Stadtländer argues that the quarry would result in the loss of prime Ontario farmland and would threaten local wildlife and the integrity of much of Ontario’s freshwater resources, since the proposed land is below the water table. “It’s some of the best farmland in Ontario, and it’s only 100 kilometres away from Toronto,” he told The Grid. “We are really only at the dawn of local food right now. The human population is growing and we really have to secure places where we can grow food.” Perhaps the best comment we’ve heard in reaction to the event comes from David Waters, an Orangeville real estate agent and Foodstock volunteer, who told the Toronto Star: “You can’t eat gravel.” Event details and tickets available here.

The list of contributing chefs is a staggering tour of southern Ontario locavorism:

Toronto:

Paul Böehmer and Milana Lise from Böhmer
Teo Paul from Union
Adam Colquhoun and Robert Bechard from Oyster Boy
JP Challet from Ici Bistro
Lola Kirk from Ruby Watcho
Jeffery Cladio from Scarpetta
Chris Brown from The Stop Community Food Centre
Jamie Kennedy from Jamie Kennedy Kitchens
Aaron Bear Robe from Keriwa Café
Fabio Boni and Michael Sangregorio from Local Kitchen and Wine Bar and Bar Salumi
Luis Valenzuela from Torito Tapas Bar
Victor Barry from Splendido and The County General
Albert Ponzo from Le Select Bistro
Hiro Yoshida from Hiro Sushi
Anthony Walsh from Bannok and Oliver and Bonacini Restaurants
Carole Ferrari from Locale Café
Carl Heinrich and Ryan Donovan from Marben
Michael Sacco from Chocosol Chocolate Traders
David Kokai from Loïc Gourmet
Anthony Rose from The Drake Hotel
Derek Bendig and Colen Quinn from Pangaea
Zane Caplansky from Caplansky’s
Evelyne Gharbirian from Hearty Catering
Rodney Bowers from Hey Meatball
Matty Matheson from Parts and Labour
Derek Zavislake from Merchants of Green Coffee
Keith Froggett from Scaramouche
Lorenzo Loseto from George Restaurant
Rob Gentile from Buca Restaurant
Patrick McMurray from Starfish Oyster Bed and Grill, Ceili Cottage
Joshna Maharaj
Steffan Howard from Palais Royale and Casa Loma
Kevin McKenna from Globe Bistro, Earth Rosedale and Earth Bloor West
Phillip Heilborn from Earth Bloor West
Trish Donnelly from Chef Donnelly Catering
Brad Long and Sarah Kuntz from Belong Café
John Higgins and Oliver Li from George Brown College
Daisuke Izatsu from Kaiseki Sakura
Christopher Palik from L-Eat Catering and Paese Ristorante
Daniel Muia from Mogette Bistro
Joe Levesque from the International Centre
Graham Pratt and Christine Fancy from The Gabardine
Giacomo Pasquini from Vertical
Aubrey Demers
Bertrand Alépée from The Tempered Chef
Fawzi Kotb from Veloute Bistro and Catering
Nick Laliberte from Poutini’s House of Poutine
Dawn Woodward and Edmund Rek from Evelyn’s Crackers
Jacob Sharkey Pearce from Two Brothers Inc.
Linda Burnside and Kevin Walters from Alternative Grounds
Alexandra Feswick from Brockton General
Diane Cartwright from Whole World Trade Ltd.
Jeff Brown and Jennifer Rashleigh from Delight
Lesia Kohut from LPK’s Culinary Groove
Anton Potvin and Nick Liu from Niagara Street Café
Johan Maes from Goed Eten

Durham:

Michael Schmidt and Chef Carey McLellan from Glencolton Farms

Mississauga:

Erica Trabulsi from The Culinary Art School of Ontario

Shelburne:

Rob Uffen from Rob Uffen’s Trout House

Rosemont:

Ross Midgley and Beth Hunt from The Globe Restaurant

Owen Sound:

