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The comprehensive index of every blog post, magazine story and restaurant review that appears on Torontolife.com
Bannock’s holiday tourtière
This time of year, it takes a strong will not to indulge, whether it be in the beautiful pastries and cakes spilling out of patisserie windows or the drinks at a holiday party. We say, why even try? We’ve rounded up some of our favourites, along with a few other gifts that your food-obsessed friends are sure to love (including one salve for those who’ve indulged just a little too much).
November 2, TIFF Lightbox. It’s not often that royalty comes to town (not that we’re bitter, Will and Kate). So when Prince Albert Grimaldi, ruler of Monaco, arrived with his new wife, the South African former Olympic swimmer Charlene Wittstock, Toronto’s peerage class got all dolled up. The couple was here for the launch of Grace Kelly: From Movie Star to Princess, a TIFF exhibit celebrating Prince Albert’s late mom. They toured the exhibit, then repaired to the VIP room, where the prince downed brewskis and the press-shy Wittstock, understated in Dior, chatted quietly with the much less understated Suzannes (Boyd and Rogers). Though the royals departed around 8:30, the rest of the party hit the dance floor to the grooves of a live Motown band, energized as they were by their brush with nobility—the champagne-soaked jelly desserts didn’t hurt, either.
The latest project of the gold magnate Peter Munk is a seaside resort and tax haven for fellow billionaires in the post-Soviet backwater of Tivat, Montenegro. A delirious tour of a world of champagne-drenched parties, supersize yachts and the recession-proof Ultra-High Net Worth Individual
Captain Fantastic: Peter Munk on his 40-metre yacht, the Golden Eagle, which has a full-time staff of five. (Image: Jim Ross)
There are birthday parties, and then there was Nathaniel Rothschild’s party this past July. The financier, scion of the prominent banking family and future baron was turning 40 and spent £1 million on the weekend-long extravaganza. The venue: Porto Montenegro, a newly developed luxury resort and marina in the Montenegrin coastal town of Tivat, on the southeast side of the Adriatic Sea. It was the sort of gathering that marks the end of an era or the birth of an empire—and in a way, for Europe’s youngest and smallest democracy, it was both.
Four hundred guests arrived at the village airport on private jets or stepped off the fleet of super-yachts that washed ashore from the world’s most glamorous tax havens—the Grenadines, Gibraltar, Grand Cayman. The attendees were described in the Guardian society pages as “200 ugly rich people and their poorer but more attractive partners,” or, as one guest more generously put it, “plutocrats and the women who love them.” A number of the partiers were so fantastically rich they could bankroll whole armies (which the birthday boy’s family, in its heyday, once did): Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska (who arrived on his £70-million yacht, the Queen K); the wealthy Egyptian Sawiris family (who have embarked on their own Montenegrin development nearby); King Leruo Molotlegi, ruler of a tiny, platinum-rich part of South Africa, who hit the dance floor in a fabulous dashiki; British politician Lord Peter Mandelson; Jimmy Choo honcho Tamara Mellon; the historian Niall Ferguson and his Dutch-Somali partner, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a feminist critic of Islam. There was a healthy smattering of European royalty, as well as members of the Guinness and Goldsmith clans.
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As the crowd settled in for an early June performance of Édouard Lock’s Untitled at the Bluma Appel Theatre, Matthew Jocelyn, the artistic and general director of Canadian Stage, stood under the spotlight, urging his audience to renew their subscriptions. Some serious name-dropping ensued. The company will be staging Red, about the life of the painter Mark Rothko, which won a Tony last year, as well as Clybourne Park, a Pulitzer Prize–winning play inspired by A Raisin in the Sun. And Atom Egoyan—who was in the audience that day—will be directing his wife, Arsinée Khanjian, in the war-themed British play Cruel and Tender.
Awards, celebrities, allusions to well-known works: there was an unmistakable whiff of desperation in Jocelyn’s populist appeal. Last year, he came to CanStage to make it a hub for, as he puts it, “the great theatre and choreographic artists who work in this country.” But his radical, rapid revamping of the ultra-safe company has alienated audiences. He opened his first season with Fernando Krapp Wrote Me This Letter, an obscure German play, and continued into movement-based and experimental works. By the end of the 2010–11 season, the company had experienced a six per cent drop in subscription rates, and the house capacity numbers were even bleaker. A few short-run plays came close to filling the Bluma for six to 12 performances, but some long-run shows ranged from 45 to 60 per cent capacity, and that factors in tickets sold through heavily discounted specials and other promotions. After two successful decades in Asia and Europe, Jocelyn’s return to his native Toronto has been met with more jeers than cheers.
My favourite read
I love the personal pieces at the back of The Spectator. Essays are my favourite form of writing because they’re so intimate.
My paper collection
I always have some nice wrapping paper from The Paper Place on hand for last-minute presents. There’s so much junk in the world, it’s a delight when something’s beautiful just for the sake of it.
My M0851 rain slicker
Walking is one of my greatest passions. It’s a way of clearing my head, and I don’t ever let rain stop me. I bought my raincoat for a trip to Vancouver Island and have been attached to it ever since.
