Toronto Life: Chatto’s Digest

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Chatto’s Digest

Posts with category ‘General’

Greetings

Posted on April 1, 2006

Greetings and welcome to the first digestive tract. I’ve never been a blogeen before but the sensation is strangely exhilarating—writing on the fly, without valiant editors and fact-checkers to catch dangling participles and verify scurrilous gossip. It’s cool to be à la minute instead of having to wait for three months to share news of last night’s dinner in a magazine column. And a blog offers a forum for direct communication—or so I’ve been led to believe—which could be interesting during this target-on-my-back time of the year when Toronto Life’s annual restaurant rankings are live and on the newsstands.

Party Quebecois

Posted on April 3, 2006

To Quebec City for the investiture of restaurant Initiale and Auberge Saint-Antoine (with its own restaurant, Panache) into the Relais & Chateaux fold. “These two are my favourites in the city,” I’m told by Normand Laprise, chef-patron of Toqué! in Montreal, “along with Laurie Raphaël and a bistro I like called Le Café de Clocher Penché.” Local connoisseurs chime in to add L’Utopie and Jean Soulard’s stately Le Champlain at Château Frontenac.

Panini-on-the-Lake

Posted on April 10, 2006

Even not-very-patriotic English people quickly tire of the endless dissing of English food by ill-informed foreigners. It’s true that Boiled Beef and Carrots doesn’t sound all that appetizing, but the dish is sublime when prepared by an expert (my mum, for example). One could debate the matter over many pints but life is really too short for such battles. Better to silence the budding rant by citing the sandwich—nature’s perfect lunch and Albion’s second greatest gift to the world. Even when adopted by Italians and renamed panini, the sandwich exemplifies the best English character traits—practical, compact, private, sensual, mysterious, satisfying, versatile, independent.

Lounging About

Posted on April 17, 2006

David Lee and Yannick Bigourdin, co-owners of Splendido, have thought of a way to keep themselves occupied this summer by colonizing the entertainment district. They’re taking over the vast, three-storey space of The Original Motorcycle Café on King Street West when it closes on May 31, sprucing up the interior and reopening a month later as King West. The idea was first suggested to them a year ago by someone who happens to be a silent partner at Splendido and TOMC, but neither Lee nor Bigourdin were prepared to let their attention waver from Splendido until now. “And of course that will always be our main priority,” says Bigourdin. “David will continue to cook at Splendido nearly every evening. But we will oversee King West. It’s exciting and scary at the same time.”

Feeling Malpeckish

Posted on April 24, 2006

Five years ago, I wrote a bitter little column in Toronto Life about oyster bars. Starfish had just opened, Oyster Boy was a year old and Rodney’s had settled in to what I still think of as the new premises on King West. All fine spots. The bitterness was because I adored oysters but was violently allergic to them—had been since I ate a bad one when I was 24—and occasional visits to an allergist continued to confirm the affliction. Sitting in her clinic, watching the pin pricks on my arm turn into swollen red welts, I tried to argue that this was only a temporary reaction. After all, I had outgrown hay fever, had learned to live with our cats. Maybe one day I would be able to eat an oyster again. “Carry an epi pen,” was the stern rejoinder.

Sommelier Summary

Posted on May 1, 2006

April was the coolest month—at least, it was for me, exploring hip downtown restolounges for a future article. Only four out of the dozen visited had food you might ever want to meet again but it was the peripheral observations that proved most entertaining. A chef throwing down the towel and walking out the door when asked to cook a chicken breast for a female customer’s accessory puppy. A suave, very well-dressed couple feeding each other scallops then making out shamelessly on a banquette. A soi-disant “sommelier” who couldn’t pronounce the names of some pretty well-known grape varieties and cheerfully told me he hadn’t actually tasted any of the wines he was recommending. Quite a contrast to last Monday’s gala lunch at Via Allegro where the prizes for the 2005 Wine Tasting Challenge were handed out. The six winners (three pro, three amateur) bagged a total of $30,000 in cash, trips, Spiegelau stemware, free meals and scholarships, making it easily the most valuable sommelier competition in North America. (I think Chicago is next, with a prize of US$8,000.) Click on www.winetastingchallenge.com for the list of winners and to find out how to enter this year. Why not give it a try? The Challenge is open to everyone, a stipulation insisted upon by Felice Sabatino, president of Via Allegro, when he created the competition, which is now conducted under the auspices of CCOVI at Brock University. There’s no entry fee. Toronto Life is a sponsor, I’m proud to say.

Sour Grapes

Posted on May 15, 2006

Congratulations to Jennifer McLagan, Toronto-based writer and food stylist. Her book, Bones, just won the James Beard Foundation award for best cookbook on a single subject. Jennifer chose not to be present at the great gala in New York, preferring to linger at her other home in Paris where, she tells me, the lilacs are currently in blossom, asparagus and strawberries are everywhere and the first cherries from Provence have now arrived. I don’t blame her for staying away. Everybody said one of the other two books in her category, Charcuterie, by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn, was a shoo-in, and though Jennifer is well-known in Canada and her native Australia, she cheerfully admits to being “a nobody” in U.S. culinary circles. So she thought to spare herself the lonely ordeal of ending up an also-ran at the Beards.

Charcuterie

Posted on May 23, 2006

So I made it to Cava on Monday evening—the new restaurant’s fourth night of existence. That’s far too early for a fair review but I was there on my own buck for once and curious to see what Chris McDonald has achieved. The four-square room is very simple—its old concrete underfloor polished up like some abstract grey-on-grey terrazzo, green and white walls that are destined, one hopes, for adornment, and a long bar down the eastern quadrant. Chris was behind it, looking calm and cheerful in his chef’s whites, and he stayed there all evening, playing delicate riffs with a knife and a Serrano ham—high priest of his own umami shrine. It was good to see that Avalon’s gorgeous crockery and monogrammed Champagne flutes have found a new home, the latter now used for cava and Waupous dry cider from Prince Edward County, a change which kind of summed up the difference in intent between the two restaurants. The tables are small and wooden with no linen but a broad slate band across the middle to take the heat of a cast iron casserole. They also have an odd little hole in them—just the right size, it turned out, for a customized retort that ends in a metal loop into which the server can slip a paper cone. It came into play twice during the evening—once for popcorn with a delicate butter-caramel chewiness that eventually gave way to a slow-building chili heat, and again for herbed frites that I venture to say might be the best in the city.

Seriously Though

Posted on June 5, 2006

Drought and deluge in a single week…Out there on the starting grid, the Toronto summer coughs and splutters and floods its engine. Just like the smokers who were unexpectedly given a heatwave-last-hurrah on Monday as sidewalk patios scurried to open, crowded with puffing punters flamboyant in shorts and Ts. A man was selling bottles of water on University Avenue. Hogtown goes from Aberdeen to Abu Dhabi in 60 seconds. Then Aberdeen again. The aliens at the controls had to be laughing as they turned the dial back to torrential rain this weekend. What the hell, we’re used to it. And it’s great for the rhubarb. I’ve had two crops out of the garden already this year, turning it all into syrup (2 cups chopped rhubarb, ½ cup sugar, 2 cups orange juice, ½ cup water, maybe some seeds from a vanilla pod, simmered to a pulp (15 minutes), strained, chilled, mixed with very cold gin in a ratio of 3 to 1 (favouring gin). Perfect last Tuesday, undrinkable in the rain).

