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Kudos are due on two counts today for Montreal meat mecca Joe Beef. Reason No. 1: the operators of this long-lauded restaurant (David McMillan, Frédéric Morin, Meredith Erickson) have penned a volume—The Art of Living According to Joe Beef—that just took first place in the third annual Piglet Tournament of Cookbooks.
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Q&A with Chuck Hughes: the hunky Garde Manger chef on tattoos, Mexico City and poutine appropriation
(Image: Yves Freypons)
Since Chuck Hughes opened Garde Manger in 2006, he’s been steadily rising in the celebrity chef world (he even bested Bobby Flay on Iron Chef America back in March). Five months ago, he opened his second restaurant in Montreal, Le Bremner, and then rushed south to shoot Chuck’s Week Off, in which he ate his way across Mexico. When we caught up with him at the Chef’s Challenge fundraiser this weekend, the Montreal native really seemed like he was warming up to the idea of opening up shop in the soulless Big Smoke.
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Q&A with Bobby Flay: the Iron Chef talks to us about comfort food, Toronto dining and his Thanksgiving dinner for 55
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Bobby Flay is a busy, busy man. In between flipping burgers with President Obama and opening up new restaurants (he launches his ninth Bobby’s Burger Palace next week), he finds time to shoot five TV shows and write cookbooks (he’s penned nearly a dozen). As if that weren’t enough, he also races horses and raises money for charitable causes. We caught up with the Iron Chef, who was in Toronto this past weekend hosting the Chef’s Challenge, a fundraiser that supports breast and ovarian cancer research at Mount Sinai hospital. Here’s what he told us:
With Bobby Flay at the helm and six celeb chefs on deck, this year’s Chef’s Challenge fundraiser proved a relaxed affair
Host Bobby Flay has a refreshment (Image: Yves Freypons)
At last year’s Chef’s Challenge, the famously potty-mouthed Gordon Ramsay ended up throwing the chefs off the stage after a skillet caught fire. This year, the annual fundraiser for Mount Sinai’s breast and ovarian cancer research was led by grill master Bobby Flay, meaning there were no fires—although there was a good deal of impaired cooking by the end. Mark McEwan was swigging limoncello from the bottle, while Flay downed prosecco and Lynn Crawford tried to curry favour with the judges with some frozen mojitos. Who knew the night would end in such delightful debauchery?
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Q&A with Nathan Myhrvold, the author of Modernist Cuisine, 2011’s most talked about cookbook
(Image: Renée Suen)
Unless you’ve been hiding under some kind of rock where no foodies are allowed, you’ve probably heard of Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking, the stunning six-volume, 2,400-page, 50-pound, $625 cookbook that came out early this year. Nathan Myhrvold, who spent five years working on the tome (three-and-a-half of them with a team of 30 in a 20,000-square-foot lab), was in town this week to speak to about 250 food and science nerds at an event hosted by The Cookbook Store at the Isabel Bader Theatre. A staggering polymath, by age 23 Myhrvold had already acquired a pair of master’s degrees (economics and geophysics) and a Princeton PhD (theoretical and mathematical physics), before working with Stephen Hawking at Cambridge, holding the chief technology officer job at Microsoft, running a patent empire called Intellectual Ventures and dabbling in photography, paleontology and, of course, cutting-edge food. We sat with Myhrvold over breakfast to talk about the surprising success of Modernist Cuisine and what the future holds for the project.
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GALLERY: At this year’s What’s on the Table benefit, Toronto’s top chefs came out to support The Stop
(Image: Jenna Marie Wakani)
On Wednesday, 550 Toronto foodies and philanthropists gathered in the Wychwood Barns for What’s on the Table, the annual fundraiser for The Stop Community Food Centre. The sold-out event featured 35 food and drink stations representing a staggering array of top Toronto restaurants, including Canoe, Scaramouche, Niagara Street Café, Parts and Labour, Jamie Kennedy Kitchens, C5, Ruby Watchco, Noce, Cowbell, George and the Gabardine, with desserts from Frangipane, Nadège and Soma, and drinks from Steam Whistle, Henry of Pelham, Frodpond Farm and Château des Charmes, among many others, not to mention two contestants from season one of Top Chef Canada.
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Zane Caplansky flaunts his delicious meats on Dragon’s Den, walks away empty-handed
A proud Zane Caplansky outside his first food truck (Image: Caroline Aksich)
Toronto diners watching Dragon’s Den last night got to see a familiar face: Zane Caplansky, owner of the eponymous College Street deli renowned for its smoked meat sandwiches. Before divvying up some luscious-looking sammies, he pulled a tarp off Thundering Thelma, his big blue food truck, and made his pitch. Caplansky described his vision of an entire fleet of Thelmas, offering up 15 per cent of his company for $350,000.
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Chuck Hughes anointed next big celeb chef by Grub Street, contemplating Toronto restaurant
(Image: Shaw Media)
Montreal chef and tattooed, all-around heartthrob Chuck Hughes could be the next primetime celeb chef, according to New York magazine’s Grub Street. The blog offers a slew of reasons why the easygoing host of Chuck’s Day Off is about to take off: he’s gotten plenty of exposure through the Cooking Channel (Canadians have watched Hughes on Food Network Canada for even longer); the cuisine at his Montreal restaurant Garde-Manger fits in with the current mini-trend of interest in French-Canadian food; he crushed Bobby Flay on Iron Chef America (with lobster poutine, no less); and he’s got a slot on the upcoming Next Iron Chef.
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Q&A with Padma Lakshmi: the Top Chef host, who’ll be in town for the Delicious Food Show, talks about her favourite contestants and places to eat
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Padma Lakshmi, the model, actress, sometime singer, Top Chef host and bestselling cookbook author, will be in town this weekend for the Delicious Food Show at the Better Living Centre. The show, which will also see appearances from Mark McEwan, David Rocco and Afrim Pristine of the Cheese Boutique, will feature cooking demonstrations, tastings, a wine-stomping and more. We chatted with the former supermodel about some of her favourite places to eat, her Top Chef co-star Tom Colicchio and her impressions of eating out in Toronto.
