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Cora Pizza reopens, Joanne Kates picks her top restaurants, the fooderati’s top Twitterers

Ratted out: Cora Pizza reopens after health inspectors discovered rats on the premises (Photo by The Pizza Review)

• U of T students, rejoice: Cora Pizza reopened its doors last week. The restaurant, a long-standing refuge of drunken university students, was closed due to unsanitary conditions (including, apparently, several dead rats and rat feces on the premises). With a history like this, we’re sure the customers will come flocking back. [CBC]

• Joanne Kates counts down Toronto’s top new restaurants of 2009, with fairly predictable results. Among her favourites are Buca, Black Hoof, the revamped Splendido, Osteria Ciceri e Tria and Mildred’s Temple Kitchen. The one wild card is Ba Shu Ren Jia, a Szechuan spot with a four-figure Steeles Avenue address. [Globe and Mail]

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December 16, 2009 | 8:31 am

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Grizzly bear bolognese, David Gest cooks with Viagra, Wendy’s is not so big in Japan

Get ready to hear a lot about Vancouver (Photo by PoYang_博仰)

• With the Olympics opening in mere weeks, the gaze of the world has been turning to all things Vancouver, including its food scene. The L.A. Times scoped out the culinary offerings, pointing out that the city’s “cuisine scene is practically an Olympic Village unto itself.” Their finds range from the predictable (like Vij’s, an Indian food spot so popular even Martha Stewart had to queue for a table) to the quixotically Québécois (Café Salade de Fruits). Canada’s western city appears to offer a world of food options—almost as rich and broad as Toronto’s. But until we get the Olympics, perhaps no one will ever know. [L.A. Times]

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Deathwatch

December 3, 2009 | 2:48 pm

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Nine restaurant chains that haven’t made it in Toronto

(Photo by Karon Liu)

Though critics often dismiss Toronto for never being able to stand alongside London, Tokyo or Paris (City TV likes to remind us by playing the “Toronto is just like New York, but without all the stuff” promo for 30 Rock every 10 minutes), one good thing about being a mid-sized city is that our downtown core hasn’t turned into a Vegas-style tourist trap like Times Square or Shibuya. The recent closure of the garish Florida import Miami Subs shows that in Toronto, independent cafés, bars that seat fewer than 20, and family-run restaurants tend to triumph over the flashy and faddish. Here are nine chain imports that failed to flourish in the city. We’re saving the 10th spot for Cold Stone Creamery.

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November 30, 2009 | 9:12 am

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Gordon Ramsay’s new face, the sudden deluge of boneless chicken wings, how garlic became more valuable than oil

Gordon Ramsay, before crevice removal (Photo by Dave Pullig)

• BrewDog, a Scottish brewery known for its highly alcoholic Tokyo beer (and for its barely alcoholic Nanny State beer, brewed in retaliation for being branded irresponsible), has launched what it calls “the strongest beer in the world.” Tactical Nuclear Penguin, as it is called, packs a punch almost as strong as hard liquor, weighing in at 32 per cent alcohol. A warning on the label advises users to enjoy the brew like “a fine whisky, a Frank Zappa album or a visit from a friendly yet anxious ghost.” [BBC]

• Under advice from Simon Cowell, Gordon Ramsay has undergone a painful procedure to have the deep grooves in his face smoothed out, the Daily Mail reports. The formerly craggy chef will have to repeat the procedure two or three times per year to maintain his new nubile glow. We can’t see this baby-bottomed visage as having a positive effect on his intimidation factor. [Daily Mail]

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November 20, 2009 | 8:41 am

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Five ethically dubious foods, taste-testing Toronto’s burger joints, presidentially pardoned turkeys end up at Disney World

• After the explosion in popularity of this video showing a still-live deep-fried carp being eaten, the Guardian compiled a list of morally dubious eating trends. Chinese chefs figured out that placing a wet cloth over the fish’s head before deep-frying its body will ensure that it’s still gasping when it reaches the plate. Equally squirm-inducing are the traditions of eating live octopus or the still-beating heart of a snake. [Guardian]

• With the gourmet burger craze taking hold across the city, the Star’s Amy Pataki samples various incarnations to see which ones deliver in the flavour department. She concludes that in most cases, the trend is a good thing, and ranks the newest spot, Oh Boy Burger Market, as the best. [Toronto Star]