Robin Pradhan from Rocky Raccoon Café

Creemore:

Michel Masselin from Chez Michel
Dave Nesbitt from Creemore Coffee Company
Don Akehurst from Sovereign Restaurant

Collingwood:

Gareth Carter from Men with Knives
Leona Nyman and Andrea Greyerbiehl from Azzurra
Jeremy Korten from Oliver and Bonacini Café Grill and Blue Mountain Restaurant
Mark and Christine Kraus from Espresso Post
Scott Chalmers and Andrew Barber from Simplicity Bistro
Christophe and Wispy Boivin from Tremont Café
Joelle Rogers from Tesoro Restaurant
Mike Duffin from One99 Broadway
Roger Genoe from Ravenna Country Market

Singhampton:

Martina Gómez and Jörg Neth from Haisai
Michael and Nobuyo Stadtländer from Eigensinn Farm

Orangeville:

Jason Reiner from The Mono Cliff’s Inn
Alex Johnston from Hockley Valley Resort

Flesherton:

Shawn Adler from The Flying Chestnut

Burlington:

Tobias Pohl-Weary from Red Canoe Bistro

Guelph:

Carin Balint from Garden of Vegan

Niagara:

Paul Harber from Ravine Vineyard
Janice Suarez
Ryan Crawford from The Stone Road Grille

Stratford:

Ruth Klahsen from Monforte Diary

Parry Sound:

Philip Patrick from The Ridge at Manitou

Barrie:

Matthew Flett from Georgian College
Randy Feltis from Oscars
David Keenan from At the Five
Daniel Hong and Anna Kim from Furasato Restaurant
Ceasar Guinto from Cravings Fine Food Market and Catering

Thornbury:

Shaun Edmonsteon and Jennifer Vipond from Bruce Wine Bar

Waterford:

Tracey Winkworth from The Belworth House

Aurora:

Jason D’Anna from Magna Golf Club

Ottawa:

Rob Fraser from Fraser Café

Saskatchewan:

Moe Mathieu

Nova Scotia:

Stefan Czapalay from Culinary Design Solutions

• Fully Stocked [Now Magazine]
• Foodstock fights mega-quarry with mega-feast [The Grid]
• In the forest with Michael Stadtlander [Toronto Star]

New Ontario vintners are planting vines in unlikely places and making wine that will warm your indie-loving locavore heart.
By David Lawrason

(Illustration: Jack Dylan)

In the last five or so years, vineyards have popped up off the beaten track of Ontario’s wine circuit—in Norfolk County (Port Dover), Grey County (Collingwood) and the south of Prince Edward County (Milford). To adapt to the idiosyncrasies of their untested terroirs, trail­blazing winemakers are trying out new types of grapes and growing techniques. For example, at the Coffin Ridge winery near Owen Sound, they’re planting hybrid vines, like Marquette and Frontenac, that are designed to survive -34°C winters. To accommodate a growing season that’s two weeks shorter than that of much of the rest of Ontario, the Georgian Hills winery near Colling­wood plants early-ripening gamay. And at Burning Kiln, on an old tobacco farm near Port Dover, they’re drying ripe grapes in tobacco kilns to produce the big, flavour-rich reds that generally come from warmer climates. After a few years of experimentation, these small operations are now turning out intriguing, often very good wines, but because the LCBO doesn’t carry small-batch bottlings, you have to order them online or make the pilgrimage to the wineries. Here, nine bottles worth the extra effort.

Half Moon Bay 2007 Pinot Noir
$30 | Prince Edward County | 91 points This is an impressive first effort from a vineyard with tough, gravelly soils. It’s a mature pinot with a meaty funk that burgundy traditionalists will love. It’s complex, smooth and concentrated, with smoky, brûlée barrel notes atop sour-cherry jam fruitiness. Drink now.