My big cutlery
My flatware is from an antique dealer in Germany, and it’s huge. The soup spoons are like ladles. They feel so substantial. I can’t stand the flimsy stuff you get at restaurants.
After three years of restaurant restraint, Aria and Toca, two unabashedly flashy new spots, are giving diners a reason to get dressed up again
Opulence, I missed you. I missed high thread-count table linens and hand-blown water glasses and even edible gold leaf a little. I missed the dining rooms whose owners gave carte blanche to talented designers, insisting only on “something grand.” But mostly, I missed gasping when I walked into restaurants—having to stop to take a space in, to admire. Though restraint wasn’t all bad for dining culture these past few years, it wasn’t always easy on the eyes.
Two ambitious, expensive, flashy new dining rooms have opened downtown in recent months, one of them from a hotel chain that’s synonymous with conspicuous luxury, the other from a pair of neighbourhood restaurateurs who’ve come out shooting for the moon. Both are fine dining (more or less), and both are likely to make you gasp when you enter.
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Will Predhomme belongs to a competitive cabal of top sommeliers who sniff, sip and spit their way through hundreds of bottles a week. They do this to help you decide what to drink with your dinner, while making you think it was your idea all along
One hundred and fifty-one people have reservations at Canoe tonight. Among these are many Bay Streeters, a couple celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary, dozens of people on dates, including the bar manager from Crush, and a young woman who plans to propose to her boyfriend over dinner. The two private dining rooms are fully booked.
Canoe, part of the ever-expanding Oliver and Bonacini empire, is routinely considered one of the finest restaurants in the city. Last summer, in a rigorous competition held by the Canadian Association of Professional Sommeliers, known as CAPS, Canoe’s head sommelier, Will Predhomme, was proclaimed Ontario’s best. Predhomme has devoted a third of his life—he’s 29—to wine scholarship. He now knows more about wine than almost anyone in Toronto.
Just after 5 p.m., the bar area begins to fill up with commuters sipping cocktails as they wait for the traffic on the clogged Gardiner, 54 floors below, to dissipate. One of the restaurant’s first guests, a retired trial lawyer, arrives. As a young female host escorts him to his large corner table, he puts an arm around her shoulder. “I don’t like to pay bills,” he says. “I want a fucking account. Last time I was here, I offered those ladies”—referring to the hosts who greeted him at his last visit—“$300 and told them to set up an account for me. And I still don’t have one.” He and his three dining companions, Canoe regulars, have brought in several bottles of their own wine, including a cabernet franc from the ex-lawyer’s private vineyard in Tuscany. When Predhomme arrives at the table to discuss the wine, the ex-lawyer, captivatingly bratty in a way that only the rich and sort-of-powerful can be, repeats his complaint. “Look, I spend about $50,000 a year at Bymark, and I’d do the same here if I had a fucking account.” Predhomme is unmoved, but gracious. “If you give me your contact information,” he says, “I’ll make sure that it gets to the right people.”
“You’ll get me an account?”
“I’ll look into it.”
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Buckets of bubbly: a thing of the past? (Image: e_calamar)
LVMH, the luxury goods powerhouse known for its fancy handbags (Louis Vuitton) and highfalutin hooch (Moët Hennessy), has declared that the champers supply is running short. Grape harvests were restricted by the Comité interprofessionnel du vin de Champagne (yes, there’s a committee for this) last year due to a fear of oversupply and falling prices. But with a modest bump in the economy (and bankers feeling free to sip Cristal in the champagne room again), there’s been a spike in demand.
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Scenes from a never-ending party
2:45 a.m., Cobra
“Let’s get drunk and fuck! Let’s get drunk and fuck!”
I’m at Cobra, a King West club in a sprawling basement underneath a 19th-century warehouse. In this neighbourhood, the best parties are either deep underground or high above in a rooftop bar. Cobra is decorated like a gothic funhouse, with a wall of glowing skulls and lots of black. The get-drunk-and-fuck directive bleats from a techno remix as coloured lights, inducing a kind of electric synesthesia, pulsate on the basement ceiling. To my left, two girls make out and topple over, knocking down their bottle service glassware. Guys eagerly watch from the sidelines, plotting how to make their move. My teeth chatter from the vibrating bass. I down a shot that’s half Sour Puss and half vodka, proffered by a human Barbie doll bartender. Read the rest of this entry »
(Illustration: Jack Dylan)
French champagne is still the standard-bearer for the world’s sparkling wines. But New World winemakers are tinkering with its conventions and challenging its supremacy, making bubbly more fun and diverse—for celebrating everyday life, not just its highlights. Understanding sparkling wine means wrapping your head around confusing nomenclature: in champagne terms, the driest styles are called brut, but the sweeter ones are “extra-dry.” More extra-dry wine is being made whether labelled thus or not, reflecting the fact that most of humanity actually prefers sweetish wine. Of late, in the New World, we’re seeing grapes other than the champagne triumvirate of pinot noir, chardonnay and pinot meunier—such varietals as sauvignon blanc, riesling and even shiraz. The final kick in the shins to champagne is that quality has improved substantially throughout the sparkling-wine spectrum—from Italian prosecco to Spanish cava, from French cremants to the global legions of chardonnay-pinot champagne emulators. Whatever the style, these sparklers are all cheaper than champagne, sometimes astonishingly so considering their fine quality. Read the rest of this entry »
We prefer to pass the holiday season by eating our way through it and forcing loved ones to do the same. So we’ve come up with 13 inventive edible gifts (and not a mini-muffin basket in sight).
