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Posts with category ‘Wine’

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.

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).

Sail Away

Posted on August 8, 2006

A weekend I always look forward to is fast approaching—August 18,19 and 20— the annual tour of Niagara when David Lawrason and I squire our guests around some of the peninsula’s best restaurants and wineries, vineyards and farms. It’s very well organised and tremendous fun. We all meet at the Port Credit marina on the Friday morning, then spend an exhilarating four or five hours sailing across to Niagara-on-the-Lake in a flotilla of luxurious 46-foot Hunter yachts (an excellent opportunity for millionaire fantasies, pirate accents and semi-serious racing) courtesy of Angus Yachts. I always feel as if I’ve been on holiday for a week by the time we glide up the Niagara river to the private dock where a champagne reception helps us all get our land legs back. That night we host the winemakers’ dinner at the Prince of Wales hotel (everyone is staying there this year), where David introduces fascinating wines that are too rare and precious to make it onto LCBO shelves. The winemakers themselves are also there to discuss their offerings.

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?

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 Wine Tasting Challenge

Posted on April 30, 2007

To Via Allegro on Monday for the awards lunch of The Wine Tasting Challenge. It’s an extraordinary competition, created by Via Allegro’s president, Phil Sabatino, in the name of his ever-evolving brainchild, The Renaissance Project (dedicated to “the passionate rebirth of Toronto”), but now administered by the Cool Climate Oenology and Viticulture Institute at Brock University. The lunch was a splendidly dramatic occasion, complete with monsoon, thunder and powercut, though the storm held off until all present had enjoyed chef Lino Collevecchio’s gorgeous lunch.

Under Canvas

Posted on October 1, 2007

It seems the worst sort of teasing to write about a meal that was available all through September at Splendido, knowing that particular ship will have sailed by the time you read about it. The dinner was a collaborative effort between the restaurant and Stem Wine Group, a wine agency specializing (though not exclusively) in the wines of Italy. Splendido’s sommelier, Carlo Catallo, chose six beauties from Stem’s portfolio then David Lee created a menu to flatter them. It’s something he does extraordinarily well, and the evening was gastronomic nirvana. If I had to pick one of the six courses (weeping and at gunpoint) it would be a rustic little casserole of rabbit soffritto spiked with Tuscan salami and served over orecchiette pasta—pungent, hearty but at the same time quietly elegant in its balance and textural integrity. The wine was a 2001 Brunello from Collemattoni, and it worked brilliantly. It had to because the wine from the previous course was simply terrific—Masciarelli Montepulciano d’Abruzzo "Marina Cvetic," 2004—maybe the ultimate example of what the often humble M d’A grape can do when coaxed and encouraged.

Meaty, Beaty, Big and Bouncy

Posted on October 8, 2007

Autumn is so much the favourite season of most Canadians I know (and why not? Canada does it so well) that I feel disloyal when reluctantly admitting that I find the fall melancholy to the point of bitterness. I don’t like watching things die. As an avid gardener (and fan of shambling zombie flicks), I know most of them will come back to life—but it’s still traumatic. Gastronomy offers its own take on life after death. Tasting the delectable porcine products showcased by Mario Pingue at Hart House this week made me humbly grateful to the pigs that gave their all but returned to the world as irresistibly moist and tender prosciutto, divine porchetta (which I ate on its own, without the proffered bun, but with a crisp morsel of chestnut-coloured crackling) and a lean, herb-rubbed cured loin, sliced and wrapped like a pink silk ribbon around a grissini stick. I always thought Ontario prosciutto was necessarily inferior to Italy’s product, usually dry and clumsily salty. Pingue’s Niagara product, aged in a naturally humid cave gouged from the Escarpment, is simply fabulous—swine revenant but transformed. There were plenty of other peninsula treats in the room, but I was waylaid in front of Charles Baker’s table (he was pouring his eponymous Riesling and a Wildass red and white from Stratus’s cadet label) and missed everything else.

New Beginnings

Posted on October 15, 2007

Much rejoicing in the basement rec room of my brain that England has made it (OK, somewhat implausibly) to the final of the Rugby World Cup. But the breathless tears of joy are nothing compared with the jubilation of 16 front-of-house staff at Mark McEwan’s new restaurant, One. They just found out they won the October 10 Lotto 6/49—total jackpot a rollicking $4,600,201. I’m happy for managerial supremo Tim Salmon and manager Eric McEwan (Mark’s son) who were part of the syndicate; even happier for the food runners and bussers who also take their equal cut. It works out at $287,512 each. And 56 cents. Most inspiring.

Cause and Effect

Posted on October 22, 2007

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Thursday night saw the spectacular start of the 2007 Gold Medal Plates campaign with a sold-out crowd of over 600 guests at Toronto’s most glamorous venue, The Carlu. Gold Medal Plates, if I may I remind you, raises money for Canada’s Olympic and Paralympic athletes. Our goal this year is a million bucks, and with events scheduled for seven Canadian cities, I believe we can do it. As ever, it’s the goodwill and generosity of the country’s leading chefs that bring in the high-rolling public—plus the chance to hobnob with elite athletes. Never more so than last Thursday. The multitude was in a generous mood during the silent and live auctions, inspired by an extraordinary evening of excellence in Canadian athletics, cuisine, wine and—as a new departure for GMP—music. Jim Cuddy of Blue Rodeo performed three times during the evening and almost stole the entire show when he sang a duet with Steven Page of Barenaked Ladies.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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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