This is your kid on Wi-Fi (Image: Jeff Karpala)

From the grain of salt department: a group of  parents in Barrie are complaining that new wireless networks in local elementary schools have led to a number of bizarre conditions in their children. The Globe and Mail reports:

Some parents in the Barrie, Ont., area say their children are showing a host of symptoms ranging from headaches and dizziness to nausea and even racing heart rates…

The symptoms, which also include memory loss, trouble concentrating, skin rashes, hyperactivity, night sweats and insomnia, have been reported in 14 Ontario schools in Barrie, Bradford, Collingwood, Orillia and Wasaga Beach since the board decided to go wireless, said Rodney Palmer.

There are so many reasons to be skeptical of this claim. The first is that Wi-Fi signals are basically ubiquitous these days, so isolating the exposure at school would be difficult at best. (Not that this argument will comfort concerned parents.) Not to be insensitive, but if school-age children are hyperactive, suffer from insomnia and have trouble concentrating, maybe the simple explanation is that they are…school-age children?

We’re surprised to learn that Lakehead University in Thunder Bay has taken this seriously—it’s banned Wi-Fi from areas with hardwire connections. There’s nothing particularly significant about the frequency used by Wi-Fi networks: a bit lower on the dial [PDF] is satellite radio, and a bit higher is that of GPS signals, both of which are much harder to escape than your local router. Given how quickly radio signals of all kinds lose their power—it’s called the inverse square law—this seems very much like making a mountain out of less than a molehill. But hey, skeptics are wrong too, so maybe we could get a scientist to check this out? But don’t take a blogger’s word for it unless they’ve got a PhD and teach at Yale. Like this guy. To violently paraphrase him, “Seriously? Wi-fi is way weaker than cell phones, and we can’t prove anything wrong with those. Now leave me alone.”

• Barrie parents demand schools turn off Wi-Fi [Globe and Mail]
• Ont. parents suspect Wi-Fi making kids sick [CBC News]
• Barrie area parents demand schools ditch wireless Internet [Toronto Star]
• Banning Wi-Fi From Schools [Neurologica via Torontoist]

Better luck next time: Caribana denied funding (Image: A. daSilva Photography)

This is starting to look like a trend: a major Toronto cultural event loses out on government funding and has to basically pass a hat to keep the shindig going: in May it was Toronto Pride, and now it’s Caribana. The annual festival of Caribbean culture applied for and was denied funding from both Ottawa and Queen’s Park. The Toronto Star, which has stepped in to sponsor Caribana, reports that organizers are taking this in stride.

Buoyed by such glittering statistics, this year’s organizers were confident they would be able to secure up to $600,000 in additional government funding, both from the federal government’s Marquee Tourism Events Program — which gave Caribana about $416,000 last year — and the province’s Celebrate Ontario fund, which organizers hoped would boost Caribana’s bottom line by about $300,000.

But much to [Joe] Halstead’s surprise, Caribana was passed over by both programs this year. To make matters worse, an annual Heritage Canada fund that gives Caribana $100,000 was scaled back to $40,000 this year — all of which have left organizers scrambling to find alternative funding sources.

“(We were) disappointed, very disappointed, and we made that known to the funders,” Halstead said. “But we decided to move on. There’s no point dwelling on lost causes.”

A look at some of the other events that did get funding from various federal and provincial sources is illuminating: Caribana was asking for $300,000 from the province and didn’t get it—but the RBC Open golf tournament did, as did the Rogers Cup (both getting exactly $300,000). Meanwhile, this year’s Honda Indy was kind of a bust but still got more than $700,000 from the feds in the name of tourism. (Gary Goodyear is the minister responsible, but we’re too mature to make a spare tire joke.) And these are just events in Toronto this summer.

The fact that Ottawa’s Marquee program was funding only two events this year in Toronto has been known for a while, but the snub from the province is a bit unexpected, especially considering that they coughed up last year. Other events getting provincial dollars include the Collingwood Elvis Festival ($75,000), the Downtown Oakville Jazz Festival ($40,000) and Barrie Caribfest ($40,000).