See our foodie gift guide now >>
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Finally, more of British Columbia’s premium bottles are available in Ontario. Here, the best of the west
(Image: Jack Dylan)
It’s boom time in B.C. There are now nearly 200 wineries, and the quality just keeps getting better. In fact, with the recent influx of showcase wineries and new restaurants, the Okanagan Valley is being called Napa North. Winemakers have perfected techniques to harness the arid valley’s impossibly short but scorching growing season. The sheer diversity of wine is stunning: floral aromatic rieslings and gewürztraminers from cooler sites north of Kelowna; sophisticated pinot gris, chardonnays and pinot noirs from the Naramata Bench; and powerful cabernets and syrahs from the hot south near Oliver and Osoyoos. Until recently, however, it’s been hard to taste the western renaissance in Ontario. Supply is limited (B.C.’s output is two-thirds of Ontario’s), and the wine is still treated as an import here due to archaic interprovincial alcohol regulations. (For starters, it’s illegal for wineries to take orders from Ontario and ship directly to their customers.) Thankfully, more good B.C. wine is now trickling into Vintages stores and wine agencies. The selection below includes some of the best cutting-edge wines now available.
The sensible shoes and twin–sets are gone, replaced by stilettos and crystal-encrusted gowns. There’s valet parking and personal shoppers, and they’re serving champagne up on three. It’s all part of the Bay’s scheme to win the loyalty of society shopaholics—and steal the fashion crown from Holts
(Image: George Pimentel)
One evening last March, Toronto’s stylish set put on their best frocks and headed to a retail baptism. Sarah Jessica Parker, celebrity high priestess of fashion, was in town to launch the Halston Heritage label at The Bay. The party, which reportedly cost over $200,000, was meant to establish Canada’s oldest department store as a major player in high-end womenswear. If retailers can be born again, this was The Bay’s moment to lean back and dip its head into the holy water.
Fashion media and socialites were ushered into the Queen Street flagship store and up the escalator to sip champagne on the third floor. That’s where The Room is located. The upscale designer dress salon was renovated a year ago for approximately $4.4 million in a high modernist style by the designers Yabu Pushelberg. The result is a treasure trove of conversation piece baubles, heels, flirty cocktail dresses and gowns by some of the most prestigious designers in the business. It’s the beating heart of the new Bay. Read the rest of this entry »
Prince Edward County’s first sparklers are incredible: you’d swear you were drinking champagne
(Image: Jack Dylan)
The first three sparkling wines to come out of Prince Edward County are taut, tender and dance across the palate: they taste more like champagne than any non-French bubbly I’ve ever tasted. The secret is in the dirt. The sunny farming region south of Belleville has almost as high a concentration of limestone in its soil as France’s Champagne district. Limestone is fissured and spongy, which allows vine roots to penetrate deep into the bedrock, and the wine it yields is full of refreshing minerality. The similarities in terroir and climate were so striking that two expat Torontonians, Jonas Newman, a former maître d’ at Scaramouche, and his partner, Vicki Samaras, have opened Hinterland winery, the County’s first dedicated exclusively to bubbly. It’s one of 14 launches in the past year, bringing the total number of wineries to 31. The region once considered laughably marginal is full of undercapitalized but pioneering vintners. Many are eking out fewer than 1,000 cases from small acreages, making their wines scarce (most are unavailable at the LCBO) and expensive. But low yields create better quality wines. Here are some examples of PEC’s finest to seek out on your next, or first, trip. Read the rest of this entry »
Shinan Govani at the launch party for his book, Boldface Names (Photo by Jen McNeely)
Local gossip king Shinan Govani landed the cover of the premiere issue of In Toronto magazine this week (it’s like Xtra or Fab for the Yorkville crowd), and while we already know too much about the party pundit, the story revealed some tidbits that might be useful for amateur celebrity spotters. The highlights of the 1,400-word Q&A:
Govani’s picks for celebrity sightings:
Drew Barrymore was spotted at Sweaty Betty’s twice when she was in town for TIFF, Robin Williams once visited the Dora Keogh, Daniel Craig and Megan Fox have dined at Avenue Road’s L’Unità, and Toufik Sarwa’s Cinq 01 on College is the go-to place for local celebs.
His answer to the tired “will Toronto ever be like New York” question: Read the rest of this entry »
Up the population by one million. “Toronto is plenty engaging and glam—what we’re still lacking is scale,” he tells the magazine, adding that a Toronto party may have 10 “cool” people, but a New York or London party may have 100 “cool” people.
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