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The Dish

Foodie Follies

February 7, 2012 | 12:51 pm

Brampton man asks council to permit extra backyard chickens (proving his city is cooler than Toronto)

Brampton resident and sometime poultry freedom fighter Joe Arlotto is doing everything he can to make sure his city looks cooler and more permissive than Toronto—at least when it comes to backyard chickens. Toronto councillors recently killed any hopes that our fair burg might allow its residents to keep laying hens in their backyards, meaning Brampton remains the only city in the GTA where chickens can still run free. Not satisfied with his city’s unusually relaxed stance on the birds, Arlotto recently asked Brampton councillors to allow him to add four more chickens and a rabbit to his collection (he already has two of each), purely for his family’s enjoyment. Arlotto’s property is 1.7 acres, and the Brampton Guardian reports that, at times, he’s had as many as two dozen animals on his property. If Arlotto doesn’t get his wish, we recommend he adopt the methods of Toronto chicken owners: buy a sweet mask, ignore the rules, and enter the chicken underground. Read the entire story [Brampton Guardian] »

The Dish

Locavoracious

January 25, 2012 | 10:20 am

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Toronto’s backyard chickens come home to roost (at city hall, right now)

The promised land: Columbus, Ohio (Image: Rachel Tayse)

Right now, in city hall’s Committee Room No. 1, the municipal Licensing and Standards Committee is meeting to determine the fate of the chickens that populate the backyards of Toronto (or, rather, the backyards of certain rebels in Toronto). They’ll be voting on a motion raised by Councillor Joe Mihevc that would allow a limited number of hens in city yards “for the purposes of producing eggs for personal consumption.” Should the motion pass, Toronto would join the ranks of such hen-happy cities as Vancouver, New York, Cleveland and Los Angeles. Things aren’t looking good, however: in an interview with the Toronto Star, committee chair Cesar Palacio argued that fears of mega-coops and feral birds will probably scuttle the motion. “I don’t think there is any appetite for backyard chickens,” he said. We’d love to see him tell that to the members of the chicken underground.

UPDATE: Following a spirited debate, with references to everything from Animal House to Animal Farm, the committee voted unanimously to defer the motion indefinitely, without a staff report—city hall–speak for killing it off for good.

The Dish

Pantry Raid

January 4, 2012 | 4:12 pm

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Poultry G-Men and supply management declared enemies of deliciousness in Canada

In today’s Globe and Mail, Mark Schatzker writes about Canada’s supply management system for eggs, chickens and cows, which he describes as “the enemy of deliciousness.” The article opens with scenes of inspectors from the Chicken Farmers of Ontario bursting upon the scene of unauthorized poultry operations and leaving crying Amish farm wives in their wake (along with fines of up to $10,000 a day). Schatzker argues that the high cost of quotas—$27,000 for one cow’s worth of dairy or $200 per laying hen—means that only high-volume, low-margin businesses can survive. As a result, the kind of specialty pastured poultry that’s raised in the U.S., like silver-laced Wyandottes, Jersey giants and barred Plymouth rocks, just makes no economic sense north of the border. Luckily, a loophole allows cheese makers to get around the quota system—as long as they can prove their product doesn’t taste like any existing Canadian product (apparently a team of bureaucrats in Ottawa gets to make that delicious call). There is hope on the horizon, however; Schatzker reports that Stephen Harper is looking at scrapping the whole system so that Canada can sign onto a new international trade deal. With any luck, local restaurants will soon be able to proudly host discerning diners like Peter and Nance. Read the entire story [Globe and Mail] »

The Dish

Locavoracious

December 12, 2011 | 2:04 pm

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Nine members of Toronto’s backyard-chicken underground on the special bond between man and bird

By Signe Langford | Photographs by Kevin Hewitt

On November 30, councillors Joe Mihevc and Mary-Margaret McMahon took on the considerable challenge of trying to overturn nearly three decades of city hall opposition to backyard hens. They didn’t quite succeed. (Their motion to study the issue was referred to the municipal licensing and standards committee for consideration in February.) With his trademark zeal for kindergarten humour, Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti opined, “Now we’re going to have thousands of chickens crossing the road and we’re going to have neighbours fighting against neighbours because they don’t want to hit the chickens.” But what Mammoliti and his ilk don’t understand is that urban hen keeping didn’t really go away when it was outlawed in 1983. It just went underground—into garages, sheds and secluded corners of backyards. The hopes of these renegade urban hen keepers are now running high, riding Toronto’s ever-growing wave of locavorism. Here, nine of those rebels, who break the law every day, talk about that other love that dare not speak its name: that between man and hen.

First up, Jill and Sunshine »

The Dish

DIY Gourmet

November 25, 2011 | 10:32 am

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QUOTED: Mary-Margaret McMahon on the relative noisiness and smelliness of backyard chickens

The biggest concern that I’ve heard is noise and smell. I’m saying your neighbour’s dog is noisier and your green bin is smellier.

—Rookie city councillor Mary-Margaret McMahon in a Globe and Mail article, in which Joe Mihevc also points out that hens can go through nine pounds of compost in a month [Globe and Mail]

The Dish

DIY Gourmet

November 22, 2011 | 5:26 pm

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Next year could see the return of chickens to Toronto’s backyards after a 29-year hiatus

Every weekend we round up the highlights from the other websites in the St. Joseph Media family (that’s the company that owns us, by the by). Check them out below:

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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