Caribana’s organizers are hopeful they can still shake some money out of Ottawa’s pockets, but it’s a mystery that it’s even necessary. We knew that this city can’t get enough of golf, but subsidizing a bank-sponsored golf tourney while the region’s premier Afro-Caribbean event goes begging could be a marketing problem if nothing else—never mind what the festival brings in for Toronto.

• Caribana: Cash-strapped, but promises to still deliver [Toronto Star]

Jake Shears (Image: Neill Turner)

Electronic rockers Scissor Sisters professed their love for Toronto and Canada yesterday in an interview with the National Post, and we’d just like to say, the feeling is mutual. Apparently front man Jake Shears took away a very special souvenir from Toronto at the tender age of 18. “I met this really sweet construction worker from Collingwood and lost my virginity in Toronto at the Four Seasons Hotel,” Shears said. “He had saved up his money because I was only 18 and had nothing, and now Canada always makes me think really sweet thoughts.” Scissor Sisters’ new album, Night Work, was released yesterday, and it’s every bit as delightfully upbeat and artfully nuanced as their previous two works. Pride Week is on now in Toronto. Maybe we can convince them to swing by for a sequel to their Four Seasons adventure.

• Scissor sisters actually didn’t feel like dancing [National Post]

David and Amy Wilding-Davies with their Zimbabwe Coffee Farmers of the Year award (Photo courtesy of Ashanti.com)

Ashanti Coffee might not be a name recognized by many of Toronto’s coffee connoisseurs, but maybe it should be. The company established Canada’s first grower-direct importing scheme for beans, which are shipped from Zimbabwe, roasted locally (in Thornbury, Ontario) and sold in Toronto stores. Owned by Canadian Olympian David Wilding-Davies, an equestrian who competed at the 1988 games in Seoul, Ashanti is unique for its importation methods, its quality control and its survival of Robert Mugabe’s land reclamation campaigns.

Ashanti’s single-origin beans come from Wilding-Davies’s farm in Zimbabwe’s Eastern Highlands, an area ideal for coffee production because of its climate, altitude and soils, but whose farms have lain fallow over the last decade due to the disastrous policies of Mugabe, the country’s ruler. Wilding-Davies originally fell in love with Zimbabwe during an overland tour of Africa in the early ’90s. After his wife, Amy, had a similarly swoony reaction during their honeymoon in the region in 1996, the couple became determined to settle there. Although they weren’t experienced farmers when they bought Ashanti in 2000, they relied on the knowledge of their staff and the surrounding farming community to get the coffee trees growing, and by 2003 they were voted Zimbabwe Coffee Farmers of the Year by their peers, and were starting to export hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of beans.

Just two years later, they fled the country and returned to Canada. All their neighbours had been forced from their farms by gun-wielding, government-endorsed squatters, and the Ashanti owners feared they were next. Never one to balk in the face of adversity, Wilding-Davies decided that instead of simply abandoning his land, he would remain in Ontario and fight to keep the farm from here. He established a café near Collingwood, starting this country’s first grower-direct bean importation business to distribute his coffee harvest.

With the help of a staff in Zimbabwe, who make the farm run despite a lack of steady electricity supply, the best unroasted coffee berries are hand-picked each April and undergo a rigorous screening process. The chosen beans travel from Zimbabwe by truck to the port of Durban in South Africa, by boat to Halifax, and finally by rail to Toronto. (The only hiccup in the journey is usually in Canada, where border guards tend to search shipments for drugs.) The beans are then roasted at Wilding-Davies’s operation in Thornbury, near Collingwood, ensuring that when the beans arrive at select carriers—like the Cheese Boutique, or Max’s Market in Bloor West Village—they are as fresh as possible.

