An unassuming French-ish bistro with a super-tight cocktail game in Toronto’s Little Italy has been named the winner of the Michter’s Art of Hospitality Award as part of North America’s 50 Best Bars 2025. Here's how Bar Pompette is giving the people what they want.
Between its striking white façade, large street-front windows and central location in a bustling part of town, Bar Pompette is definitely more 'open book' than 'hidden bar.'
Even so, it can be easy to walk right past this understated space unless you glance in and notice this brightly lit room is full of people who are clearly happy to be exactly where they are, basking in the warmth that can only come from knowing you’re truly welcome.
The art of reading people
Although known for its attention to detail and friendly team, there’s no house guide to hospitality lurking under the host stand at Bar Pompette. Even the often invoked ‘golden rule’ – treat guests as you’d like to be treated – holds no currency here. Instead, the team shares a deeply held conviction that it’s far more important to treat guests as they’d like to be treated. 
Maxime Hoerth and Hugo Togni opened Bar Pompette in 2021 (Image: Jessica Blaine Smith)
“Hospitality has to be personal,” says co-owner Hugo Togni, who, nearly four years ago, moved from France to open Pompette with partners Martine Bauer, Jonathan Bauer and Maxime Hoerth. “It’s about being able to read everyone and be like, ‘What are they here for?’ What’s their expectation for the night?’ And then asking ourselves how we can meet that.”
When the bar opened in the summer of 2021, Toronto was still dealing with pandemic regulations and experiencing a decidedly sluggish tourist season. The silver lining was that this gave the team an opportunity to really get to know the neighbours, who quickly fell for the casual digs, leafy courtyard patio, fresh, inventive drinks and welcoming vibe.
Now, in addition to locals, this destination bar gets the full gamut of libation-seeking guests, from first dates who are more interested in each other than the drinks menu to industry folks and the peak of the cocktail pinnacle: the super keen cocktail enthusiasts on a mission to learn more about the bar’s in-house ice programme.
“If there’s a rule here, it’s that not everyone has to see the ice being cut,” Togni says. “If someone is really interested, okay, but if somebody wants to learn all about their date to see if they’ll be a good fit for life, we’re going to bring them drinks and leave them alone.”
Bar Pompette is renowned among cocktail enthusiasts for its ice (Image: Jessica Blaine Smith)
The in-house ice in question is temperature monitored to ensure zero inclusions and cut in satisfyingly uniform columns or perfect blocks with laser-like precision, in case you were wondering.
Bringing joy to the table
Although there’s no script for hospitality at Pompette, GM Simon Taggart says that if you look up ‘golden rules of hospitality’ online, quite a few resonate with him. Not all, though.
“There’s a rule that if you walk within 10 feet of a guest, you have to smile and, at five feet, you have to say hello,” Taggart explains. “That seems a little robotic to me. We don't want rules that might inhibit people’s ability to make a genuine connection. It should feel natural. It should feel real.”
The bar team believes that great hospitality shouldn't be bound by strict rules (Image: Jessica Blaine Smith)
Taggart and Togni, both lifers in the industry with experience working in everything from pubs to fine dining, share the opinion that it’s important to make a distinction between rules of service and hospitality.
“The warm napkin is great and so is putting down all the dishes for the table at the same time, but it’s not the same as hospitality,” says Togni. “I went to a restaurant where the food was amazing and every motion was perfect, but there was no joy at the table. And we all need joy!”
How to give guests what they actually want
“If hospitality is high on the list of priorities, then all the other elements of the bar will be designed around that,” says Taggart. “You know the feeling you want people to have when they first sit down, and that particular priority dictates the colours of the bar, the music and all the rest.”
Pompette's cocktails are complex but approachable, such as the Cornichon (Image: Jessica Blaine Smith)
The best example of this at Pompette is the menu, which is built with the guest experience in mind. The first two pages present an easy-to-understand overview of Bar Pompette’s five signature cocktails, which makes snap decisions easy for first-timers. Super-fans can go deeper into the list to try new things and everyone’s more than welcome to go off-book.
The cocktails themselves encourage repeat visitation, with an almost chef level of simplicity and minimalism and food-first ingredients – think beetroot-infused mezcal and a martini made with dill-infused distillate and topped with an orb of dill oil instead of the classic green olive.
“We’re known for cocktails, but it’s really important to us that people order what they actually want,” says Togni. “We want people to feel comfortable ordering wine, beer or a gin-tonic. If you don't like what's on the menu, we’ll make you something you like. That’s really important to us.”
Putting the team at the heart of every accomplishment
Togni says that when he learned Pompette was the recipient of the Michter’s Art of Hospitality Award 2025, he felt like the team had won the most meaningful accolade he could ever have hoped for. 
In 2023, the bar took home the Disaronno Highest New Entry Award
“I got very emotional because this award represents something that we put so much effort into,” he recalls. “It was a very, very big team effort to get here, to get this award. And it’s an everyday job that represents so, so, so much work.”
When he told members of the team about the award, some of them “lost it” a little, too, especially floor manager Niraj Sehdev, the only person on the eight-person roster who doesn’t have a hands-on role making cocktails.
All other staff at Pompette rotate between serving, doing prep in the cocktail lab and working the bar, which helps keep everyone fresh and engaged. In the warmer months, that includes field trips to local farms they partner with where they might help with the harvest or travelling to the sugar bush to learn to make maple syrup for the drinks programme.
“We’re quite a happy team and we have good fun together,” says Taggart. “And I feel that comes across with the guests as well.”
It’s a huge win, but it’s hardly a fait accompli. “It's a recognition that every day we have to keep going in the direction in which we're going, trying to create an environment that’s safer and more welcoming every day and to look after the staff’s well-being, too,” says Togni. “At the end of the day, we’re still only four years old in June and we still have a lot of work to do.”
Now watch the video:
North America’s 50 Best Bars 2025, sponsored by Perrier, will be revealed at a live awards ceremony in Vancouver, Canada, on Tuesday 29 April.
