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All stories relating to Chinatown

Weekly Lunch Pick: a weekday feast for two at Chinatown’s newest dim sum restaurant

(Images: Renée Suen)

Up on the third floor of an old Chinese mall on the south side of Dundas sits Dim Sum King, a new Chinatown spot that serves excellent renditions of steamed, fried, boiled, baked and braised classics at reasonable prices. The large, open room is filled with the usual cacophony of chopsticks clicking against dishes and waiters circulating around linen-covered tables with old-school trolleys. Although daily midday specials are available for $5.99, the better deal on weekday lunches is to order by the plate, since all sizes—small, medium and large—go for $2.

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The Dish

Restauran-TO

December 2, 2011 | 5:20 pm

9 Comments

Chinatown restaurants receive threatening letters over shark fins

Ever since the city banned shark fin products in October, the Toronto Chinese Business Association has received hundreds of hate-filled emails and messages. Nothing, however, has come close to the letter received on Tuesday, which claims members of the “Animal Liberation of USA/Canada” were “in your Chinatowns spreading rat poison on meat, fish, fruit and vegetables.” The letter asserts that Chinese people are “barbarians” and “animal killers” for continuing to use shark fin products, which are still legal in Toronto until September. Apparently the American “head office” will be supplying lethal E. coli bacteria to the offending restaurants. We doubt the threat is genuine; still, the Toronto Police hate crime unit says it’s taking the letter very seriously. Read the entire story [Toronto Sun] »

The Dish

Opening

October 24, 2011 | 12:16 pm

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Introducing: Cold Tea, a new Kensington Market bar that nods to a venerable Chinatown tradition

Theoretically, this inauspicious entrance should keep people away; in practice, the place is already packed (Image: Caroline Aksich)

Tucked into the back of the Kensington Mall, down the hallway past the knick-knack peddlers, is Cold Tea, the market’s newest watering hole. Oliver Dimapilis, who owns the bar along with Stacey Welton and Matthew LaRochelle, told us he’s convinced the “cold tea” phenomenon—post–last call beer served in tea pots at Chinese restaurants—was born in Toronto (he’s got Urban Dictionary on his side). And while the original dream was to have their new bar (open Tuesday through Sunday) tucked into a Chinatown back alley, the trio doesn’t seem too distraught to have landed a block west, scoring, as they did, a back patio to rival the front one at Ronnie’s.

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The Dish

Opening

September 27, 2011 | 12:02 pm

2 Comments

Introducing: One Hour, Chinatown’s first minimalist tea shop

Inside One Hour (Image: Karolyne Ellacott)

The leap from architect to restaurateur is probably not a traditional career trajectory, but that’s the route Han Shao has taken. After moving to Toronto from mainland China in 2005, Shao earned a master’s degree from U of T’s architecture program and went on to work for a local firm. But that didn’t last long. Fed up with the mind-numbing computer work he faced every day, Shao decided to quit his job and open up a bright new tea house in the heart of Chinatown.

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The Dish

Opening

September 16, 2011 | 11:49 am

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Introducing: the second stop on the Drake Dining Roadshow, 1940s L.A. Chinatown

The redesigned dining room features all kinds of gleeful appropriations and kitschy Chinatown elements, like this wall of cats. (Image: Gizelle Lau)

Back in June, we told you about the Drake Hotel’s Dining Roadshow, a series of thematically changing restaurant concepts constructed in the back section of the hotel’s dining room, starting with the Drake Summer School Dining Hall. This stop: 1940s L.A. Chinatown, which opened just in time for TIFF and continues until November 19.

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The Dish

Restauran-TO

September 2, 2011 | 1:35 pm

4 Comments

VIDEO: The Drake releases a puzzling trailer for the next iteration of its Dining Roadshow series

In what’s probably a Toronto first, The Drake has released a trailer for the next iteration of its Dining Roadshow series of in situ pop-up restaurants. The series began with a cheeky tribute to summer school and is moving on to L.A.’s Chinatown circa 1940 this coming Thursday, just in time for TIFF. Some of the things that happen in the puzzling, surrealistic trailer:

a young woman goes running through some woods and meadows;
she declares that she hates exercise;
some birds in a tree tell her about a burger, which, naturally, materializes immediately, but only in a ghostly, translucent way;
she concedes to her mom (on the phone) that yes, she mostly eats noodles;
she daydreams about a cupcake in the clouds;
an opulent picnic appears before her;
the picnic items start flying toward her, and she eats them, enraptured;
she then rolls down a grassy hill.