Wilding-Davies is happy to point out the best part of this system: Without any of the middlemen who boost the price of a bag of Kicking Horse or Starbucks blend, Ashanti’s grower-direct model delivers high-quality beans at a much lower price. And with a commitment to treating farm workers ethically, and a percentage of the proceeds going towards two rural schools in Africa, Ashanti’s chocolaty dark roast or citrusy medium roast couldn’t taste any sweeter.

If you build it, they will come: Michael Stadtländer's new Singhampton restaurant, Haisai (Photo courtesy of Haisai)

Michael Stadtländer, chef, environmentalist, multimedia artist and all-around gastronomical guru, left the world of regular restaurants behind in 1993 when he bought Eigensinn Farm, a 100-acre Grey County property where he’d prepare feasts for a few lucky guests at a time. This September, he’s returned to the fold with Haisai, a 28-seat restaurant and bakery in the village of Singhampton. The new spot shares the same whimsical style; he built all the furniture by hand and spent two years decorating the fairy tale–like rooms (think pebble-encrusted walls, seashell wall sconces, light fixtures fashioned from sawn-off wine bottles and the odd pair of antlers).

Here, we talk to the chef about his latest career move.

Chef Michael Stadtländer at Feast of the Fields 2009 (Photo by Kate Allen)

Why open a new restaurant?
Well, it was meant to be a place for my son, Jonas, who’s a chef, and his wife—an opportunity for them. It was also a chance for me to create something, which is what I like to do—somewhere that would use produce from Eigensinn Farm and would be a place to go after work for a drink. Then, halfway through construction, my son and his wife packed up and went to Japan, so we had to rethink the whole thing.

And now you’re cooking at Haisai. Is Eigensinn closed?
No, it’s still available for private parties on Mondays and Tuesdays. But I can’t dance at two weddings. I’m enjoying Haisai. I kind of like being back in a real kitchen.

So it’s a return to a more conventional operation?
I wouldn’t say it’s more conventional. The room is anything but. And it’s a 12-course tasting menu with everybody coming at the same time—seven o’clock. That’s not conventional, either.

You’re cooking for twice as many people now, with twice as many courses. Is that a challenge?
These are smaller plates with maybe three elements instead of seven or eight, so it’s workable as long as people are on time and we don’t have to start the menu over again in the kitchen.

At Eigensinn, you have always been able to improvise a dish at the last minute.
That’s even more possible now. The dishes are simpler, and I don’t show you a menu.

This is the first Stadtländer wine list since your restaurant Nekah closed in 1990. How did you put it together?
Well, it’s all Ontario, which makes sense since almost all our ingredients are from the farm and the region, so I wanted our wines to reflect Ontario. And people can bring their own wine if they want. The corkage is $30.

That’s also what you charge for a jar of pickles in the bakery.
It seems like a lot of money, but when you open the jar you’ll see about eight huge cucumbers in there, all grown on the farm, so it’s good value. Our breads are organic, and almost all the flours come from Grey County. The pastries, apple strudels and plum cakes use all our own seasonal fruits.

You were always able to close Eigensinn for months at a time and travel. Can you do that with Haisai?
Right now, I don’t want to. I’m having too good a time. And winter is busy up here, with the skiers from Collingwood. Plus, in February and March I’m going to be holding dinners with luminaries from the fields of the arts, science, entertainment, the environmental movement. All sorts of people, from broadcaster Paul Kennedy to conjurer Sheldon Jafine to speakers from the David Suzuki foundation. A good thing to do on long winter evenings.

Haisai, 794079 Country Rd., RR2, Singhampton, 705-445-2748, haisairestaurantbakery.com.

Irregular joe: Chris Tellez pours his way to first place at the Regional Barista Championships (Photo by Cristene)

The atmosphere may have been frothy at the Seventh Annual Regional Barista Championships at the Gladstone Hotel last Sunday, but the competition was no cake walk. Fourteen coffee aficionados had 15 minutes to impress six judges (two technical and four sensory) with 12 cups each (four espresso, four cappuccino and four signature). Marks were docked for such Emily Post–like infractions as improper spoon positioning and more than half a finger nail’s worth of waste. We caught up with the top five winners and asked them about the second coming of coffee, what makes a good cup, latte art backlash and why Starbucks isn’t all that bad.