Ail Caesar

Posted on June 12, 2006

My father hated garlic. Hated it with an almost superstitious passion. In other ways he was a very adventurous eater, cooked rich, hot curries from recipes gathered in India during World War II, liked to pour whisky onto his corn flakes, occasionally made and bottled his own chutneys and pickled walnuts, relished a raunchy game bird oozing dark blood and adored Gentleman’s Relish (the nearest thing to the ancient Roman garum sociorum then available in England). But garlic was the anathema. It may have had something to do with the fact that he was an actor, and it is an old tradition of the theatre for a Juliet to eat garlic before the matinée if she happens to hate the man playing Romeo (or vice versa). But I think it went deeper than that. Garlic, uncooked and injudiciously used, is such an inharmonious ingredient. It’s the schoolyard bully, the tuba in the string quartet, a slash of orange graffiti on a cathedral door. You can’t ignore it. Like some malevolent virus, it leaps from the fork and burrows into the taste buds, laughing at Listerine. I know it’s supposed to be good for you, but that’s a medieval fallacy born of the fact that garlic-eaters were shunned, even by rats, and therefore less likely to catch the plague. And I’m now beginning to think that an aversion to the odorous little bulb may be genetic because I, like my dear old long-departed dad, have discovered a garlic antipathy in myself.

Eigensinn Farm

Posted on June 19, 2006

Pulling in to the yard at Eigensinn Farm on Friday night I realized it had been more than ten months since I was last there. It felt like two weeks ago, which is partly because the days skip by bewilderingly quickly when you’re both busy and old and also because last summer’s visit—to the Heaven on Earth project—was so vivid and extraordinary that details were burned onto memory’s hard drive. This time, though, was just a regular dinner in the dining room of the farmhouse, my wife and I at one table, two other couples at theirs, a party of five from Vancouver. The evening light was bright in the room, which looks less serene than of old, mostly due to 13-year-old Hermann’s paintings crowding the crimson walls. Some of them are remarkably beautiful; all of them show a precocious eye and an innate kinetic energy. I guess it’s inevitable he would have talent.

French Caviar

Posted on June 26, 2006

I’m sitting here mulling over comments posted by lunchbill about last week’s blog, a report of an evening at Michael Stadtländer’s Eigensinn Farm. “What’s to get,” asks lunchbill, “the co-opting of nature and country life by an elitist, wealthy, urban culture? Some people do get ‘it’ and realize that some other people need to return to reality.” I’m not sure if he/she objects to Stadtländer (born and raised on a farm near Lubeck) owning and working his farm in Ontario and subsidizing the operation by feeding people in his dining room, or if the problem is people from the city going out into the countryside in order to eat. I don’t see anything particularly reprehensible in either scenario. It seems to me Stadtländer did return to an earthy, honest reality when he gave up the urban rat race and started farming organically 13 years ago. And I can’t think of a less elitist human being than Michael—artist, social activist and environmentalist, yes, but not elitist.

In London

Posted on July 4, 2006

England basks and fans itself in a heatwave—an extraordinary occurrence during Wimbledon fortnight—and London looks splendid, buffed and busy, the monuments gleaming in the sunshine, the parks and gardens still green in their early summer glory. I’ve been here a week, to launch my book, not really to eat, though eating has taken place—especially on Friday night at Itsu and on Saturday night when kind friends took me to Michel Roux Junior’s Le Gavroche, the 40-year-old temple of French gastronomy on Upper Brook Street. It had been a busy day with the England football team’s shameful, wasteful implosion; a victory by the rude young Scot, Andy Murray, at Wimbledon; London’s Gay Pride march and a Pink Floyd concert in Hyde Park.

In Pasta Veritas

Posted on July 10, 2006

To Studio Café on Thursday for an all-pasta dinner organized by Jim Savona of Brunello Imports in honour of Gianluigi Peduzzi, proprietor of the Rustichella d’Abruzzo pasta company. At the bus stop I realized the coins in my pocket were English not Canadian so I ended up walking, which gave me some time to reminisce. I’ve known Jim for 20 years —since I was a rookie food writer trying to think of story ideas that might interest editors and he was just starting his food and wine business, slogging around from restaurant to restaurant with sample products in the trunk of his car. We hit it off from the start. Around 1991, when the sudden recession meant very lean times for freelancers, my wife and I were forced to take drastic action, plucking our children out of school, renting out our house and setting off on a six-month road trip that carried us from London in a long meander through France, Germany, Austria, Italy and North Africa, researching and writing food and wine stories as we went. Jim furnished us with invaluable contacts in Italy, including an introduction to Gianluigi, whose gorgeous products, cleverly packaged in brown paper bags, were just arriving in Toronto.

Housekeeping

Posted on July 24, 2006

Tired of Toronto and the overfamiliar surroundings of your own kitchen? Bored of the way you cook? James Morris, owner of Rundles, in Stratford, has a suggestion. He calls the idea “Cooking in the House.” First you form yourself into a party of between one and four persons. Then you drive out to Stratford. You stay for four nights in the gorgeous, Shim-Sutcliffe-designed house next to Rundles restaurant—all glass and modernity and luxurious comfort with views of the lake and a wee water garden at the rear. For three mornings, Neil Baxter (chef at Rundles and Master of Cookery at the Stratford Chefs School) teaches you in an exclusive little cooking class during which you prepare your own lunch. Afternoons and evenings are free to absorb all the cultural treats Stratford offers—including a bumper crop of Colm Feore performances this season. I don’t know what the adventure costs but you can find out by visiting www.rundlesrestaurant.com, where you’ll also find images of the aforementioned Morris house and information about Neil Baxter—one of Canada’s most gifted teachers. I think it all sounds rather marvellous.

Armageddon

Posted on July 31, 2006

What a strange week. Scorching heat, tornados and torrential rain. Ventured out into the neighbourhood to buy lunch, wading through warm puddles, and found all the fruit and vegetables on Chinatown’s sidewalk stalls were brown and bruised and rotting. The astonished greengrocers stood staring at them with eyebrows raised and mouths silently shaping an “Oh!” while street musicians pounded a relentless apocalypso on their African drums. Our garbageman talked of lifting the lids of bins and finding them brimful of maggots. In the corner of my tiny urban garden a dormant tree suddenly started to grow a foot a day, frantic and unnatural. I thought it was just a sumach tree but apparently not. On Wednesday, a strange woman from Saskatchewan leaned over my fence and told me it is a tree of god, that its seeds came to Toronto from the Indonesian tropics hidden in the crevices of a packing case. This is the weather it has been waiting for—waiting to make its move. On Thursday, I trimmed it and the white sap burned my fingers, dissolving the hairs on my arm, leaving a pattern of pinprick scabs like a coded message I couldn’t read. And also, in this strange week, I have become a changed man, going out for dinner at five major restaurants. I’d like to tell you more but it’s all very hush-hush until the column appears in November’s Toronto Life.

