Once again, New York has recruited Save the Deli author David Sax to convince New Yorkers that, contra Jack Donaghy, there’s “no shortage of, well, stuff in Canada’s most diverse, dynamic city.” Alongside a Bixi tour by Yvonne Bambrick, which proceeds along Jarvis Street’s “hard-fought bike lane” (get it while it lasts, New Yorkers), the piece confers upon Toronto the dubious distinction of “The Best Away-Game Sports City in the Americas,” courtesy of Sports and the City blogger Navin Vaswani. There’s also a quick ’n’ dirty guide to the buzziest new restaurants (with less buzzy and busy alternatives) by our chief critic Chris Nuttall-Smith, and our favourite bit, a refreshingly catty thumbs-up, thumbs-down tour of new buildings titled “Love the Gehry, Hate the Libeskind” by George Yabu and Glenn Pushelberg of interior design super-firm Yabu Pushelberg (the new ROM addition? “It’s a bit of bullshit. One of these napkin-drawing things.” The Absolute Condos in Mississauga? “They’ve got some balls.” The TIFF Bell Lightbox? “A big bunch of nothing”). Read the whole guide [New York] »
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Zane Caplansky wants your grandmother’s balls
Who has the testicular fortitude to take on city's best ballers? (Image: Gotham Nurse)
Caplansky’s Delicatessen is holding its inaugural “Battle of the Bubbies” competition this Sunday in search of the city’s best matzo ball maker. Chief mensch Zane Caplansky points out that the competition is open to anyone—not just bubbies—and there will be two categories to compete under: cannon balls (hard balls) and fluffy balls (soft balls). For the record, Caplansky himself likes the fluffy balls. The judges include Moses Znaimer, Bonnie Stern, David Sax, Lara Rabinovitch and Amy Wilson, so it’s quite clear that these people will know what goes in a good matzo, unlike most food competitions out there (remember when Antonio Sabato Jr. was a judge on Iron Chef?).
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Toronto writer David Sax wins James Beard Award
(Image: McClelland and Stewart)
Local boy and Toronto Life contributor David Sax won a James Beard Award for his much-lauded book Save the Deli yesterday. He blogs today on the Save the Deli Web site:
It was a wild night. I haven’t shvitzed that intensely since I was at a Russian banya. There was every kind of treyf you could imagine, great friends from the food world, and enough mixed alcohol to give me a hangover for the rest of today (hence, the late entry).
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Wall Street Journal declares Toronto’s Chinese food better than New York’s
Chinatown: the land of better buns (Photo by John Vetterli)
New Yorkers are never happy when someone suggests that they’re not the best at something. Case in point: when David Sax asserted that the best Jewish delis are in L.A., not New York, flurries of incredulous aggregate posts popped up everywhere. The Gothamist, in a tongue-in-cheek headline, went so far as to suggest Sax had a death wish in speaking his mind. But it turns out that NYC may have—God forbid—an inferior Chinatown to Toronto.
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The healthiest meal in the world, the scariest foods ever, the enduring success of Farmville
• The travel Web site concierge.com lists the world’s scariest foods. At first glance, we thought Jell-O reigned supreme as the scariest—at least scorpions and tarantulas are natural—but then we watched this video of a writhing plate of sannakji (live baby octopus). Imbibers have to contend with still-active tentacle suckers, which apparently present a choking hazard. [Concierge]
• New York Times writer Micheline Maynard visits Ottawa’s Cordon Bleu Culinary Institute to see if it lives up to its worldwide reputation. There, she experiences the highs and lows of professional cooking, including a successful lobster in verbena cream sauce, and a not-so-successful platter of skate. [New York Times]
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