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Posts with category ‘Japanese’

All That Jazz

Posted on October 30, 2006

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.

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.

Pork and pinot

Posted on July 30, 2007

My daughter has secured a summer job as staff photographer at a camp near Minden. She returns to the city for three days while the cohorts of unruly children change—which is heaven for this doting p. who wants nothing more than to cook for her. After a month of wieners and frozen hash browns, she craves flavour and gorges on gravadlax, roast beef and maki rolls. I send her back with a cache of Tabasco, hoping she’ll use it to brighten her lunches not startle some foe by spiking his milk shake. I never went to camp. We didn’t have them in England. Much to my regret.

Youth Movements

Posted on September 17, 2007

Having finally got through the cruel deadlines that had accumulated during my self-indulgently prolonged stay in the somnolent madness of Greece, I have been catching up on old webular connections such as the Saylor’s journal. It reminds me that music is essential and hard work epiphanic and that there are friends to be made out there if we only have the courage to introduce ourselves.

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.

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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