Rachel Heinrichs | torontolife.com

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Toronto’s newest raw food boutique, Belmonte Raw, proves dishes below 47° can still taste great

By Rachel Heinrichs | Photography by Jess Baumung | Food styling by Linsey Bell/judy inc.

Belmonte Raw’s collard burrito with dehydrated ground-kernel corn chips

Outside Belmonte Raw, Leslieville’s new organic, vegan, sugar-free, gluten-free, dairy-free raw food restaurant, a trio of wiry-lean women with dignifiedly graying hair and yoga mats tucked under their arms examined the menu posted in the window: hulled hemp and kale salads, lucuma and camu camu smoothies, something called a sun burger made with pumpkin and clover sprouts. In their patchouli wake, I entered the restaurant while attempting (unsuccessfully) to conceal my huge leather purse under my trench coat.

The space is small—just 16 seats—and cute, with wood slab tables and motivational directives scrawled on the walls: “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you imagine,” it says on the mirror across from me. While sipping my $9 Happiness juice out of a Mason jar, I overheard the owner, Carol Belmonte, chatting elatedly with another diner about juice detoxes. She offers a menu of home-delivered organic juice feasts (instead of fasts, because raw foodists prefer to emphasize abundance over abstinence) that start at $90 for one day and max out at $1,960 for a month.

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The Dish

De-licious

January 10, 2012 | 2:31 pm

10 Comments

Winterlicious 2012: our food editor whittles the monster list down to a manageable 11

The spectacular view from c5 (Image: Suzanne Long)

It might be hard to believe, but Winterlicious celebrates its 10th anniversary this year. That’s right: it’s been a whole decade of commoners storming the fine dining gates, not to mention mutual bile and suspicion between restaurateurs and diners. And yet, the annual prix fixe event keeps growing. In its inaugural year, only 35 restaurants participated. This year, there are 175 on the roster, making it tougher than ever to choose where to spend your hard-earned $25 or $35 or $45. So we narrowed the choices down, first to 61 Toronto Life–approved spots and now to just 11 of the best. Because we’re slaves to trends, we focused the list this year on the new and improved—places that recently opened, overhauled or changed chefs—and because we like a bargain as much as anyone, we looked for the spots that offer the very best bang for the buck, which is, after all, what Winterlicious is all about. Start making your reservations now (unless you don’t have an AmEx card, in which case you can wait until Thursday like the rest of us).

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The Goods

From the Print Edition

September 22, 2011 | 4:30 pm

7 Comments

Great Spaces: A notorious Riverdale raccoon house is transformed after standing derelict for decades

By Rachel Heinrichs | Photography by Michael Graydon

Great Spaces: Home Improvement

In close-knit Riverdale, no two houses have garnered as much gossip as the side-by-side Victorians on Langley Avenue that were owned by Walter Schimming. Schimming, for the uninitiated, was an octogenarian recluse who lived, Grey Gardens–like, in one of the houses and left the other vacant and decaying for decades until his death in 2006.

In 2008, the houses went on the market together, with an asking price of $1.15 million. When James Faw, owner of a software company, and Michael Schwarz, owner of the restaurants Hair of the Dog and Fire on the Eastside, first saw them, they looked like the set of a horror film: each was divided into a maze of rooming units, a fallen tree had crushed one roof, and raccoon carcasses littered the interiors. At the time, Faw and Schwarz had a two-year-old daughter, Hannah, and were expecting twins by surrogate. Most parents would run screaming from such a huge project, but Faw and Schwarz knew that in one of the city’s most family-friendly neighbourhoods, this was a steal. So they bought the places—one as a rental property, the other as their future home.

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The Informer

From the Print Edition

July 25, 2011 | 1:05 pm

3 Comments

How running became the city’s collective obsession

By Rachel Heinrichs | Photography by Sandy Nicholson

The Running Cult

Last year I turned 30, broke up with my long-term boyfriend and moved into a tiny apartment for one. The domestic vision I’d had for my future—marriage, a semi-detached fixer-upper, kids with endearingly arcane names, homemade pie—dissolved overnight. When I tried to reformulate a picture of my future, alone, my imagination failed. Usually when I’m lonely or stressed out, I run. I’ve been running non-competitively for 10 years. It eases my anxieties more effectively than anything else I’ve tried: psychoanalysis, yoga, eBay buying sprees, binges on HBO series, even anti-depressants. When I run, for one blissful unmeasured hour, my brain stops spinning.