Tundra Lobsters

Posted on August 14, 2006

Attempting, perhaps, to ward off humanity’s cultural extinction, Sutter Home, the venerable Californian winery that gave the world Blush Zinfandel (Thank you. Thank you so very very much), has launched a new initiative that matches wines, recipes and books. To do so, they have partnered with publishers Harper Collins. I have the greatest respect for the team at Harper Collins Canada. They treated me royally when they launched A Matter of Taste (co-written with Lucy Waverman, out in paperback next month), and I have nothing but ground-kissing gratitude to offer to their marketing corps. But maybe Sutter Home isn’t quite the authoritative food-wine matchmaker one would wish for. The suggested pairing for the first book I checked—Bread Alone by Judith R. Hendricks (a novel about the emotional devastation of an abandoned trophy wife)—is Sutter Home Cabernet Sauvignon and “Oma’s Sugar Cakes." I would venture to suggest that Cabernet Sauvignon and sugar cakes might be an unorthodox match—perhaps even disastrous—but then again I haven’t read the novel. Maybe it provides a dazzling sensory bridge between dark, tannic austerity and saccharine gateaux. Harper Collins owns Tolkien’s works and I’m not sure that Elrond, Saruman and the other lads wouldn’t have favoured something a tad more sophisticated than sweet pink strawberry Zin. The company also publishes the dazzlingly brilliant, probably immortal novels of Patrick O’Brian. The protagonists, Aubrey and Maturin, have decidedly grown-up palates, favouring good quality Burgundy (the bottles with the yellow capsules) and such delicious Regency treats as shrub (rum infused with Sicilian lemons). Which reminds me that Hart Melvin, the genius behind the Gelato Fresco ice cream company, recently took time out from a family holiday in Italy to dash down to Palermo to ensure that his shipment of the suckably pungent fruit would arrive in Toronto in time for the end of the summer. Keep a weather eye out for G F’s fabulously aromatic Sicilian lemon sorbet, available in individual-sized squeeze-tubes.

Many Tomatoes

Posted on August 21, 2006

We’re all still dazed by the news reported in David Lawrason’s blog that the LCBO computer is delisting Tio Pepe fino sherry, one of the most versatile and delicious aperitifs known to man. Is nothing sacred?

In Leiden

Posted on September 5, 2006

To Leiden in the Netherlands for a four-day visit, spending my days walking the cobbled streets beside the canals in the delightful old university town. The handsome 16th- and 17th-century buildings speak of the civic wealth acquired during the glory days of Dutch commerce and power. This was Rembrandt’s home town and he remains the favourite son, though not entirely unopposed. Here, the first European tulips were propogated by Dr Clusius (the botanical gardens are still superb) and here gin was invented by Dr Silvius (we stand, we bow) in the medical department of the university.

Corfu Report

Posted on September 11, 2006

From Holland to Greece for a stay at our old house in the mountains of Corfu, carrying on with renovations that have preoccupied us for 25 years.

Still in Corfu

Posted on September 19, 2006

This morning we were woken by a peal of thunder so long and loud it might have been announcing the end of the world. I opened the shutters and they were ripped from my hands by the wind and flattened against the walls. Instead of the usual 7 a.m. vision of the sun rising gracefully over the ridge across the valley there was nothing to see but roiling dark grey cloud, lightning and horizontal rain. I was soaked in an instant and dragged the shutters closed again. Given our altitude, we were actually inside the storm clouds and it was all very violent and Wagnerian with garden furniture skittering across the patio and plants bent double. The climax hurled hail into the rain and now there’s not a petal left on the ornamental rose bushes. But the tiny vermillion flowers on the useful mint bush have survived. There’s probably a moral to be drawn in that, but I don’t know what it might be. An hour later, the storm was moving away to alarm the Albanian coast and there was even a glimpse of blue sky above our house. Then the wind changed and the storm has swept back. Weather like this can hang about for days, circling the island, snagged on our mountaintops.

Terra Madre

Posted on October 10, 2006

Mother Earth—the clay from which we are all formed. Except for those who sprang from the ocean’s foam or who came here from a distant planet (you know who you are). On Wednesday, Jamie Kennedy at the Gardiner Museum hosted a delightful dinner to raise funds to send Ontario artisanal farmers, producers and chefs to the next biennial Terra Madre gathering in Turin, headquarters of the Slow Food movement. It was an excellent event, with 145 enthusiasts sitting down (eventually—everyone had summer to talk about so pre-prandial conversation was intense) in the Gardiner’s stunningly beautiful, glass-walled, candlelit event space. Anita Stewart, culinary activist, author, MA (Gastronomy) and probably the person who knows more than anyone else on earth about Canadian food from coast to coast to coast, gave an inspiring and patriotic keynote speech. Wines were coordinated by Paul DeCampo from Henry of Pelham winery—all of them delightful, especially H of P’s unfiltered 2000 pinot noir and a 2002 merlot from Lailey Vineyard.

Tubers in the Moonlight

Posted on October 16, 2006

A peculiar week has yielded three very different but memorable meals. First, a dinner at Truffles, enjoyed on October 2. My wife and I had gone there intending to review the restaurant and review it I did, completing my analysis last week and awarding no less than four stars. I share this double-secret information because I have since heard that Executive Chef Lynn Crawford is leaving Toronto at the end of the month to become Executive Chef at the Four Seasons hotel in New York and so my stellar review is wasted. Whoever replaces Lynn Crawford will have to be allowed to settle in, oversee her or his own menu for Truffles and then we’ll have another look.

Now It Can Be Told

Posted on October 24, 2006

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The third meal alluded to in last week’s post was an extraordinary progressive dinner hosted by Stephen Leckie in celebration of his 50th birthday. Stephen is the founder of Gold Medal Plates (of which more later) and draws his friends from an extraordinarily broad cross-section of life—avant-garde musicians, major political figures, Olympic athletes, filmmakers, captains of industry, the occasional ink-stained wretch. At 5:30 last Saturday evening, sixteen of us rendezvoused at Célestin, where we stood about breaking the ice, drinking gimlets and eating torchon of foie gras wrapped in prosciutto. An hour or so later we trooped out onto the sidewalk. There stood a monstrous white vehicle like some kind of stretch SUV which Stephen introduced as the Culinary Chariot. It looked as if it might be capable of flight, all gleaming and weirdly lit like a car from another dimension. We climbed in, settling onto luxurious leather sofas while a sound system regaled us with dulcet airs and various light and laser shows charmed our eyes.

All That Jazz

Posted on October 30, 2006

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Life always seems a little brighter when you hear of an honour being bestowed upon someone who truly deserves it. On October 23, my friend Fatos Pristine, proprietor of the renowned Cheese Boutique, was inducted into the Confrérie des Chevaliers du Taste Fromage de France. The ceremony took place in Paris and I know nothing of the rituals involved, what robes were worn, whether nights of waking vigil were part of the preparations.

More Golden Plates

Posted on November 6, 2006

I flew into Winnipeg on Thursday for the second Gold Medal Plates event of 2006, the tournament preoccupying me in recent weeks. Cold wind and a foot of snow—winter has already come to the prairies—but it was charmingly warm in the sumptuously decorated Convention Centre. The evening was a huge success with Olympic and Paralympic athletes “assisting” their assigned chefs most graciously. A large and generous crowd relished the offerings of the city’s finest restaurants and then settled down to listen to gold medallists Paul Rosen and Clara Hughes deliver their extraordinarily inspiring speeches. Even hardened culinary professionals had tears in their eyes.

Pathetic Fallacy

Posted on November 20, 2006

Last night I dreamed I was a sausage on a disc of steel. Beyond a low encircling metal wall roared gouts of orange fire, and, in the flamelight, I could see the silhouettes of other souls who shared my torment, crouching in ones and twos or prone upon the metal, their voices shrill with lamentation.

