General Urban Kitchener Updates and Rumours

[dtkvictim]

Definitely not my experience regarding food hours, but looking through Google maps it seems you're more right than I thought. I guess I just don't patronize the places you're describing. Yet downtown seems to be much busier doing workdays, and honestly is a bit of a ghost town at night considering the number of people who live here. This weekend I was looking for some late night food with friends and the options felt limited, and they commented on how depressing and dead downtown was. I don't go uptown terribly often, so my view isn't as nuanced I'm sure, but every time I'm there I'm shocked at the number of people out and about. It feels like on any given evening there are 10x as many people on the uptown streets vs downtown (20x if you discount the homeless), and the overall vibe is so much more positive and lively.

There are many more people in DTK in the evenings now (not late-late, we definitely don't have a nightlife kind of downtown) since COVID, the new buildings and the DTK patio program. More restaurants (and bars) are opening, and still more people are moving downtown, so I don't know that it'll be dead, at least not at 7 or 8 PM. If the target time is midnight, though, this is not your town.

As for Waterloo, I was chatting with a Waterloo resident at the Waterloo Jazz festival a few weeks back, and he was insistent that there is a much better selection of restaurants in downtown Kitchener (barring "fine dining", as he said) than in Waterloo. The grass is greener on the other side of the fence?

Definitely, more people moving downtown will result in more people outside, but

1. I don't think it has recovered to pre-pandemic levels, despite quite a few people moving in during that time. Other North American downtowns also haven't recovered, and I'm talking about ones with significantly more draw than DTK
   
2. Regardless of any growth in activity, in absolute terms I still think street activity is very low for the population of the city, and the population of downtown (with certain exceptions like Victoria Park, or during events with a suburban draw).
   

My comparison to Waterloo wasn't about food quality, but about the number of people out on the streets (voluntarily) and the overall atmosphere. By sunset it often feels like the people you see downtown are only on the street because it's the route to their destination, yet uptown seems to have way more people on the street just chatting, eating, dancing/skating in the public square, etc. I'm not really remotely interested in nightlife, I just prefer to be in a place where people are outside enjoying themselves and the atmosphere is positive.

Though to comment on the food, I get their point even though I disagree. I eat out downtown a fair bit, but if I'm eating out I prefer the international and student focused food you find in Waterloo since I can't make most of it myself. But if you don't like that, downtown definitely has the best options (beating out the suburbs by quite a bit).