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November 12, 2009 | 8:44 am

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Ruth Reichl praises Toronto, government-subsidized chocolate milk, the great seafood shim-sham

Ruth Reichl goes Hogtown wild (Photo by Brigitte-Lacomb)

• The defunct Gourmet magazine was thinking of putting out a Toronto-themed issue, former editor Ruth Reichl says, following the success of their Montreal issue—their most popular issue ever. In this interview with the Globe, Reichl discusses her admiration for Toronto’s “amazing” food scene, along with the state of the magazine industry and her disappointment with Gourmet’s end. [Globe and Mail]

• There’s something fishy going on with Canadian seafood. A nationwide investigation has found that fish sold to customers are frequently misidentified and mislabelled. Of 500 samples, about a quarter of the fish were not what they were purported to be. In one case, sashimi-grade tuna (which is subject to stringent preparation methods) was replaced with cheaper skipjack tuna. [Toronto Star]

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November 3, 2009 | 9:26 am

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Whole Foods gets some competition, Rosie DiManno’s Halloween hijinks, rethinking turkey dinners

Fowl fun: Daniel Boulud, Wylie Dufresne and David Shea put together turkey dinners for New York magazine (Photo by Doug Shick)

• New York challenges three chefs to create a Thanksgiving meal using such classic ingredients as turkey, brussels sprouts, sweet potatoes, stuffing, pumpkin and oysters. It’s a bit late for the Canadian version of the holiday, but it does give us plenty of time to prepare for Christmas dinner. [New York]

• After taking her niece and nephew trick-or-treating on the Bridle Path this weekend, Rosie DiManno concludes that the residents are “pikers and meanies, folks who’d begrudge a youngster a licorice swirl.” Most homes, in fact, weren’t handing out sweets at all, and one of the children declared it the “worst Halloween ever.” [Toronto Star]

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Deathwatch

October 8, 2009 | 3:52 pm

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Ho-Lee-Chow, ubiquitous purveyor of pseudo-Chinese food, closes its many doors

Ho-Lee-Crap: the Chinese food chain closed suddenly

Ho-Lee-Chow—that omnipresent bastion of quick, North Americanized Chinese food—is going out of business after 20 years. Around since 1989, Ho-Lee-Chow has been a fast-food mainstay in Toronto, seemingly always in eyeshot with its bright white decor and signature anti-MSG neon sign. The company’s Web site is currently down, and a phone message at the chain’s call centre says:

Due to circumstances beyond our control, one of which is the poor economic climate, another of which is a refusal to compromise on the quality and service you have come to appreciate, Ho-Lee-Chow has closed down operations.

While it’s unclear whether all of the chain’s locations will be closing, we’ve heard that at least one location, at St. Clair Avenue and Winona Drive, was still operating as of Wednesday night. Multiple calls to that location on Thursday, however, went unanswered. It is rumoured that some of the locations will continue to operate under different (and surely less hilarious) names.

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Culinary Curiosities

October 8, 2009 | 11:55 am

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One person’s junk food is another’s treasure

Before and after: a McNuggets meal is transformed into a "McNifique" McConfit (Photo by Erik R. Trinidad of FancyFastFood.com. ©2009 Trinimation)

More and more, we’re feeling that the Internet holds the solution to every problem known to man—well, every inconsequential problem. The latest we’ve stumbled across is Fancyfastfood.com, a photo-recipe blog that reveals how to convert fast food into haute cuisine. Each entry provides step-by-step instructions for systematically taking apart some nasty fast-food staple—a Big Mac, Whopper, Tim Hortons’ Canadian maple doughnuts—and rearranging it to resemble a gourmet-quality dish.

The recipes take a little legwork. One concoction involves grinding down the breading of a Wendy’s spicy chicken sandwich into a fine powder, then mixing it with the accompanying chocolate milkshake and simmering it all down with some ketchup packets to form a mole sauce—a perfect drizzle for that now-naked chicken patty. Top it off with some organic cilantro (preferably locally grown) for that extra touch of irony.

