This morning, Where announced its annual picks for the best new restaurant in each of the regions the travel magazine covers in Canada. The winner for Toronto, unsurprisingly, was Acadia, Matt Blondin and Scott Selland’s buzzy new Clinton Street temple to the cuisine of the Lowcountry, which the Where editors praised for its “precisely pruned menu of seasonal sea- and soul-food dishes in a space that’s evocative of an old, oceanside cottage.” Other picks across the country include Calgary’s Latin-tinged Ox and Angela, Parry Sound’s Kudos Kuisine and the vintage-glam Hawksworth Restaurant in Vancouver’s Rosewood Hotel Georgia. Toronto Life will announce its picks for the city’s top 10 new restaurants of 2011 in our April issue. Read the entire story [Where] »
The comprehensive index of every blog post, magazine story and restaurant review that appears on Torontolife.com
All stories relating to Calgary
Where magazine names Acadia Toronto’s best new restaurant
Grant Van Gameren teams up with Top Chef Canada’s Connie DeSousa for Calgary pop-up
Grant Van Gameren, former chef and owner of The Black Hoof and currently the chef at Enoteca Sociale, has teamed up with Connie DeSousa, the second runner-up from season one of Top Chef Canada and co-executive chef and owner of Charcut, for what is apparently Calgary’s first pop-up restaurant, Charpop. The full-service restaurant will operate at a secret Cowtown location for three days only, from January 15 to 17, serving “an à-la-carte menu that promises to surprise and satiate with creative, memorable items,” according to John Jackson, Charcut’s other co-chef and owner. Menu items will include lardo-topped rabbit pie, bison heart steak and cinnamon buns baked in cast iron with spiced rum and raisin gelato. Aviv Fried, a Calgary baker who delivers his artisanal loaves by bicycle, is also involved. Reservations for the 60 bookings went on sale today, and a return flight to Calgary can be had for a mere $518 at the moment.
Year in Review: 2011 was the year street food finally took off in Toronto
Read the rest of this entry »
After living through decades of delicious but pretty much uniform street meat, followed by a city-backed pilot program that ended up a complete fiasco, Torontonians finally got a glimpse of the street food promised land in 2011, thanks mostly to a clutch of feisty entrepreneurs. A selective and entirely arbitrary roundup of the highs and lows of Toronto ephemeral eating in 2011, after the jump.
Why three prominent Chinese-Canadian writers launched a $10-million plagiarism suit against Ling Zhang
A tale of death threats, tarnished reputations and literary jealousy
(Image: Daniel Ehrenworth)
The streets near Scarborough’s Confederation Park curve and loop in a vertiginous web. The neighbourhood was built in the 1970s—several blocks of low-lying split-levels and bungalows divided by neatly trimmed hedges and 20-foot pines. The 401 is just a few blocks away, but these houses are quiet and isolated, even prim. Ling Zhang lives here in a large mock Tudor. She answers the door on the first ring, a diminutive woman with full moon cheeks and a bashful smile. At 54, she wears her hair in a wispy, youthful updo and is dressed in a peacock-blue sundress, a simple cardigan and slippers. The house is immaculate. We pass through a large front hall with a formal dining and living room off either side. Matching white leather sofas sprawl across polished cherry floors. Everywhere I look, there are vases filled with flowers in pastel pink and white. They’re all fake, but the effect is cheerful.
In the kitchen, Zhang makes me a cup of tea. Her husband, Ken He, a slight man in a short-sleeved plaid shirt, pops in to say hello—but not much else. Zhang explains his English isn’t great. “Moving to Toronto was a big sacrifice for him,” she says. The couple met in Vancouver, at the church where Zhang, a born-again Christian, was baptized as an adult. They came to Toronto so Zhang could take a job at Scarborough General Hospital as an audiologist. Her husband, who was an ophthalmologist in China, now sells real estate to the GTA’s Chinese immigrant community.
