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New trend: food tattoos

Ink and icing (Image: Ann Larie Valentine)

More and more, the Globe is spotting trends in the manner of children after shiny objects. To wit, the paper has turned its attention to foodie tattoos. “When I decided on this [tattoo theme], I’d never even seen a food tattoo. Now I see so many girls getting, like, cupcake tattoos and candy and pie, cake and stuff like that,” says Amanda Tanos, an amateur cake decorator from Ajax. “I think it’s just become part of fashion now.” For others, an epidermal ode to cheap sweets is more than just a fashion statement—a food tattoo can acknowledge the complex social and political dimensions of one’s eating. At least that’s what Vicki Fraser of Ladner, B.C., thinks. She is planning to get a small cupcake tattooed on her arm or ankle. Mind you, when pressed, she admitted, “I just thought it’d be nice to have something really cute and sweet and just happy and have no stupid attachments to it. And plus, who doesn’t like cupcakes?”

With mancakes now on the scene, the answer ought to be “nobody.” And since they’re here, why not get a mancake tattoo?

• Food tattoos take off [Globe and Mail]
• Mancakes are selling like hotcakes in Toronto bakery [Toronto Life]

The Dish

Culinary Curiosities

February 23, 2010 | 2:20 pm

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Mancakes are selling like hotcakes in Toronto bakery

Mancakes often sport stereotypically masculine designs (Photo by Clever Cupcakes)

Mancakes are the latest iteration of man-prefixed goodies, following in the footsteps of mantyhose and man purses. Taking hold in North America, the so-called “manly cupcakes” eschew traditional vanilla and chocolate for such macho flavours as bacon, rum and coke, and beer, and are subverting the treats’ traditional girly image of pink frosting, icing sugar flowers and sprinkles. In Toronto, For the Love of Cake has had such high demand for its mancakes that cake master Genevieve Griffin has doubled the bakery’s daily offerings. “It’s been a great way of getting guys interested in cupcakes,” she told the Montreal Gazette. But as David Arrick of Butch Bakery in New York has said, some 90 per cent of customers have been women buying for men.

• Customers go wild for ‘manly cupcakes’ [Montreal Gazette]

The Dish

Deathwatch

February 19, 2010 | 3:33 pm

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Liberty Village bread factory is relocating to Hamilton

Hamilton will smell like freshly baked bread (Photo by jytyl)

It’s been just over a month since we first reported on Canada Bread’s announcement that it will be closing three aging Toronto plants in 2013—including the massive Liberty Village bakery—and building a substantial factory somewhere in southwestern Ontario. Yesterday, the company announced that Hamilton will be the site of the new $100-million facility.

The 375,000-square-foot behemoth will occupy a piece of land on which Maple Leaf Foods, which owns 90 per cent of Canada Bread, wanted to build a pork-producing facility in 2005, which would have created 900 jobs. Neighbourhood opposition nixed Project Pork, but the city seems to be eager for the bread plant (which will employ up to 300), judging by how quickly the deal went through.

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The Dish

Read All About It

January 22, 2010 | 8:30 am

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Menus trick diners into spending more, $26.50 brownie mix, the manliest cooking magazine

The brownie mix from Bouchon

• Amy Pataki taste-tests a $26.50 brownie mix from the bastion of expensive cooking supplies, Williams-Sonoma. The mix, modelled on Thomas Keller’s Bouchon Bakery chocolate “corks,” fared better than the Duncan Hines and Betty Crocker mixes she also baked, but the brownies were a pain to make, and so buttery they stained the photographer’s table, and overall were not worth the money. A $26.50 jar of powder rarely is. [Toronto Star]

• Globe restaurant critic Alexandra Gill turns the tables, so to speak, when she takes up a waitress gig at one of Vancouver’s hottest restaurants, Cioppino’s. Spoiler alert: it’s harder than she thought. Gill struggles with the Saturday shift, incorrectly calls the chef by his name (in kitchens, the chef is always referred to as “chef”) and has trouble memorizing the daily specials. Perhaps after these new life lessons, Gill will have a few memorable posts for the myriad angry waiter blogs. [Globe and Mail]

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The Dish

Aprons & Icons

December 4, 2009 | 11:30 am

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Q&A: legendary chef Thomas Keller on his culinary empire

Thomas Keller at his first Toronto appearance (Photo by Renée Suen)

A crowd of 450 (including top Toronto chefs Ted Corrado, Mark McEwan, Bonnie Stern and Donna Dooher) gathered at the Toronto Reference Library on Monday night to hear from Thomas Keller, who was in town to promote his new cookbook, Ad Hoc at Home. In the book, Keller, the only American chef to receive Michelin stars for two restaurants (The French Laundry, Per Se) at once, reveals recipes from Ad Hoc, his restaurant in Yountville, California, which serves a different prix-fixe menu every night. We wrangled some alone time with the chef to talk about his culinary empire.

It’s your first time in Toronto. Will you be exploring much of its culinary scene?
Unfortunately, I got in late last night and am leaving early tomorrow morning, so I won’t really get to see much this time. The one restaurant that is on my list is The Black Hoof, which I heard from a friend is very good.

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The Dish

Opening

October 26, 2009 | 8:51 am

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Just Opened: Spice Safar

The bar at Spice Safar (Photo by Renée Suen)

The recession may just be ending, but around King West, there are few signs it ever happened. Buca has just opened, The Roosevelt Room starts up in two weeks, and the Bell Lightbox is rapidly climbing into the sky. And now there are two new locations of Montreal’s Spice Safar to add a dose of the unexpected to the district.

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The Dish

Opening

October 15, 2009 | 12:22 pm

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Just Opened: Haisai: James Chatto talks to Michael Stadtländer about his new, somewhat straightforward (but still deeply idiosyncratic) restaurant

Marc Thuet and Biana Zorich are adding a new outpost to their empire, just as they close the dining room at Atelier Thuet. The second location of Petite Thuet will open at 1 King Street West in two weeks. The new bakery-café in the financial district will offer pastries, bread and coffee in a 900-square-foot space that’s directly across the street from a Starbucks. There has been little buzz about the opening thus far, but Zorich assures us that it is no secret—rather, she says, “It’s so small, should we even bother to do a press release?”

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The Dish

Opening

June 15, 2009 | 12:25 pm

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Mark McEwan’s opens his grocery store this week (no, seriously)—and plans a second downtown location

Northern star: Mark McEwan will open his gourmet mega-store at The Shops at Don Mills this Thursday

After months of anticipation, Shops at Don Mills will finally get its gourmet grocer this Thursday, says Mark McEwan. We caught up with The Food Network star over the weekend as he was assembling seared tuna at Toronto Taste 2009 under the gaze of a camera crew. McEwan was supposed to open this Wednesday but computer problems lead to a 24-hour delay. Of course, the store was originally slated to open last January, so what’s one more day?

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The Dish

Aprons & Icons

April 8, 2009 | 7:06 am

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Cultivating talent: Michael Stadtländer’s new restaurant goes beyond eco-eats

Singhampton, Ontario is the site of Michael Stan,,,

Singhampton, Ontario, is the site of Michael Stadtländer’s new restaurant (Photo by Bev Currie)

If the farm turned fine-dining restaurant concept of Eigensinn Farm was a radical innovation, Michael Stadtländer’s new project will take the rural revolution one step further. A restaurant, bakery, film school and news network—that’s what the chef has in mind for Haisai, which is set to open in Singhampton (about eight kilometres from his famed eat-in farm) at the end of May. “We’ve been doing Eigensinn Farm for 16 years,” says the chef, “so it’s time for a little change.”

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