No, we have no idea what any of it means, nor can we figure out why none of the food is Chinese. But we are excited to see what chef Anthony Rose and the Drake team come up with for round two of their roadshow.

The Dish

Aprons & Icons

August 9, 2011 | 12:23 pm

2 Comments

Offal king Chris Cosentino smells Toronto’s Chinatown from three blocks away

(Image: Gary Stevens)

Chris Cosentino, America’s reigning king of offal and chef at San Francisco’s nose-to-tail mecca Incanto, is currently in Toronto for “adventure,” and like all good 21st-century chefs, he’s tweeting. From his feed, we learn that he made the requisite pilgrimage to the Black Hoof last night and that he wasn’t quite prepared for the powerful combination of a Toronto heat wave and Chinatown’s particular olfactory charms:

It so hot in Toronto I could smell china town from 3 blocks away! Holy dried and fermented fish

We’ll be watching for other revelations about the food in our fair (albeit pungent) city.

The Dish

Weekly Lunch Pick

August 2, 2011 | 8:30 am

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Weekly Lunch Pick: the southern-inspired beer can chicken at Hotel Ocho

Hotel Ocho’s beer can chicken (Image: Andrew Brudz)

Last March, this former textile factory in Chinatown was given new life as a loft-style hotel with a minimalist, two-storey lounge, restaurant and café. In the kitchen, chef Chris Thorne has put together an eclectic yet affordable menu, including a $10 daily lunch special that includes an appetizer and a main. The beer can chicken ($17) is stuffed with a can’s worth of Leffe Blonde and roasted in an oven. The moist leg arrives nicely charred and covered with a kicky house-spice blend. Underneath, the Southern-style potato salad is studded with pecans and chunks of bacon—the whole thing would feel right at home at a bayou barbecue.

The cost: $27, including tax, tip and a house-made blueberry lemonade ($3.50).

The time: 45 minutes

Hotel Ocho, 195 Spadina Ave., 416-593-0885, hotelocho.com.

The Informer

From the Print Edition

July 5, 2011 | 11:00 am

2 Comments

Jack Layton accomplished the impossible (with a little help from the anti-Iggy movement)—now what?

By Kelly Pullen

(Image: Daniel Ehrenworth)

I should start by telling you that you’re my MP.
That makes you my boss.

Great—so you have to answer all of my questions.
I’ll do my best.

This is the moment you’ve been waiting for—a chance to show that the NDP is a viable alternative as a governing party. How do you make sure you don’t blow it?
We’ve been around for 50 years in the House of Commons and in public life—from our earliest days with the contribution of Medicare and our work around the CPP. We’ve shown we’re able to add to good legislation and governance.

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The Informer

From the Print Edition

May 4, 2011 | 8:56 am

36 Comments

Welcome to Toronto the Rude

We swear at each other from cars, bark at each other on the TTC and yell into our cellphones. How a supposedly livable city suddenly turned boorish By Jan Wong

Torontonians cursing each other in a traffic jam, illustration

(Illustration by Kagan McLeod)

I got into a cat fight the other day at the Bolshoi ballet, one of those live satellite transmissions at my local Cineplex, where people arrive an hour early to get a good seat. The orchestra in Moscow hadn’t yet begun warming up when one balletomane barked at me for sitting in her territory, a 10-seat swath ambiguously marked with scattered scarves and hats. “You can’t sit there,” she said, with surprising nastiness. When I chose a seat farther down the row, she snapped, “That’s taken, too.” Steaming, I moved to a third spot and plunked my bag down on the seat beside me, not to save it for anyone, but to ensure zero human contact after being bullied by Lady Ten-Seat.