Read the rest of this entry »
Truck-off: why Calgary’s food truck program works and Toronto’s doesn’t
Toronto’s food trucks are not permitted to operate on public streets in the downtown core
Somehow, inventive, high-quality food served out of a truck has become one of the hottest food trends across North America over the last few years, and Toronto entrepreneurs—like Suresh Doss of Food Truck Eats, or Zane Caplansky—are doing their best to keep up. But such ventures have succeeded despite some strict regulations that keep most trucks off public streets downtown. And although we have no desire to write yet another how-Calgary-is-better-than-Toronto article, that city is halfway through an impressive food truck pilot program that has 10 new trucks roaming the streets. We called around to find out how Calgary got started and see whether the same thing could happen here.
Read the rest of this entry »
First, Calgary’s street eats (think truffle-oiled French fries and lamb burgers) trumped Toronto’s. Now, average weekly wages in Saskatchewan have surpassed Ontario’s for the first time. Sakatchewanians earn $906.22 on average, 6.9 per cent more than last year. As for Ontario, weekly wages are falling faster than anywhere else in the country, dropping 1.3 per cent over the same period from $901.16 to $889.13. That puts Ontario’s average wages in fourth place in the country, behind Alberta, the Yukon (seriously) and the Saskies. So what’s the reason for the prairie province’s prosperity? No, the cost of canola hasn’t quadrupled: new industries and steadily rising commodity prices (including those of Saskatchewan’s abundant grains, oil, gas, uranium and potash stores) have seen the province’s status surge to “have” in recent years. Premier Brad Wall is even inviting Ontarians to head west to seek their fortune. Maybe “Saskatchewaner” doesn’t sound so bad after all. Read the entire story [Toronto Star] »
Rob Ford could deliver on a campaign promise by fixing Toronto’s broken 311 service
(Image: Christopher Drost)
Apparently, Toronto’s 311 service is in a spot of trouble. Naturally, having staff on call to help Torontonians deal with broken waters mains and dead raccoons makes a certain amount of sense, but a report from the city’s auditor general finds that roughly one in five calls to the service go unanswered and many callers face lengthy wait times. Meanwhile, water mains keep gushing and dead raccoons keep getting deader—and another of Rob Ford’s campaign promises remains effectively broken.
Read the rest of this entry »
Recipe to Riches Reviewed: Episode 5, The Smart Cookie
Last things first: at the end of this week’s episode (the sweet and savoury snacks challenge), the producers flashed a disclaimer explaining that “due to unforeseen circumstances,” the winning contestant would “not be competing for the grand prize in the final episode.” Our minds rife with conspiracy theories neither sweet nor savoury, we dashed off a note to the show’s publicist, who reassured us there was nothing untoward going on. Apparently, after the show was taped, the producers found out that the winner had a family member who worked at a company connected to the show, making her technically ineligible. But since that family member wasn’t in a position to have any influence on the show, they decided to let her keep her $25,000 in winnings while barring her from the grand prize. Given how badly she wanted to win (see below), we have to admit we feel a little bad. After the jump, our weekly recap and tasting panel.
Read the rest of this entry »
Camera: Meeting Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi at the first annual Urban Futures lecture
Man of the hour Naheed Nenshi (Image: George Pimentel)
September 20. Hard as it is for Torontonians to admit to envying anything Calgarian, this group of developers, architects and urban activists was practically drooling over Calgary’s mayor. Naheed Nenshi is a Harvard grad (okay, we had one of those, but still…) who advocates for walkable cities and was the grand marshal of the Calgary Pride Parade. He was in town to deliver the first annual Urban Futures lecture, put on by star architects Jack Diamond and Donald Schmitt at the glistening Corus Quay building (a Diamond and Schmitt design) next to Sugar Beach. “In his short time as mayor of Calgary, Naheed Nenshi has grasped the issues facing cities better than anyone,” said Diamond. If it wasn’t obvious at the outset that this was the mayor most of the guests wished Toronto had, it was by the end, when Nenshi was peppered with so many questions that Diamond had to call time. As attendees spilled onto the patio for the reception, one guest was overheard saying, “He even pronounces ‘library’ correctly.”
