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Chatto’s Digest

May Archive

Up the ramp

Posted on May 7, 2007

To Eigensinn Farm yesterday for Michael Stadtländer’s Wild Leek Festival, a fundraiser for local women’s shelters. It was a glorious day with a cloudless forget-me-not sky and warm sunshine flooding the broad, deep dell in the maple forest. You forget how much sun reaches the forest floor when there are no leaves on the trees. There were patches of wild leeks on the northerly ridge—bright green against the grey-brown carpet of leaf litter—though most of them grow in another part of the property. To either side of the pathways little trout lilies were everywhere—just delicate single green leaves. “You can eat them, too,” said Michael, picking one each for those of us who were standing close to him. It tasted as sweet as a corn seedling.

Willi Fida

Posted on May 13, 2007

Just about 21 years ago, when I was a bran-new freelancer with an occasional gig at Toronto Life, the food editor at the time, Joseph Hoare, sent me down to the Harbourcastle Hilton to cover a press conference. There were three chefs hanging around in whites—all of them European, as was the custom, if not quite the rule, in those days: the Hilton’s executive chef, the great Albert Schnell, the restaurant chef for the hotel’s flagship restaurant, Willi Fida, and his sous chef, Marc Thuet, a big bear of a guy who had just been sent over to Canada by Anton Mosimann of the Dorchester in England. (Mosimann had worked under Schnell in the ’60s in Montreal.)

Hello, Saylor

Posted on May 21, 2007

An unfulfilled ambition for the long weekend was to get out of the city, preferably to Bloomfield in Prince Edward County to check out a new café that opened there on May 19th. It’s called Saylor’s Café (274 Main St., 613-393-5387) and is rumoured to serve a particularly delicious soup of local asparagus, potato and roasted red onion. I have never met the two women who own and run the place—Marnie Woodrow and Eliza Clark —but I have been a longtime fan of Woodrow’s writing since I first read her book of short stories, In The Spice House. It sits on my small shelf of indispensible food writing and, like her online journal can be read and re-read for pleasure and inspiration.

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Categories: Hotel, Chefs, Openings, General, Out of Town, Events

Van Inn

Posted on May 28, 2007

The Inn at Manitou has opened for its 34th season up near McKellar and was looking very spiffy in last week’s hot sunshine. The suites that climb up the steep, forested ridge are the most luxurious, their private balconies offering spectacular views down onto glittering Lake Manitouwabing. From there, it’s just a short stroll down to the main building for afternoon tea in a drawing room filled with Chinese antiques or a Negroni out on the terrace. Over on distant court number nine, diehards are getting in a last game of tennis before dinner and the pleasant pok… pok… of ball hitting racket gives a slow pulse to the early evening. Tennis was my first love and it will be my last. For others, it’s golf or canoeing, kayaking, biking and swimming—or going to the spa then lying for hours by the pool. There’s always plenty to do or not do at Manitou.

James Chatto

James Chatto worked as a dishwasher, actor, waiter, bow tie salesman, choreen, bookseller, nanny, tennis coach, lounge singer, KFC truck driver (fired after 1 day), olive farmer and janitor before moving to Canada in 1987 and becoming a journalist. These days, he writes about food and restaurants for Toronto Life, about wine and spirits for Food & Drink and edits the menswear magazine, Harry. Two of his books are still in print: A Matter of Taste (co-written with Lucy Waverman) and The Greek For Love, a memoir of Corfu. James is married and has two delightful children.

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