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Leslieville’s recent boom in new gourmet food stores—including Foodist Market, Hooked and Sausage Partners—shows no signs of abating. The latest addition? Olive and Olives, the first Toronto location of the Montreal-based purveyor of high-quality olive oils. Danièle Beauchamp and Claudia Pharand, who run five shops and a thriving mail order business in Quebec, have partnered with Torontonian Mia Sturup to open up the Leslieville location.
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Christine Cushing at Terroir earlier this month (Image: Renée Suen)
Christine Cushing is a face that most will recognize from TV shows like Fearless in the Kitchen and Christine Cushing Live. But Cushing has also done stints at some of Toronto’s most renowned kitchens (Four Seasons Hotel, Scaramouche), and more recently, she’s become the developer of a line of upscale food products, Christine Cushing’s. We caught up with Cushing, who has been promoting her latest discovery—a yet-to-be-named roasted red pepper paste—at the Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association Show.
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Vikram Vij at All the Best Fine Foods
Vikram Vij, chef and owner of Vancoucer haute Indian restaurants Vij’s and Rangoli, was in town this week for the Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association show and a series of meet and greets around the city. His namesake restaurant is well known for its no-reservation policy, long lineups and devoted fans, including New York Times columnist Mark Bittman, who once hailed it as “among the finest Indian restaurants in the world.” Recently, we sat down with the chef, restaurateur and cookbook author to talk about the reasons behind his success and why he won’t expand to Toronto.
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Bite-sized desserts were one of the few fun trends in this year’s survey (Image: Eliyas J)
The results from the 2011 Canadian Chef Survey were announced Monday at the fourth annual Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association show. More than 500 chefs confirmed what locavores and the 400-plus attendees at last week’s Terroir Symposium knew all along: locally produced food and locally inspired dishes are hot. Less surprising still was the focus on sustainable practices and nutritionally driven plates. While the list hardly qualifies as revolutionary, it is interesting to compare this year’s results to the up-and-coming trends predicted one year ago. So how close was it?
Continuing its never-ending quest to make searching marginally easier, yesterday Google introduced the pretty awesome Recipe View. Of course, Google is already the go-to resource for amateur chefs looking for the perfect recipe, but this new feature now refines the search to make it even easier, allowing users to narrow results to show only recipes; this means no more searching for dishes and turning up definitions or other non-food-related sites. On top of that, Recipe View can filter search results based on ideal ingredients, cooking time and calorie count. The filter also includes clearly marked ratings and pictures for each recipe.
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1. CONNECTING: TORONTO IS AN AWFUL CITY
As part of the ROM’s regular Connecting series, Toronto Star urban affairs columnist Christopher Hume expounds on gridlock, pollution and—shudder—transit. Counterintuitively, Hume also explains how the much-yearned-for “better future” is happening right now. Jan. 28. $50. Royal Ontario Museum, 100 Queen’s Park, 416-586-8000, rom.on.ca.
2. WINTERLICIOUS Read the rest of this entry »
The most delicious part of winter is here! In addition to the prix fixe menus at some of the city’s best restaurants, there are 14 extra foodie events, including a maharaja-themed evening at the AGO, a Chinese New Year celebration at Spice Route and an Iron Chef–style competition at Fort York between C5′s Ted Corrado and Beast’s Scott Vivian. Jan. 28 to Feb. 10. toronto.ca/special_events/winterlicious.
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“Growing up in Tottington, near Manchester, I came across a meaty cobbler practically every day, whether at home, school or down at the pub. This is one of my favourite seasonal dishes. It has everything: the gamy venison, the smokiness of bacon, the wine, brandy and port, all brought together with bittersweet chocolate and crowned with plump, cheesy scones. For our expat patrons, this is familiar cooking. They take ownership of it, the same way they do with the old English china on our tables. We sometimes hear, ‘My mother needs just this one piece to complete her set,’ at which point we say, ‘It’s yours.’ ”—chef Andrew Carter
Spreading perky cheer on OWN (Image: Anna Wallner and Kristina Matisic)
On New Year’s Day, Oprah Winfrey’s OWN Network launched to solid ratings, and two Canadian ladies were happy to be in on the action. Vancouver cooking show Anna and Kristina’s Grocery Bag debuted weekdays at 3 p.m. on OWN this week, and show creators and stars Anna Wallner and Kristina Matisic are reportedly thrilled to be a part of the Oprah empire.