Dairy King

Posted on November 27, 2006

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On September 25, I posted a sad tale of being ripped off by a restaurant on Corfu. I had put it all behind me, as one must, but now learn that my friends on the island have been active in my stead. Thanks to my koubaros, Philip Parginos, the incident has come to the attention of the excellent Mrs. Pouzarelou of the Greek National Tourist Organisation in Athens. I am very grateful to her for taking this matter so seriously and I am confident that such crude fraud will soon be a thing of the past. I have eaten in innumerable restaurants in Greece in the last 26 years and never ran into this sort of thing before. Of course, anyone who is the least bit concerned can fall back on the simple and effective procedure of paying for lunch with cash.

Smells like burao

Posted on December 11, 2006

One evening last week, while propping up the kitchen counter at Canoe (a restaurant currently at the very top of its game), I was surprised by a treat—a little sampler of a new dish chefs Anthony Walsh and Tom Brodi have been playing with. It stars a “porcelait” from the St-Canut family farm in Quebec’s Lower Laurentians—a milk-fed piglet, in other words. Canoe has been working with the chops—exceptionally tender, lean, finely textured meat with a delicate sweetness. It was absolutely delicious. The meat is distributed through La Ferme to their usual customers—Canoe, Crush, Splendido, George, Biff’s, Rain, Rosewater, Pangaea, Rosedale Diner, as well as the Ancaster Old Mill, Hillebrand Estates Winery Restaurant, Wellington Court in St. Catharines and the Bloomfield Carriage House Restaurant in beautiful downtown Bloomfield. If St-Canut doesn’t whip up some serious new reverence for pork in Ontario’s haute gastronomic circles, I’ll eat my hat. Oh yes—you can buy a porcelait of your own at Cumbrae or Olliffe.

The Good Fight

Posted on December 18, 2006

Toast’s comments to my November 27 posting resonate more loudly now that Michael Schmidt is on a hunger strike protesting the law that forbids the sale of raw milk.

Another Glass of Milk

Posted on December 24, 2006

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Wednesday, December 20, 2006, dawned cold but bright, a winter sun in a clear blue sky. I walked up to Queen’s Park around 10:15 and stood about in front of the Provincial Legislature, watching dutiful schoolchildren line up around statues and a group of men in overcoats stamp and nod and blow into their hands. I guessed they might be there for the same reason I was—in support of Michael Schmidt and his freedom-of-choice position on the sale of raw milk—but I was too shy to approach them. They were well-dressed and might have been a counter-demonstration, suits hired by the Milk Marketing Board to disrupt the Gathering of the Righteous by standing around and looking supercilious…

Queue is for Quince

Posted on January 2, 2007

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Anyone who lives in the Yonge Street-Davisville-Eglinton area and has more than a passing interest in food must know La Salumeria, the tiny but well-stocked Italian deli owned and run by Rita and Ernesto Fuda for the last 20 years. Charles Oberdorf, then food editor of Toronto Life, introduced me to the place a decade ago (in those days Ernesto cut the best prosciutto in the city and carried more olive oils than almost anyone else). It was the first Italian deli in Toronto I had found that actually smelt like an Italian deli, with a complex and delectable aroma of freshly cut parmesan cheese, sopressata sausage and fresh crostoli made by Rita’s sister-in-law.

East-West Reunions

Posted on January 15, 2007

Good news for the city: Patrick Lin is coming back from Hong Kong to take over as Executive Chef of Senses down at the Soho Metropolitan. I have a huge amount of time for Lin. Remember him as chef of Truffles in the early 1990s? And then a triumphant return there towards the end of the decade? Hotelier Henry Wu soon wooed him away to become executive chef at the Metropolitan Hotel and to cook in the open kitchen at Hemispheres Restaurant & Bistro. Most recently he has been executive sous chef at The Royal Garden Hotel in Hong Kong where he managed the food and beverage operation of the hotel, including its restaurants Dong Lai Shun, Inagiku, The Royal Garden Chinese Restaurant, Sabatini and Greenery.

First Gold Medal Plates Canadian Culinary Champion

Posted on February 5, 2007

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This weekend, in Whistler, B.C., we held the first ever Gold Medal Plates Canadian Culinary Championship—the culmination of a journey that started six months ago. Last fall, we crossed the country, holding Gold Medal Plates gala events in seven cities—Halifax, Ottawa-Gatineau, Toronto, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver. The purpose was to raise money for Canada’s Olympic and Paralympic athletes but part of the show in each city was a cooking competition between the top ten local chefs. We awarded a gold medal to the winning chef from each city and invited them to Whistler for the weekend of February 1 through 4, to compete for the ultimate title. My challenge was to think of a format for the Championship that would truly test the chefs and in the end we came up with a three-part competition.

Out for the County

Posted on February 12, 2007

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When the good folks at Myriad Restaurant Group in New York telephoned certain top seafood suppliers in Toronto, this week, checking on the quality and availability of fish up here, rumours swiftly circulated that a branch of Nobu might soon be coming to town. An intriguing notion but quickly squelched, alas, by a call to the States. No plans exist for a Nobu Toronto. So were those enquiries purely hypothetical? Just idle curiosity on the part of a New York restaurant company? How peculiar.

Many Small Treats

Posted on February 19, 2007

It’s good doing business with people who work on the Danforth because you tend to have meetings and brainstorming sessions at Allen’s. A visit there is always a pleasure but especially right now when proprietor John Maxwell is running his steak festival, an astonishingly brilliant idea that allows customers to order steaks purchased from many different farms and compare them. This is single estate beef and Maxwell makes no bones about the fact that the purpose of the initiative is to prove, once and for all, that Ontario grass-fed steak is superior to U.S. Prime (whatever that is from one month to the next). Had I known about all this before our meeting I would have made arrangements to stay for dinner but as things stood we only had time and room for one item from the special menu. On the advice of Mr. Maxwell, we chose a piece of meat from Barker Farm—grass-fed, corn-finished, Limousin-Angus cross, aged 42 days. Oh Lord, it was good—slightly crusty from the grill, medium rare as requested, the juicy pink, ruby-hearted flesh yielding into tenderness with a toothsome crunch, the flavour sweet and beefy. I believe Allen’s steak festival lasts until February 24. To forego it would be a sin.

Nunc est Bibendum

Posted on February 26, 2007

In London for a few days, where Jamie Oliver is raising cash for Comic Relief doing commercials with children and the must-see TV event is a weekly competition between chefs forced to cook the fastest omelette. I’ve only been out once (my mother’s cooking is too good) and that was to Bibendum in the fabulous Michelin building on the corner of Sloane Avenue and the Fulham Road, which friends assured me is back in form after a handful of disappointing years. The ground floor is an oyster bar and florist but the main dining room is upstairs—a fairly plain space but comfy, adorned with old photos of Michelin garages in Europe.

Ionian Again

Posted on March 5, 2007

On Saturday night at about 1:00 a.m., as we were leaving the excellent Maistra restaurant on the beach at Akharavi, the surf whispering in the darkness, the frogs in the ponds beside the car park croaking to wake the dead, we glanced up at the moon. It was blood red with a slender fingernail of white near the top. A lunar eclipse! Not unexpected to those who keep a proper almanac, but it took me by surprise. Spectacular! An hour earlier, the heavenly orb had been bright enough to read by. As we watched, the pale rim vanished and the moon hung there glowing a baleful crimson, as if Mars had swung closer to Earth to see what was going on.

