A few years ago we lost one of our city's top chefs to the New York dining scene, but now she's back and has opened a new restaurant. With impeccable credentials and a top-rated show on the Food Network, one might expect Lynn Crawford to open in Rosedale or Forest Hill, but instead this restaurant has opened on the evolving Riverside (or South Riverdale) strip of Queen Street East.

Crawford does not spend her time oohing and aahing over crocks of butter and wooden spoons full of Bolognese sauce. Unlike many celebrity chefs, Crawford actually cooks food in her own place and has opened her first restaurant, Ruby Watchco.

Crawford is most notable for her long tenure as Executive Chef with the Four Seasons and her appearances on Food Network shows like "Restaurant Makeover" and, most recently, "Pitchin' In." But unless you've been hanging out and eating in NYC for the past few years, you don't really know her, or her food.

As celebrity chefs go in Canada, she's unparalleled. In the celebrity food world you toil in the real trenches for a few years before wading into television and publishing, maybe keeping in the restaurant game, but focusing mainly on the camera. Stir in a few Cuisinart ads and guest appearances at trade shows and voila, you've got yourself a career. But the Food Network has lucked out with Crawford, who is a working chef with five star cred to boot.

Winemaker and former manager of the Studio Caf�, Norman Hardie worked with Crawford when she first started at Four Seasons.  "She was definitely on a mission," he says. "There was no cutting corners, no B.S. She ran a really tight ship. She's done well because she develops people below her so she can move forward."

Watching her sliding in manure while chasing pigs in Georgia or gushing over microwaved lobster in Nova Scotia on her new show, "Pitchin' In," you could easily forget her culinary pedigree. But when she starts to cook you see the talent of a real chef emerge.

Back here in Toronto, scraping paint off a brick wall at Rodney Bower's former Queen East restaurant Citizen just before opening her new place, Crawford's passion for this city is obvious. 

"I wouldn't have opened in Brooklyn, it doesn't feel like home to me," she says. "This feels like home. It would have been great to have a restaurant in New York, don't get me wrong, but I'm not a New Yorker. I'm a Canadian and I don't want to live in the States."

She and partners Cherie Stinson and Joey Skeir have done the work themselves. Crawford walks through Ruby Watchco, the restaurant so named after a vintage sign purchased two years ago. "It's thirteen feet long, it's so beautiful. We saw it and said that's the name of our restaurant. I mean what else am I gonna call it? Chef Lynn's Place?"

Peterborough native, Lora Kirk, head chef at Ruby Watchco, left New York with Crawford. As the former chef at Truffles in Toronto and sous chef at Allen & Delancey and the Soho House in New York, she has had mixed emotions about returning to Toronto. "New York is full of so many things, you walk a block and pass countless restaurants and shops. It's like seeing a million Christmas lights at once."

This project convinced her to return to Toronto. "To be a part of something like this makes the decision easy," she says.

Renovating a place like this is full of details big and small. The kitchen was full of dead equipment. "We were able to sell some of that thankfully," says Skeir. "They didn't have a grease trap, the grease in the drain was thick as molasses. We put one in� then we had to put a new compressor in the walk-in fridge� the money just goes and goes."

Crawford wants her own place on her own terms. "We don't want investors, this is our own thing. We're doing twelve-hour days here and we're doing this on a budget. The three of us have made a lot of tough decisions about what we can afford." she explains, "You need a huge sum of money to open a restaurant, the hidden expenses�you have no idea."

Signe Langford opened her own restaurant in this exact location in 1997, "I think if anyone has a chance of success in my old Riverside location, it's Lynn. She did the one thing that has always been needed but that no one else has been able to, which is push the front of the place to the sidewalk. It always looked closed when it was Riverside or Citizen. Now it looks alive."

The entrance was set back from the street and fronted by a twelve-seat patio. The team eliminated the patio and pushed the opening right to the sidewalk. "We wanted to open it up visually to people walking by. It will be far more inviting." says Stinson, whose designer cred is way more luxe than this little East side endeavour aims to be.

Stinson works for Yabu-Pushelberg, recent inductees into the Interior Design magazine Hall of Fame, and she's designed restaurants for world-renowned chefs Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Michael Mina. Crawford herself spent most of her career in a five star kitchen. So where's the swank?

"When we were researching restaurants, all of the places we looked at and liked were neighbourhood places." says Crawford.

Stinson is more pragmatic, "I've designed restaurants all over the world and I think people gravitate more to comfortable neighbourhood restaurants. There's longevity there. It doesn't suit Lynn to do some fancy, polished thing. She's a laid back person who loves to laugh and hang out with friends."

"There's no lad-di-da here." Adds Skeir, who spent his career front of house, most recently at the Pour House on Dupont. "Cherie and I like to say that we bring our living room wherever we go. That's what this is like, sitting in your living room, only with us buzzing around feeding you."

Cole Snell who runs Provincial Fine Foods and brings a lot of New York and Quebec's best products to Toronto is happy to have Ruby Watchco on Queen East. "It's great for the city, we need that right now. They are gonna bring a New York vibe to the East end."

Adds Langford, "I love this area, and I'm very happy she has chosen here and not taken the predictable route out to Queen West or College Street."

This stretch of Queen features the slinky strippers of Jilly's, the infamous burgers at Dangerous Dan's, seductive brunches at Edward Levesque's kitchen and latte art at Dark Horse Espresso Bar. It may not be a million Christmas lights just yet, but there's definitely an eclectic diversity here in the new digs for Joey, Cherie and Lynn's living room.  

Ivy Knight is a freelance writer and host of 86'd Mondays, a weekly free event at the Drake Hotel that is open to the public. To find out about upcoming 86'd events like Sustainable Ceviche Smackdown featuring Jamie Kennedy, go to www.ivyknight.com.

2nd photo: Joey Skeir, Co-owner, Ruby Watchco