Biana Zorich and Marc Thuet at their home in Toronto (Image: Davida Aronovitch)
Marc Thuet and Biana Zorich are exhausted. It’s taken the pair a month to recuperate after shooting the second season of their reality show, Conviction Kitchen II, in Vancouver. Like last year’s Toronto edition, the program is airing on CityTV and features former convicts learning the cooking and restaurant trade. Amid talk of a third season set in the U.S., Zorich and Thuet are in Toronto re-organizing their lives. They’ve shut down the original Conviction restaurant on King Street West and are focusing on their bread-making business. Here, they talk with us about their Vancouver experience, their marriage and the Conviction Kitchen contestants they came to love.
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Celeb chef Scott Conant opened his third outpost of Scarpetta this summer. Too bad it looks, feels and tastes like a branch plant
(Image: Lorne Bridgman)
This city’s corps of celebrity chefs has lost some of its swagger in recent years. Lynn Crawford has retreated into what tastes like semi-retirement; Jamie Kennedy’s mismanagement cost him, and the city, his best restaurant (anybody been to Wine Bar lately?); Marc Thuet can’t seem to find a winning formula for his once-vaunted King Street space; and though I’m eager to be proven wrong on this point, Susur Lee is too busy chasing fortunes abroad to give it his best back home.
Scott Conant, on the other hand, is young and hungry, and his Scarpetta, in the new Thompson Hotel, is the first unapologetically expensive and formal room to open here since George, on Queen East, way back in 2004. Conant is also the first U.S. celebrity chef to build a satellite in Toronto. So sure, the city’s gluttonous class got excited: new blood, naked ambition, world-class cooking and all that. One chef even said privately that he hoped Scarpetta’s arrival would force the coasting locals to step up their game. Read the rest of this entry »
Ten things chef David Adjey, star of the new Food Network show The Opener, can’t live without
The best perk ever
I used to work as Dan Aykroyd’s personal chef in Kingston, and then I decided to move to Santa Barbara to cook at a resort. He gave me a car as a goodbye present and said, “If you’re gonna live in California, you’re gonna need a California car.” It was a gold ’66 Impala—the same car a lot of L.A. gangsta rappers drive. I keep the licence plate in my office.
A badass leather jacket
I got this jacket in 2003 when I was going through a rebel phase. It was the same month I separated from my ex-wife, opened my restaurant Nectar, and got signed to Restaurant Makeover. It cost $1,000—which was huge money at the time—at Due West on Queen Street. I love that it’s worn in and a little beat-up. I’m too old for it now, but I bust it out once in a while.
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Kitschy collectibles
I have been collecting antique egg cups since the early ’90s. I got the idea from the Park Avenue Café in New York, after I ordered the flan and it was served in an eggshell set inside an egg cup. I thought this was fantastic, so I started scouring flea markets and garage sales. Now my mom and friends are on the mission, too. My favourites are from post-war, 1940s Japan; they say “Made in Occupied Japan” on the bottom.
René Redzepi in the courtyard of Victoria College, University of Toronto (Image: Taku Kumabe)
René Redzepi, chef and co-owner of the world’s best restaurant (at least according to San Pellegrino’s 2010 rankings), was in Toronto over the weekend to promote his new cookbook, Noma: Time and Place in Nordic Cuisine, at the Isabel Bader Theatre. His Copenhagen restaurant, named Noma, has taken the global culinary community by storm despite being a small operation (40 seats) that uses ingredients from the Nordic terroir (98 per cent are foraged from within a 100-kilometre radius). We caught up with the 32-year-old chef as he sipped a double cappuccino from Manic Coffee—he liked it so much that he returned for more before his flight out—to discuss why he hates being labelled “new Nordic,” how the Ontario pawpaw is a revelation, and how Canada and Denmark are really alike.
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Upwardly mobile at the new Longo's (Image: Karon Liu)
The latest supermarket to open in the downtown core is a sleek, 48,000 square-foot megastore by Longo’s. The new spot is part of Maple Leaf Square—the spanking new sports-themed development beside the Air Canada Centre—and should make locals rejoice as their area, better known for tourists and expressways, takes one step closer to becoming a bona fide neighbourhood.
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The food world is in high anticipation of a new cookbook by—wait for it—Microsoft’s former chief technology officer, Nathan Myhrvold. Calling it a “book” may be a bit of an understatement, though. As one would expect from a dinosaur-loving, patent-seeking super-nerd, it’s more a compendium of all things cuisine-related than a simple kitchen handbook. Case in point: the 48-pound, six-volume work runs $625 U.S. ($644.14 Canadian), comes with an acrylic case and includes a waterproof kitchen manual.
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