Rob Ford marks the first anniversary of his election with news that he’s only the second-least popular mayor in the country
Don’t worry, Rob, at least you didn’t rank last (Image: Christopher Drost)
A new poll finds that Hazel McCallion, she of the conflict-of-interest fame, is Canada’s most popular mayor, while Rob Ford sits in second-to-last place (a cruel gift from the folks at Forum Research Inc. on the same week of the anniversary of his election victory). Because Gérald Tremblay is the only mayor less popular than Ford, we’re tempted to suggest that only a major scandal could knock Ford down any further—but hey, look how things worked out for Hazel.
Read the rest of this entry »
A recently released report from RBC on the state of Canadian real estate has prompted the Toronto Star to direct homebuyers to Calgary, and with good reason: the numbers don’t favour Torontonians. According to the report, a median-income household in T.O. can’t even afford a standard condo. Mortgage payments, property taxes and utilities would cost 34.2 per cent of the household income and, according to a lender’s rule of thumb, no more than 32 per cent should go towards those expenses. To afford a standard condo, which the bank pegs at $321,200, a household needs to pull in $70,600. While that number is much higher than the national qualifying income of $52,000, the Big Smoke isn’t the most egregious case in the country. That honour goes to Vancouver, where a household needs to make a harrowing $80,500. Read the entire story [Toronto Star] »
A city where commuting is essentially carefree and French fries with truffle oil can be purchased on the street might sound like paradise, but it’s actually just Calgary. The Toronto Star interviewed the city’s mayor, Naheed Nenshi, who gave the paper some reasons to love Calgary—or, as the Star puts it, “reasons why Calgary tops Toronto.” To quick and easy commutes you can add government support for libraries and plenty of arts funding. Of course, the two cities are very different, so it’s important to note that there might be some apples-and-oranges comparisons happening here. Both cities do, however, share a Ferris wheel deficiency. Read the entire story [Toronto Star] »
Given Rob Ford’s incessant and dour gravy train mantras, it helps to be reminded that some mayors actually enjoy the role of civic booster. Case in point: Calgary’s Naheed Nenshi, who’s apparently on a cross-country Cowtown sales tour. Nenshi told the Toronto Star that although he likes our ubiquitous hot dogs just fine, they don’t quite compare to Calgary’s truffle-oiled french fry trucks or the burger truck—presumably the one run by Charcut, Top Chef Canada finalist Connie DeSousa’s restaurant—that serves a lamb burger with an egg on top. And of course Nenshi’s right. But at least we’re catching up. Read the whole story [Toronto Star] »
Harper heralds end of Liberal era of Canadian politcs; Joe Comartin accuses him of having a one-night stand with Quebec
Stephen Harper in a cowboy hat at the Calgary Stampede (Image: Government of Alberta)
“Here we’ve got a guy who’s saying our honeymoon is going to be over quickly with the people of Quebec after he didn’t have anything more than a one-night stand.”
That gem came from Windsor-Tecumseh NDP MP Joe Comartin in response to Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s proclamation this weekend at the opening ceremonies of the Calgary Stampede that the Liberal era of Canadian politics is dead in the water and the New Democrats’ supremacy in Quebec will soon follow suit.
Read the rest of this entry »
Four things we learned from Justin Vernon, a.k.a. Bon Iver, on Q today
Bon Iver coos out his oft-inscrutable songs to a DC crowd (Image: angela n.)
Justin Vernon, the voice behind Bon Iver, gave a revealing and Canada-praising interview this morning to Jian Ghomeshi on Q. Bon Iver first made its way onto the indie music scene in 2007 when the album For Emma, Forever Ago became an international hit. Since then Vernon has recorded and performed with a number of different collaborators, including Gayngs, Volcano Choir and perhaps most notably Kanye West, whom Vernon supported during Kanye’s headlining performance at the Coachella Music Festival in California. Check out four things we learned about collaborating with Kanye, the latest album and Vernon’s Canuck love life, after the jump.
Read the rest of this entry »
Follow Toronto Life on Twitter, Facebook and via RSS