Gezundheit

Posted on March 12, 2007

Last week I scoffed at the village wisewoman who foretold disaster after a brick-red moon. What a fool I was, what a mutton-headed fool, what an addle-pated dolt. Her cackling kin, riding their storm clouds at midnight across the streaming welkin, sent an ague down to torment me. It settled onto the sinuses and at the back of the throat and I woke up with what doctors call “a cold.”

Nostalgia not what it was

Posted on March 19, 2007

While I was away last week, I received an email from Donna Dooher announcing that Mildred Pierce will close its doors for good on July 31, 2007. Well, I was gobsmacked. The place does so well, especially for Sunday brunch, and Donna has her Cookworks studio in the adjacent space! Then again, she reminded me, March 8 marked the seventeenth anniversary of Mildred Pierce’s opening. An impossible statistic—it was just a few years ago, surely, that we first oohed and aahed at the décor, a high-camp masterpiece of film-set trompe l’oeil that was simultaneously amusing and beautiful. Remember how those boughs and foliage arched from a faux marble dado to chandeliers made of gold-painted plastic cherubs, how that painted Dutch tile floor lead directly to heaven’s gates? Such fun! Today’s restaurants take themselves far too seriously. The only good news was the suggestion in Donna’s message that she and her husband and partner, Kevin Gallagher, have been “presented with an exciting opportunity” elsewhere. Meanwhile, she says, “we plan to celebrate these years over the next five months. And, as we prepare to board the train there will be NO tears on the platform!” I trust that true Mildred fans will flock to their favourite between now and July 31 and raise a last flute of Champagne to the memory of youth’s fleeting pleasures.

The cheese stands alone

Posted on April 2, 2007

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Saturday was a most exciting day for this cheese-eating peacemonkey, when I had the signal honour of being inducted into the Confrérie des chevaliers du Taste Fromage de France. In all, nine of us were dubbed Chevalier in a splendid ceremony held at Cheese Boutique while members of the public stood and cheered and mounted knights, maidens, trumpeters and a falconer from Medieval Times put on a show both inside and outside the store. The Grand Maître of our order, legendary cheesemaker and cheese merchant, Christian Room, came from Paris to do the honours, surrounded by officers of the Confrérie, all of them resplendent in green robes and feathered hats. An avatar of the god Krishna was an unexpected but welcome guest (see photo), joining the group at the microphone. Then the newly minted chevaliers plunged our swords into a sumptuous strawberry and pistachio-marzipan cake the size of a tabletop made by Amuse-Bouche’s Bertrand Alépée.

Steamed muscles

Posted on April 9, 2007

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It’s amazing how a casual remark can alter weather patterns across the planet. Last week, I pointed out to a friend that I had miraculously escaped ice storms in four different countries this winter, arriving in their wake in time to enjoy sunshine and unseasonably warm afternoons in London, Greece, New York and Toronto. I really should know better. All the weather demons, the demiurges of tempest and drought, storm-riding banshees, rain-bringing brumal cluricauns and silent white vampires of nocturnal snowfall must have overheard my comment and blatt! Temperatures plummet. My rhubarb had just pushed its bloody knuckles through the mud. My tulips were doing their sinuous shoot-dance whispering “we are tulips” in that strangely sibbilant high-pitched Dutch accent tulips have. All the lilies were reaching faceless green fingers towards the light, like Cadmus’s teeth. Will they now survive? Will they be nipped in the bud? Oh God, what have I done?

Chin up, Bobo

Posted on April 16, 2007

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The best places for lunch in Toronto? Not too hard a question. The Gallery Grill, Jamie Kennedy’s Wine Bar and his place at the Gardiner Museum, George, Auberge du Pommier, Lai Wah Heen, Vertical and Canoe immediately spring to mind. George is a particularly useful member of the list because people haven’t really discovered it yet (wait until summer when the courtyard is open). And Auberge is also lovely when the weather warms up and the sun shines, though I gather Oliver Bonacini will be closing the place for the month of August in order to renovate. These are the changes that have been hovering, planned, costed but unconsummated, for years, and they sound like a good idea. The familiar glossy terra cotta tiles are to be ripped up (regular customers have already asked to take them home) and replaced by white stone. The murals, too, are for the chop, though they have also been bagsied by fans and, being painted on canvas not wall, can be removed without much damage. The bar becomes a private room. The wall o’ wine between dining room and kitchen gets thickened and rendered a tad less porous to sound. Most importantly to chef Jason Bangerter, the kitchen is getting a major makeover. Chef remembers the awesome induction stoves and other equipment he once worked with in Berlin (they’re ten years ahead of us in terms of hardware) and is hoping he’ll get some here. Time will tell. One thing’s sure—Bangerter deserves them. His core menu hasn’t changed in years but he cooks the dishes very very beautifully, finessing the mod-French plats with an unusually deft touch. Every detail is carressed. The mood of the food is elegant and subtly European. I’ve been trying to figure out what I mean by that and I can only fall back on metaphor. A very high quality Canadian restaurant meal is like a perfectly cut, bespoke velvet shirt. The European version offers the same shirt made out of silk. Does that make sense? Probably not.

La grande boutique

Posted on April 23, 2007

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Now it can be told. Last Friday, Fatos Pristine, the laird of Cheese Boutique, and his sons signed the papers on a 4000-square-foot property right across the road from the Boutique. They have been thinking about expanding for a long time, pondering the wisdom of opening a new branch downtown or uptown. “But my father pointed out that one of the main things people enjoy about Cheese Boutique is that it’s a family business,” says Afrim Pristine. “Our customers like seeing us all together and hard at work—my dad, my mom, my brothers…” When 18 Ripley Avenue became available, the die was cast. As well as being across the street, the property has other unique attributes. Long ago, it was a gun shop that sold firearms to the police and in the basement is a 100-foot tunnel where the weapons were tested. It’s cool, dark and moist—a perfect “cave” for ageing cheese. Within minutes of signing the lease, Afrim was on the phone ordering 600 wheels of manchego and 300 wheels of parmiggiano reggiano specifically for the new tunnel. Now he’s working on designs for some sort of conveyor belt that will silently and gently move the cheeses as they age in the damp darkness, communicating one to another in achingly slow, reassuring, telepathic cheese-speak.

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.

Nothing but the news

Posted on June 4, 2007

If any of you plan on being in Edmonton on June 12, come and join me for the first in a series of wine and food extravaganzas we’re calling Masters of Wine and Food. It’s a Bordeaux night and we’ll be opening some pretty stupendous wines, including 2004 Pavillon Blanc, 2003 Château Ducru Beaucaillou, 2002 Château Pichon Lalande Comtesse, 1995 Château Mouton Rothschild, 1990 Château Palmer, 1986 Château Beychevelle and 2003 Château Lafaurie Peyraguey, matched to wee tastings of delectable dishes from chef David O’Connor. A very good time will be had by all.

In the raw

Posted on June 11, 2007

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I’ve been spending some time with Patrick McMurray’s new book, Consider The Oyster: A Shucker’s Field Guide, (McClelland and Stewart/Madison Press). It’s a handsome little volume, well illustrated with photographs of shuckers and shucking competitions, old oyster markets and people eating oysters. The shots of actual oyster beds are worth lingering over and of course there’s a family album of all the many different kinds of oyster that pass through McMurray’s Toronto restaurant, Starfish, each pic surrounded by lore, history and tasting notes. That alone makes the book a vital vade mecum for the itinerant Ostreavore—not to mention the chapter on the different shucking techniques of recent world champions (himself included).