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The Dish

From the Print Edition

June 8, 2011 | 4:30 pm

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50 Reasons to Love Toronto: No. 28, Sweetbreads are the new chicken nuggets

The prosciutto-wrapped offal at Buca. (Image: Angus Fergusson)

When nose-to-tail restaurants like Cowbell and the Black Hoof started serving offal a few years back, diners debated the adventurous menus with the giddy trepidation of children about to play a game of truth or dare (“I’ll get the tongue sandwich, if you go for the pig’s tail”). Since then, entrails, organs, faces and feet have become requisite on the city’s best menus, emboldening our tastes and turning out a new breed of grown-up diner. Without a moment of misgiving, we’ll order prosciutto-wrapped lamb’s brain at Buca, slurp marrow out of a calf’s shank at Fabbrica, dip fritters in tripe ragù at Enoteca Sociale and top our crostini with tongue-to-tail duck rillette at Canoe. Our appetite has even surpassed the need for exotic-sounding names to mask the offal truth—the more brazen the dish, the better, like Parts and Labour’s pig platter, which brings sweetbreads, belly, foie gras and ear in trotter sauce. Yes, in 2011, there’s no half-assing our commitment to the flesh.

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The Goods

Trend Alert

June 22, 2010 | 3:45 pm

3 Comments

Icky or inspired: rentable maternity wear

This dress rents for $39 a week (Image: rentmaternitywear.com)

When we got a press release from rentmaternitywear.com, a business by California “mompreneur” Marcelle Costello that leases special occasion dresses to pregnant women for $35 to $75, we thought it was a brilliant idea. But then we wondered, isn’t renting maternity wear a little sketchy, kind of like buying second-hand lingerie? Don’t get us wrong: pregnant women glow in that magical hormonally imbalanced way and deserve to flaunt it in flirty summer frocks. However, it’s an undeniable fact that along with the glow, there’s increased flow—of pee, sweat and vomit. Maybe Costello thought of that, too. For an extra $25, queasier moms-to-be will be guaranteed that a dress has been worn only once.

The Goods

Telling Tales

March 17, 2010 | 2:45 pm

6 Comments

Sarah Jessica Parker makes a cameo at The Bay

A dress from the Halston Heritage line

In the competition for celeb endorsements, The Bay scored a serious victory against Holts last night when Sarah Jessica Parker—gracious, gorgeous and, yes, incredibly tiny—glided into the Yonge and Queen store in her four-inch Ferragamo heels.

She was there as the newly minted chief creative officer of Halston, the American design house that made its name in the gaudy glam ’70s. The usual mass of Toronto fashion media and socialites (and a surprising appearance by Laureen Harper) huddled around her as she smiled warmly. With all the hubbub, it’s hard to say how long she stayed, but by our estimate, it was about 20 minutes, just long enough to pose for pictures in her minuscule purple tube dress (Halston, of course) and leave an overall impression of effortless effervescence.

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The Dish

Aprons & Icons

November 20, 2009 | 4:10 pm

2 Comments

Q&A: three minutes with Naked Chef Jamie Oliver

Caper crusader: Jamie Oliver speaks at Roy Thomson Hall on Sunday

Jamie Oliver will send foodophiles into full swoon this Sunday, when he appears Roy Thomson Hall to speak about his new cookbook, Jamie’s Food Revolution, and his first U.S. TV show, Jamie’s American Road Trip. In the latter, the spritely chef attempts to charm Fast Food Nation into eating fresh, seasonal foods. These projects have been keeping him busy lately; so busy, in fact, that when we caught up with him during his first visit to Canada, we had time for only three questions. But it’s hard to be annoyed when the answers, however brief, are delivered with that musical cockney twinge (see glossary below).

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The Dish

Pantry Raid

August 7, 2009 | 4:32 pm

17 Comments

Miracle berries: a taste-bud tricking fruit finally comes to Toronto

Tongue twister: for $5 a pop, these miracle berries bind to taste buds and boost flavours (Photo by Rachel )

Tongue twisters: for $5 a pop, these miracle berries bind to taste buds and boost flavours (Photo by Rachel Heinrichs)

On a tiny, ivy-wound patio in Parkdale, a group of 20 gastro adventurers and journalists crowd around a table set with big bowls of sliced citrus, salt and vinegar chips, sour gummy bears, Tear Jerkers, and decanters of vinegar and tequila—not the usual canapés and cocktails. With the giddy anticipation of high school kids dropping acid for the first time, we wait for our hosts, Tyler Clark Burke and Jeremy Stewart to bring out a saucer of squishy, frozen berries. We are gathered here to experience miracles.

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