Edmonton restaurant owner offers free meal to whoever can solve tunnel mystery

Now that the Toronto-tunnel mystery has been solved, it’s time for a new underground head-scratcher.

And if you can solve it, dinner for four (with wine) is on the house.

“There is a tunnel below my restaurant and no one can tell me what purpose it served,” said Mike Bhatnagar, owner of the Hat Resto Pub at 10251 Jasper Avenue, Edmonton.

“The tunnel once ran under Jasper Avenue but has been blocked off. I have wondered if it might date back to Prohibition days,” he told the Edmonton Journal.

“It is still 11.5 metres in length and about one-metre wide. It would have been easy to roll a barrel through it. More recently, bricks have been used to define the tunnel and supports have been inserted to make it safe.”

The building was built in 1908 and first opened as a restaurant — then called the Golden Spike — in 1912.

Bhatnagar and his wife bought the Hat in 2013. He believes the tunnel has been around since those early days and was likely blocked off during LRT construction.

After twice inspecting the tunnel, a city heritage building staffer was also left stumped: there were no blueprints or records of it to be found.

“Wouldn’t it be nice if it was discovered our tunnel was as ancient as some of Delhi’s old fort ramparts? But that’s just a dream. We’d settle for the 1898 Klondike Gold Rush,” Bhatnagar said.

Bhatnagar is offering a complimentary dinner for four to anyone who can tell him the history of the tunnel under his beloved restaurant.

Toronto’s mysterious tunnel ended up being simply a 22-year-old’s “man cave.”