Over the course of 28 years, Ralph Morana built up Bar Volo from what was a slightly sketchy Italian café to an internationally renowned beer bar. And then in October 2016, at the peak of its success, it was shuttered to make way for—what else?—condos.

“The last few years at Bar Volo,” says Morana, “there was a buzz; there was a vibe; there was a chit-chat … We weren’t ready to close. It wasn’t our time.”

This month, after three years of false starts and hard graft, Bar Volo is finally reopening, on a side street just across from it’s original location on Yonge. The owners and operators—Morana and his sons, Tomas and Julian—are the same, but in a beer and bar scene that it once helped to revolutionize, how will Bar Volo stand out today?

It helps that few are better than the Moranas at getting people to try something new. Ralph’s conversion to micro-brewed beer in 2002 inspired him to bring Ontario brewers and drinkers together and convince them both that flavourful brews—not mega-corporate macro-lagers—were the way of the future.

His sons have followed his lead. “We’ve always been on our own course,” says Tomas. It’s mid-September, and he, Ralph, and Julian are sitting at the new Bar Volo, a more eclectic version of the old one, stretched out across a much taller space. Along with the familiar elements—church pews, barrels, an old coat stand, a wooden bar ledge, some pendant lights, the 26 A-Z tap handles adorned by letterpress types—are everything from corrugated tin and Eastern European industrial lamps to a rather swanky marble bar, which sits atop an 18th-century Egyptian door and beneath a glass cabinet salvaged from a hospital.

Although the new Bar Volo occupies three previously vacant units on the ground floor of a condo building (if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em!), it already looks as though it has a history. Says Ralph, who designed the space, “People come in and ask, ‘How long has this place been here? What was it before?’”

The idea, says Tomas, is for Bar Volo to become a “charismatic, whimsical, random room that doesn’t have scripted table service rules, where you can come in and sit wherever you like, talk to whoever …”

It’s also meant to complement its sister bar, the narrow-but-welcoming Birreria Volo, which Tomas and Julian opened in Little Italy shortly before the old Bar Volo closed. Birreria has since become even more adventurous than the first Bar Volo, with events bringing in taps from innovative brewers from the UK and the U.S.

With Birreria, says Tomas, “We’ve gone to the extreme of how beer can be presented, by bringing in beer/wine hybrids, doing five-ounce pours in wine glasses. Here, we want to go back to the idea of the classic neighbourhood hub—where beers are accessible and you’re drinking full pours—and creating that pub culture.

“Toronto is a very one-and-done culture now: there’s a lot of specialty places people will try out once. We want very much to be that place where people come regularly.”

To do so, they’re aiming to be many things to many people. In addition to mostly local taps and “unfussy” small-plate Italian food, they promise several wines by the glass (imported by their own company, Keep6), well-made mixed drinks, amaro, good non-alcoholic drinks, and, eventually, a coffee program—which will see them opening in the morning too.

And in the new year, with a facility much expanded from the old Volo’s cramped kit, Ralph will start brewing again. He’ll focus on cask ale—the unpasteurized, naturally carbonated beer the Moranas have popularized with their annual Cask Days festival, which draws thousands of people to the Evergreen Brickworks each October. Ralph says that if in recent years, cask ale’s presence has diminished in Toronto bars, it’s because people don’t know how to keep it and serve it. He’s determined to lead by example.

The word “craft” inevitably comes to mind, but the Moranas would prefer you didn’t use it. Where in the brewing world, “craft” once signified beer made by independent, hands-on brewers in small batches and with big flavours, the concept is much more diffuse now. Some small brewers have partnered with or been taken over by globalized Goliaths, and nowadays “craft beer” barns boast about ridiculously long tap lists. The fetishization of quantity and variety for its own sake, says, Julian, “is the opposite of what we’re trying to achieve.”

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In Bar Volo’s earlier years, says Tomas, “the beer community was very small, so having a new brewery on tap was always part of our brand. It didn’t matter if the beer was good or bad-the fact that there was something new was exciting. Now that it’s oversaturated, we have to be aware that quality is number 1.”

Looking around the space, he says, “If you were to ask me in a very plain and simple way what this is, this is a bar that makes its own beer, that does great wine, good local beer on draft—” Julian chimes in: “A retail component—we’re going to have coffee, pastries …”

The brothers start talking up the kinds of things they’d like to start selling—cheese, sardines, anchovies, heirloom tomatoes, meat that they cure themselves … “There might be Volo-branded olive oil,” enthuses Julian.

“One step at a time,” says Ralph, with a weary smile. “Let’s just get open first.”

Bar Volo will be soft-opening, with limited hours, in early October at 17 St. Nicholas Street.