More nonsense

Posted on June 18, 2007

“Izzy wizzy, let’s get busy!” The immortal words of Sooty, mute yellow bear glove puppet of my youth, have clearly been whispered into Mr. Corbett’s ear recently—and oofle dust scattered, too, or I’m a Dutchman (and I’m not) because lately things have been piling up. A very busy week—writing about wine and spirits for Food & Drink magazine and clothing for Harry Rosen—the stress compounded a hundred-fold by the ceaseless clatter of hellishcopters over the downtown core all weekend long. (Does anyone know who they are? A movie? Tourist flights? The MuchMusic awards? A class action lawsuit for disruption of quiet enjoyment may be in order). In the midst of it, like a silent, tranquil beacon of violet light shining out into space from Alberta was the two-ounce pour of Château Mouton-Rothschild 1995 I sipped in Edmonton on Tuesday evening. It may be the most elegant, subtle, resonant, perfectly balanced, exotic wine I’ve ever tasted. If I had a bottle, I’d put it straight into the TONIUR capsule (Things One Needs If Unexpectedly Reincarnated) along with side two of Abbey Road, various works of Shakespeare and Max Beerbohm, and several other items too personal to mention. Then again, I’d rather drink it right now (though drink is too coarse and thirsty a word for what I would do to that wine if I ever got my hands on it again).

Too much alone

Posted on July 16, 2007

Still eating my way through the 45 pounds of wild salmon I caught. Grilled, poached, roasted, fried, sliced into sashimi, turned into gravlax, don’t have a smoker, diced as tartare, not sure about the milkshake though it was a lovely colour. My blood glows with omega-3 polyunsaturates but I wait in vain for enlightenment. It must be because it’s the wrong kind of salmon, not salmo salar, the leaper, whose blue-green backs once made turbulent the estuaries of the Atlantic. Their silent avatar dwelt in a secluded pool of Ireland’s River Boyne, nourished by the hazelnuts of knowledge as they plopped into the water, the very emblem of philosophical retirement. My fish are the Pacific variety, not as astute, perhaps, but certainly revered by the first peoples of B.C., the currency of commerce and of prayer, welcomed by elaborate human ceremony as the springtime rivers boiled with their ecstatic, suicidal homecoming.

Four entrances and an exit

Posted on July 23, 2007

I went to Amaya on Thursday and enjoyed myself no end. Call the cooking there New Indian or Contemporary Subcontinental—or better yet, don’t. It’s more like the way very good, rather sophisticated Indian friends cook in their homes with fresh textures and subtle spicing. But the facts, the facts…! Amaya is on Bayview Avenue, where JOV Bistro used to be. Derek Valleau (ex Crush) and Hemant Bhagwani (who owns Mantra in Burlington) are the proprietors, working the room as good owners should, and they have brought the brilliant and charming Lynn Stimpson in as manager from Cava (and a great many other places—she’s a career front-of-house star with a CV as long as the Nile). The chef, Dinesh Butola, also comes from Mantra and he knows his stuff. We finally have someone to contend with Vancouver’s Vikram Vij and with the team at Amaya in London, England (no relation—and no comparison, either, since our Amaya is content to woo Leaside while the London version aims to be the sexiest, haughtiest venue ever).

Richard Bradshaw

Posted on August 20, 2007

News of the death of Richard Bradshaw casts a deep shadow over the old homestead. It reminds me of a conversation I once had with Andrew Chase (chef, restaurateur, composer and now food writer) who was also a big fan of Bradshaw and the amazing achievements of the COC under his aegis. Chase recalls having dinner at Biff’s after the opera and Bradshaw walked in to join a group at another table. “In New York or London or any major city,” pointed out Chase, “people would have stood and applauded their city’s great maestro. In Toronto, no one even glanced up. It made me so angry!”

More summer treats

Posted on September 10, 2007

Back to Toronto and happy to find that summer still lingers here, though Canadian friends (typically) are getting gleeful about the imminent glories of autumn with its brisk days, colourful trees and hockey. Talking of which, Tie Domi was sitting at the next table to me on Thursday when we had dinner at Mark McEwan’s new restaurant, One. So much more exciting than the fanfaronade of film stars and starlets also swanning about the highly glamorous room. One is already terrific—there’s a Beverley Hills buzz to the place—and the food was impressive for any restaurant that was only three days old. Ingredients of notable quality cooked simply—just what the elite like. I was particularly happy with a warm salad of roasted carrots (so tender and flavourful) paired with big chunks of avocado, fresh orange and a subtle cumin–coriander dressing. By no means complicated but such a great match of flavours and textures. It’s a bit early to be talking about the food quite yet, however. Even the hyper-organized and savvy McEwan deserves a week or two before the critics drop in—though I noticed at least two of them there, quietly forming judgements…

Stratford Bound

Posted on November 12, 2007

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Woken yesterday morning at 6:45 a.m. by small black and white cat faces very close to mine, mewing for their breakfast. Grumble, mutter, shuffle downstairs and find no newspaper on the porch. Choking coughs and gurgles of coffee machine announce start of day. Cats crying for the outside world, though I know when I open the back door and the damp arctic air hits them they will race back indoors complaining of my cruelty. Why, then, am I smiling? Because this Ethiopian coffee that I buy from Moonbean in Kensington Market is not the first thing of surpassing excellence to pass the lips this week.

A.A. Gill’s new book

Posted on December 10, 2007

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Spending the weekend in the shadow of the soaring peaks of Collingwood, checking out the local restaurant scene for a forthcoming story, I have been filling the precious moments between bouts of garlic bread by dipping into A.A. Gill’s latest book, Table Talk. It is a compendium of the famous British journalist’s restaurant reviews—I was going to say ‘in all their acerbic glory’ but they have been castrated, presumably with Gill’s permission. The names of restaurants, chefs and restaurateurs have been omitted so the reader is left with mere invective, undirected and irrelevant—a spinning woozle-bird of malevolent wit floating in space with nothing to give it impetus but its own self-satisfied imagination.

Lives of the Rich and Famous

Posted on December 18, 2007

It was the most amazing wine tasting of Bordeaux I had ever heard of—and I wasn’t invited. Château Haut-Brion 1982, 1989 and 2000; 10 different vintages of Château Lafite-Rothschild from 1899 to 1995; Château Margaux 1966, 1982, 1989, 1990 and 2000; Château Mouton Rothschild 1928, 1970, 1982 (in magnum), 1986 and 1989; Château Latour 1966, 1975 and 1990. It is to drool.

Great Scott's!

Posted on December 24, 2007

In London, England for Christmas, seeing old friends and relations and staying in my mum’s flat on the Fulham Road, I am overjoyed to catch the last episode of season three of The Mighty Boosh on the television (my son gave me seasons one and two on DVD and they travel with me everywhere). I make my mum watch it and she finds it funny, even though (or perhaps because) its theme is acting and its plot hinges on the thespian rivalry between one of the protagonists (Howard Moon) and an alcoholic crab called Sammy. Meanwhile the other hero, Vince Noir, is trying to fit into a pair of very tight black drainpipe trousers so he can be cool enough to perform with a mod band he idolizes. What an amazing series of coincidences! And I’ll tell you why.

