, and Queen West are all walkable.

What the block is not is pretty. There is no waterfront, no park view, no skyline drama from street level — this is a dense, mid-rise, slightly industrial pocket of downtown, and the hotel’s interior glamour exists partly to compensate for the unglamorous street. For a visitor who wants to walk to dinner and ride one subway line to most of what they came for, it works cleanly. For one who wants to step out into beauty, the block under-delivers.

Operations

Service was the quiet, well-trained kind — present without hovering. Housekeeping was thorough; the front desk handled a restaurant booking and a late checkout without friction. The Wi-Fi was fast.

The food and drink program is the headline, and it earns it. Alder, the ground-floor restaurant from Patrick Kriss of Alo, runs a wood-fired menu and carries a Michelin Guide listing — it is a destination in its own right and not the captive-audience afterthought that hotel restaurants so often are. I ate there one night and would go back even if I were not staying upstairs. Evangeline, the 14th-floor rooftop, is the social engine of the building: an indoor-outdoor bar with city views, busy with locals as much as guests, the kind of room that gives a hotel a pulse. The Lobby Bar downstairs handled the morning coffee and the late nightcap with equal ease.

Value

At roughly C$300 a night the Ace is fairly priced for what it delivers — a serious building, a Michelin-listed kitchen, a rooftop that the whole city wants into. On event weekends the rate climbs and the calculus tightens, but even then the product is real; you are not paying for a logo, you are paying for architecture and a kitchen that would stand alone.

The marks against it are honest and small: the location is functional rather than beautiful, and the rooms prioritize how they look over how much they hold. Neither is enough to pull it down far. The Ace Hotel Toronto is the most convincing design hotel the city has, and it lands at 8.5 on the Curb Score — go for the building and the food, and forgive it the unglamorous street.

Verification

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Frequently asked questions

Where is Ace Hotel Toronto?
51 Camden Street, in Toronto's Garment District just west of the financial core. It's a short walk south to King Street West and the Spadina or St. Andrew subway stations, and close to Rogers Centre.
When did Ace Hotel Toronto open?
It opened in 2022, the brand's first property in Canada. It has 123 rooms.
What restaurant is in Ace Hotel Toronto?
Alder, a Michelin Guide-recommended wood-fired restaurant from chef-partner Patrick Kriss of Alo Food Group. Evangeline is the indoor-outdoor rooftop bar and lounge on the 14th floor; the lobby Lobby Bar runs all day.
How much does a room at Ace Hotel Toronto cost?
Rooms generally start around C$300 a night and climb with demand and event weekends. Expect more during festivals and Blue Jays homestands.