Like beer, which has been catapulted to celebrity status with the craft brewing movement, coffee has been gaining ground. The Toronto bean renaissance continues with a slew of new cafés, including an new eponymous joint from this year’s second-place champ Sam James, coming August 8.

“This is the evolution of espresso,” says Adam Vrankulj, who took fifth place for Grinder, the recently re-named second location of Mercury Espresso Bar, where thoughtful touches includes seasonal bean picks like the fruity Ethiopian Yirgarcheffe for summer. “Tea is ancient,” he says, “but coffee is young.” For third-place brewer Momiji Kishi of Dark Horse, the competitions are part of the renaissance: they raise coffee to foodie status and brewers to chef status. “Coffee-making is really a science,” says Dolce Gelato’s Ivonne Ramirez, with proportions, timing and temperature all essential to success. Though she was bumped out of the top three when her grinder seized mid-competition, her signature Espressado—avocado, vanilla bean, condensed milk and espresso blended with ice—has already got a fan base that’s boosting business.

“There are hundreds of different factors that go into what you’re tasting in the cup,” says Mark Karause of Collingwood’s Espresso Post. “It’s as complex as wine.” His team’s Chris Tellez (who first competed at 16) took first place this year. Runner up Sam James starts with taste. “A lot of people don’t want coffee to taste like coffee—they want it to taste like milk and sugar with a bit of coffee aftertaste,” says the java-hound, who has worked at Cherry Bomb, Hank’s and Manic Coffee since he left a desk job in 2006. He looks for aroma, natural sweetness and body that’s about 20 per cent thicker than water. Of course, these principles are more important than milk stencilled leaves and flowers, which he acknowledges sometimes inspire sneers. “I remember reading blogs and thinking ‘why would anyone be against latte art’? It’s so fun!”

When we asked the champs if Starbucks makes a good cup of joe, we got a unanimous “not my style.” But the brew behemoth got props for bringing the latte to the masses. “Starbucks has given us the business that we have. Without it, we wouldn’t have all the cafés we do,” says Vrankulj. There’s just one problem: “I can’t taste the bean.”

Check out Toronto Life’s picks for the best brew masters in Toronto>>

While I was digging around salvage places looking for the finishing touches for Union (like sinks and mirrors and dishes), I came across some lights that used to hang in an old theatre in Collingwood. My gut told me to buy them and put them above me in the kitchen. I think all the drama, the concrete, the ’hood, the plumbing, the loans and the anxiety that have come with building Union out of an old karaoke dive have made me look at the restaurant in a different way. I now compare the undertaking with building a theatre on a lively street, where a play will run for as long as it can. Union—with its brick walls and barn floors and great lights and horseshoe bar and open kitchen—is going to be a big stage, an opportunity to perform, to dig in a little bit and see where it can go. If building Union had been smooth, easy and on time, I would have missed the chance to understand it this way, to see what it can become. Now I can define it; I can visualize the food and the flow and the acts. I want it to be a place where people perform and lift life up a bit and feel as if they could be anywhere.

Maybe all this theatre business is just an act, a way for me to diffuse the anxiety I am feeling about the grind and routine that awaits me in the kitchen. But seeing it all like a drama reminds me that cooking is not just a tiring trade; it’s creating and expressing and performing. And if I can build a place where I can cook and feel as if I am anywhere, then maybe something different can come out of there. The food I begin with is just the introduction; where it all will go from there is a mystery. All I know is that I will have theatre lights to remind me, on the darkest and roughest of restaurant days, to see Union like I do right now—with excitement. A place where, at any moment, something great could happen.