The Mother of All Parties

Posted on January 14, 2008

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This blog post, dear reader, is essentially an invitation. An invitation to a three-day gastronomical extravaganza being held on February 7th, 8th and 9th right here in our own backyard. And since you have shown the impeccable taste and good sense to click on this blog, I am delighted to offer you a unique opportunity to take part in the culmination of this amazing weekend at a substantially discounted price.

Busy like bee

Posted on January 28, 2008

Quelle week, as they say in France—though of course one would always rather be busy and active at this age than morosely, motionlessly wealthy or monotonously toiling away for Matthew and Son. On Thursday, I played guinea pig for a series of new dishes chef Patrick Lin is introducing at the redesigned Senses—fascinating, innovative cuisine and exactly what we have patiently hoped to see from Lin since he came back from Hong Kong. The new menu kicks in once Winterlicious is over, so I’ll wait until then to share the experience in more detail.

Tasting notes

Posted on February 4, 2008

This week, they sent me out prowling the restaurants, bars, bakeries and grill rooms of Ossington Avenue, and there will be much to tell in May’s Toronto Life. But in between all the pho and sucking pig, the tequila-cured salmon and the free-form apple galettes, there was still time to squeeze in some special, extracurricular treats.

Canadian Culinary Championships: The Grand Finale

Posted on February 11, 2008

Three intensely competitive nights, three very distinct occasions. On Thursday evening, the Canadian Culinary Championship began with the black box competition held in the teaching kitchens of George Brown College. We restricted numbers to 65 guests so that the seven chefs could work in relative ease with their sous-chefs, assisted by some of the talented students at the college. GBC maestro John Higgins and I had deliberately chosen challenging items for the black box: flank steak from the brilliant Ontario supplier Top Meadow Farms (who generously sponsored all the black box ingredients), two Georgian Bay whitefish, a celery root, a bag of Ontario peanuts, a honeycomb oozing honey and (the only ingredient from outside the province) a hand of green plantains. The chefs all obeyed the rules, creating two dishes that used every ingredient plus whatever they needed from a communal pantry, and delivered the plates to the judges within the allotted time.

Senses redux

Posted on February 19, 2008

Since Claudio Aprile left Senses in the fall of 2006, the restaurant has seemed to be treading water. It was always going to be tough following Claudio’s act, but I was excited when hotelier Henry Wu brought chef Patrick Lin back from Hong Kong to man the kitchen. Lin had wowed me when he was restaurant chef at Truffles back in the early 1990s and again at Wu’s Metropolitan hotel a decade later. This time around, it seemed as if his heart wasn’t entirely engaged. The food was technically excellent—high-end French dishes of undeniable elegance—but not quite as original or exciting as I had hoped it might be. Lin’s wife and daughter were still in Hong Kong, and he was back and forth a fair bit, which may have had something to do with it. A couple of weeks ago, Lin sent word that he was about to propose a new menu for Senses—dishes he had been working on for a year—and he asked me to come by for a tasting. Delighted, I’m sure.

Also rans

Posted on March 10, 2008

It’s one of my personal rites of spring—handing out awards in the April issue of Toronto Life. Sometimes we pattern the event by categorizing superlatives, celebrating the most cowardly chicken or the most patient waiter; in other years it might be a straightforward 10 Best or Top 20 restaurants. Such rankings are entirely subjective, of course, and while some people use the list to choose where they will eat in the coming months, others delight in taking issue with it.

Last spring, the awards concentrated exclusively on new restaurants, choosing 10 good ones that had all opened in the previous year and adding another 10 that didn’t quite soar to the summit. This April, we’re trimming the form to the top 10 only—no more, no less—but not without shedding bitter tears. 2007 turned out to be a very decent vintage with many enjoyable establishments making their debuts. In the spirit of completeness, therefore, and also by way of a lead-in to the April issue, here are four more restaurants that might have made the charts in a less stellar year.

11. Foxley
Cruise Ossington any night of the week and look through the window of Tom Thai’s cozy restaurant: you’ll see people standing waiting for a table or one of the high-tops near the bar. Customers just don’t want to leave. The mood is partly responsible—so warm and relaxed, convivially loud—but mostly it’s the food. Thai came to fame as one of the four chefs at Café Asia and Youki and then starred at Tempo. Avant-garde sushi was his bag, but he has a broader range as owner-chef of Foxley, forswearing sashimi and sushi in favour of more original fusion dishes (and in the process keeping prices down to a reasonable, neighbourhood level). Absolutely not to be missed are the various ceviches on the menu, especially one involving surgically sliced sea bream marinated to order one night with yuzu, shredded shiso, crispy shallots and ground Japanese red pepper or, on another night, with kumquat and sesame. Thai’s flavours are intense and deeply layered, showing the innate balance of salt and acid, spicy heat and cool freshness that is the soul of Southeast Asian cooking. A sophisticated little wine list has been chosen with the food in mind.
207 Ossington Ave. (at Dundas St. W.), 416-534-8520.

12. Cluck, Grunt & Low
Like steak, barbecue is one of those subjects that brings out the pontifical worst in just about everybody—so opening a dedicated Q-shack amounts to breast-baring at an almost masochistic level. Not that start-up chef Paul Boehmer, or his successor, Marc Thuet, is easily crushed by criticism. I would hurry anywhere either one of them was cooking (though next time I won’t wear a pristine white shirt). My first visit was on a hot July evening, and we sat outside on the little sidewalk deck that runs up from the corner of Bloor drinking cocktails from Mason jars and watching the suckling pig on its spit. Thuet slow-cooks the meats in the combi-ovens at Cluck, Grunt & Low’s second location (1620 Bayview Ave.), but the journey to the Annex does them no harm. Not everything on the menu is epiphanic but several items come close: an awesome sandwich of pulled chicken in thyme-spiked barbecue sauce; big fatty beef ribs in a dark sticky glaze; moist, greaseless chicken deeply infused with fruitwood smoke; a simple but perfectly achieved potato salad. I wasn’t so impressed by the bland, honey-glazed lamb ribs or a side order of “Brunswick stew” that was like some kind of runny, slightly oily succotash. Then again, I would like to eat Thuet’s Wild Turkey bourbon ice cream every day for the rest of my life.
362 Bloor St. W. (at Walmer Rd.), 416-962-5050.

13. Jacobs & Co. Steakhouse
Part of the latest steak house revival, Jacobs & Co. tries so hard to be glamorous, stylish and exclusive that you can’t help but hope it succeeds, especially in a troubled Brant Street property that has seen several projects implode in recent years. The partners involved are certainly making maximum use of the building. Customers are guided downstairs, through a piano lounge and then ushered back upstairs to the dining room, passing a meat locker where sides of Pennsylvania USDA prime and Snake River Farm Idaho “wagyu” beef are dry-aging. The menu has a retro self-consciousness, offering such old-time treats as a good, rich but booze-free lobster thermidor or a version of oysters rockefeller. Most fun is the revival of the tableside caesar salad, made from scratch in the classic way with optional Spanish white anchovies. And the meat? Prices change daily but I paid $93 for an 12-ounce “wagyu” rib-eye—richly marbled, beefy, aromatic, delicious. Side vegetables like onions braised in dark stock or roasted tomatoes with feta and herbs were yummy. Frites, however, deep-fried in duck fat, were starchy heavyweights and desserts very disappointing. A place like this needs an energetic, rich, very well dressed crowd to get its engines running smoothly: we’ll see if one can be found.
12 Brant St. (at King St. W.), 416-366-0200.