Rudeness is contagious. When another woman arrived a minute later and needed two seats, I set my jaw. “You’re not going to move your bag?” she asked, incredulous. “Nope,” I replied. We exchanged sharp words. “I’m tired of being pushed around by your friend,” I finally hissed, nodding at Lady Ten-Seat. It turned out not only did they not know one another, but my newfound adversary had just received the same rude treatment. “Now I’m totally edgy, too,” she confessed, suddenly extending her hand. “I’m Jane. Let’s be friends.” Mortified, I shook her hand, apologized and moved my coat. Then we all settled in to watch Giselle.

I wish such hostile encounters were rare, but it’s hard to navigate the city these days without experiencing friction. At least that’s my observation. Perhaps I’m just a magnet for trouble. Perhaps you, on the other hand, float through winter with people politely stepping into snowbanks to let you pass; perhaps you’ve never been held captive to a cellphone user’s inane conversation on a streetcar. But I say civility is on the decline, and the evidence is everywhere.

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The Informer

Election Whoas

May 2, 2011 | 2:29 pm

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Who leaked on Layton? We look at why each party may have tipped off Sun News

Which party gave the press the Layton story? (Image: Matt Higgins)

On Friday night, Sun Media broke the news that it had acquired the notes of a retired police officer who once found NDP leader Jack Layton in a Chinatown massage parlour that the police—and others—suspected of being a “touch” more friendly than the law allows. The NDP promptly responded, calling the leak a smear campaign; meanwhile, the media focused less on the news itself and more on whether or not Sun News should have reported it in the first place (we like Chris Selley’s take). As the critics piled on, the answer to one question remained a mystery: who, exactly, tipped off Sun Media? We look at four intriguing possibilities after the jump.

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The Informer

Gimme Shelter

April 6, 2011 | 2:15 pm

16 Comments

Home of the Week: $669,000 for a spacious condo at Queen and John

ADDRESS: 169 John Street, Unit 905

NEIGHBOURHOOD: Kensington-Chinatown

AGENT: Carl Langschmidt, Royal LePage – Your Community Realty, Brokerage

PRICE: $669,000

THE PLACE: A spacious two-bedroom, two-bathroom loft in the heart of downtown for under $700,000 might sound too good to be true, but at John and Renfrew, just steps from Grange Park, it’s the real deal.

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The Informer

Battleground Toronto

March 29, 2011 | 11:37 am

2 Comments

Michael Ignatieff visits Trinity-Spadina to fight the NDP for second place

Michael Ignatieff is mobbed by the press in Toronto’s Chinatown (Image: John Michael McGrath)

Liberal leader and PM aspirant Michael Ignatieff visited downtown Toronto on the first Monday of the election campaign yesterday, doing an oh-so-brief walkabout with Christine Innes, the Liberal candidate running against incumbent Olivia Chow. Walking, by our calculation, a grand total of 150 metres in his 30-minute photo op, Ignatieff was in Trinity-Spadina to fly the Liberal flag in the one of the two 416 seats the party doesn’t already own (the other, Toronto-Danforth, is taken by Chow’s husband, Jack Layton). This led the NDP to complain that despite Ignatieff’s rhetoric of running against the Conservatives, Liberals were starting off their campaign running in NDP-held ridings—ones that, even if the Liberals win, won’t change the balance of power in Parliament.

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The Goods

Business of Fashion

March 9, 2011 | 4:28 pm

4 Comments

Louis Vuitton and Burberry sue Canadian counterfeiters for fakes

The handbag equivalent of a James Frey novel, $45 (Image: Aidan)

Take a stroll down Spadina Avenue, peeking into Chinatown’s many nondescript knock-off handbag emporiums. But don’t look too closely, because luxury brands Louis Vuitton and Burberry are starting to fight back, and they’ve targeted Vancouver-based producers and distributors Singga Enterprises, Carnation Fashion Company and Toronto-based Altec Productions (likely names that no one has heard of until today).

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The Hype

Creative Types

February 25, 2011 | 12:07 pm

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Awesome Foundation’s first grant winner, Stephanie Avery, to play connect the dots with Toronto

A gravy boat around City Hall

Who’s the awesomest of them all? According to the Toronto branch of the Awesome Foundation, it’s Stephanie Avery, who was named the recipient of its first grant last night. A self-described “totally rad” artist, Avery was awarded $1,000 for her Connect the T-Dots pitch, a project that aims to turn aerial satellite views of Toronto into a giant connect-the-dots number puzzle.

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