14. Prime
You can imagine the thought process in the mind of George Friedmann, owner of the Windsor Arms: “What this town needs is another pricey steak house with retro flourishes and prime rib on Sundays.” Then he goes and creates it, gussying up the long narrow space that used to be the hotel’s bar, Club 22. I haven’t been in for the prime rib, but I did join the millionaire meat-and-potatoes set one evening to try a 20-ounce Alberta rib-eye (Friedmann and chef Stephen Ricci, ex-Prego Della Piazza, are fans of Canadian beef). It was excellent, barely seasoned with a little kosher salt and pepper, juicy and nicely crusted from the grill. A side of organic baby vegetables and another of pan-fried mushrooms (inexplicably called a fricassee) also hit the honest-to-goodness button on the nose. Other dishes were less successful. I know Calabrian gnocchi are supposed to be heavy and dense, unlike their northern kin, but these were leaden. And what’s a caesar salad with no discernible anchovy or garlic and the parmesan relegated to a crisp? Huge, too-sweet, cream-smothered, retro desserts like apple crisp and key lime pie are presumably intended to appeal to the greedy inner child. The steak is lovely, but the restaurant needs a good editor.
Windsor Arms Hotel, 18 St. Thomas St. (at Bloor St. W.), 416-971-9666.

Easter onions

Posted on March 18, 2008

I lent my cherished copy of Marnie Woodrow’s short stories, In the Spice House, to my daughter. Now I want it back for rereading purposes, reminded of its resonances by a visit to that aromatic Kensington Market emporium known as House of Spice. I was looking for powdered bay, needed for a particular recipe that I’ll be reviving in a couple of weeks. I described it once in Outlook magazine, but even that public exposure failed to mitigate the private, emotional pungency of the flavours. The dish slipped into our kitchen more than 20 years ago, when our children were toddlers and we were living on Corfu. It was the gift of our nearest neighbour, Kleopatra, the village wise woman, and I cooked it once or twice under her critical eye. When we moved back to Canada, the recipe came with us and eventually found its own place on our calendar, settling there like a cat on a comfortable pillow, as part of a secular Eastertide dinner.

Sushi and Ushi: The best place for sushi in Canada

Posted on March 24, 2008

I finally got back to Sushi Kaji after far too long an absence and had a meal that confirmed my opinion of the restaurant as the best place for sushi in Canada—including Tojo and Blue Water Café in Vancouver. Mitsuhiro Kaji has recently redecorated, and the serene little room looks much more spiffy than it did (no more glimpses of packing boxes behind curtains). Some clever artist has also repainted the mural of a giant koi behind the sushi bar and written a motto alongside—“each meeting with a fish is precious”—modified from the traditional Japanese proverb, “each meeting with a person is precious.” A new toaster oven has replaced the old beaten-up version that had sat at the right of the bar since the place opened eight years ago.

Prize Noggins

Posted on April 8, 2008

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Last weekend, I went down to Niagara to research an article for a food magazine’s autumn issue on the Twenty Valley region. Had myself a ball. Zigzagging hither and thither between Beamsville, Vineland and Jordan, visiting old friends and new, I watched winter suddenly morph into spring, snowbanks melting before my very eyes, glossy green things pushing up through the sodden leaf litter. Breakfast number one at Inn on the Twenty offered views of a winter wonderland, the bushes and trees white with frost clear down to the creek. For breakfast number two, the next morning, everything was dripping and wet, the sky dazzly blue and bam! Spring.

Hog wild

Posted on April 15, 2008

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Chalk one up for the nerds, the diehards, the people who stay to the bitter end of every party. At Pangaea, on Thursday, Michael Tkaczuk of Serrano Imports introduced an extraordinary prize to the city—the famous dry-cured hams of the Ibérico pig (also known as the Pata Negra or Black Foot pig) of southwestern Spain. I remember the night, years ago, when Tkaczuk first brought Serrano ham to Toronto—a soirée at Bouchon. Even then he had his sights set on the superior and world-renowned Ibérico, but it takes time to persuade Canadian bureaucrats of the virtue of foreign delicacies. Now we can taste.

Gala gala

Posted on April 22, 2008

Last year, I had the pleasure of watching the culinary team at the Royal Ontario Museum bring the old building into the modern world with a philosophically vibrant cafeteria, a highly accomplished special event schema and a fine restaurant, C5, under the soaring, pointy crown of the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal. Talking to me in a hard hat and steel-toed slippers, Connie MacDonald, the ROM’s senior director of hospitality, restaurant and retail services, told me of her plans to hold special evenings that would bring together chefs, farmers and winemakers in a sort of slow-food symbiosis. Up there on the fifth storey, it seemed like pie in the sky, but this month Connie did it with the first of four monthly events. The featured chef was Jamie Kennedy (an appropriate choice since it was Connie who first recruited him to the museum and helped him create JK ROM back in ze old days) and the winemaker was Norm Hardie, whose Prince Edward County wines have received such excellent press. They are both farmers, too, so I guess that base was covered. It turned out to be a delectable evening with some of the best Jamie Kennedy food I’ve eaten in a while.

Making progress

Posted on April 30, 2008

A tasty young rumour appears to be true—that Gordon Ramsay will be opening a restaurant in Toronto. He is currently in negotiation for space in rather a cool venue: the new condo tower planned for 1 Bloor Street East. Perhaps he’ll also turn the project into a TV show.

Dram after dram

Posted on May 21, 2008

Please forgive the long silence but I have been awa’ in Scotland, exploring a number of my favourite whisky distilleries. It has been a delightful week conducted in the varied but stimulating company of 20 people who bid on this adventure at Gold Medal Plates events across the country last fall. We were invited to rendezvous last Saturday at the premises of the Scotch Malt Whisky Society in Leith, near Edinburgh, a gracious stone building close to the docks with the grand, old-fashioned feel of a gentleman’s club. I was late, alas, thanks to a long delay on my Air Transat flight from Toronto to London Gatwick—some bozo decided to get off the aircraft just as it was pulling away from the terminal so his bag had to be found and removed. The eventual flight would have given some new ideas to Torquemada in terms of induced physical discomfort. By the time we got to Gatwick, I had missed my connection and was keenly aware, as the taxi finally carried me in from Edinburgh airport, that the rest of the group were already enjoying their first drams at the SMWS. They had saved some for me—a generous gesture that was to prove typical of the merry group.

Parties

Posted on May 27, 2008

There are parties you simply don’t want to miss, but then you do miss them and end up regretting it the rest of your life. Or at least until Tuesday. I was actually invited to Ivy Knight’s sausage party—a riotous assembly of competitive sausage-making, sausage-eating, imbibing and burlesque. Ivy describes it with typically vivid verve (and pictures) on the Gremolata blog. Wish I could have been there.

Niagara on summer’s horizon

Posted on June 4, 2008

I should have been a joiner not a writer. Renovating our new house on the edge of Chinatown is completely engrossing. These may be the longest days of the year (almost) but they wax and wane in a moment while I’m busy with screwdriver and taper’s mud. Coming home to do some actual work during the brief hours of darkness I find myself caught between two stools: as an editor trying to persuade tardy and recalcitrant writers to deliver their articles on time, and as a writer summoning ever more elaborate excuses to explain to editors why my own stories are late. It’s like playing both black and white in a game of chess—or reliving those endless whining debates of complaint and accusation with the imaginary sidekick who talks like Peter Lorre and lives inside my brain.

Chatto Bio Pic

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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