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September 30, 2009 | 8:12 am

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Moms encourage kids to eat McDonald’s, the caveman diet, a Canadian-themed bar grows in Brooklyn

Small fry: McDonald's-sanctioned mothers promote fast food eating for children (Photo by Noli Fernan Perez)

• Manhattan was besieged by a group of McMoms last week—a team of pro-McDonald’s matriarchs who were handpicked by corporate bigwigs to crusade in favour of the fast-food giant. In their attempts to convince other parents that the chain provides good food for kids, they offered some words of McWisdom: trade the Coke for a bottle of Dasani, take the salt off fries and swap the cheeseburger for some chicken McNuggets. Unfortunately, they provided no counsel about the ill-effects of selling out to the man. [New York Daily News]

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Culinary Curiosities

September 24, 2009 | 11:30 am

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All the burgers known to man

Burger fling: Serious Eats is love with an American classic (Photo by lambda_X)

Burger fling: Serious Eats is in love with an American classic (Photo by lambda_X)

In an age when the Internet has turned the everyman into an expert on all things, it was only a matter of time before someone filled in the knowledge gap for hamburgers (the Wikipedia entry doesn’t begin to cover it). Until last week, it was exceedingly difficult to educate oneself adequately to allow for pontification about the many differences between a fast-food burger and a fast food–style burger, or the many similarities between a mini-hamburger and a slider.

But now we have A Hamburger Today’s Guide to Hamburger and Cheeseburger Styles. Written by Adam Kuban for the Serious Eats Web site, this primer offers a stunningly long, detailed and mouth-watering list that attempts to catalogue every genus of burger in existence, complete with photos and videos. Kuban seems to have done a fairly thorough job, though readers have pointed out a few gaps here and there (no mention of the backyard burger, for example, or of non-beef burgers, though those could ostensibly fall into the fancy-pants burger category). Veggie burgers have been left off the list for now, but that’s only fair as vegetarians have no shortage of other things to pontificate about.

• The AHT Guide to Hamburger and Cheeseburger Styles

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September 19, 2009 | 8:33 am

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The $168,873 bar tab, a new Toronto food craze, solving the jellyfish problem

Our tax dollars, hard at work (Photo by Beau B)

• As Canadian taxpayers were hunkering down for an era of frugality, they were also footing the bill for civil servants who spent $168,873 on booze for the 2008-09 fiscal year, according to documents tabled at the House of Commons. Also high on the list expenditures: golf balls, which racked up $30,053. [Winnipeg Sun]

• Canadians want to eat healthier food, but they’re placing the blame elsewhere when asked why they don’t. A national survey of low- and middle-income households found that cost is the biggest barrier to Canadian families in their attempts to eat healthy. Fifty-five per cent of families surveyed said healthy food is too expensive; other popular excuses included insufficient willpower, followed by a lack of availability (though last time we checked, most grocery stores had a produce section). [CBC]

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September 17, 2009 | 12:45 pm

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New nosh at the ACC, urine is the secret to top tomatoes, chicken trade war turns foul

Hot dog hot spot: Variety prevails at the Air Canada Centre (Photo by chairman moneko)

• The Air Canada Centre may become a mecca for hot-dog connoisseurs in Toronto, with a newly unveiled concession stand that offers a vast array of hot dog varieties. On the menu are Kobe dogs, maple dogs (a beef dog simmered in maple syrup) and bacon-wrapped dogs, among others. To accompany the new abundance of hot-dog options is a slew of unique toppings like wasabi mayonnaise, baked beans and sautéed onions. [Toronto Star]

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September 9, 2009 | 8:10 am

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The world’s top 10 ethical wines, deep-fried butter, the “Superbowl of cheese”

Gilding the lilly: a form of deep-fried butter has won... (Robert S. Donovan)

Gilding the lily: a form of deep-fried butter is in the running for best new midway food (Robert S. Donovan)

• In theory, it looks to be the ultimate in artery-clogging cuisine: deep-fried butter. That’s what renowned deep-fryer Abel Gonzales is bringing to the table at the State Fair of Texas’ annual contest for best new midway food. Gonzales’ previously honoured entries include fried Coke and fried peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches. The butter will be available in four flavours: original, garlic, grape and cherry. [Slashfood]

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August 12, 2009 | 8:31 am

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Best fast food, revolutionizing restaurant reservations, the true origins of haggis

We're number one: top American chefs have voted In-N-Out Burger as the best fast food joint

Chain Reaction: top American chefs have voted In-N-Out Burger as the best fast food joint

• America’s star chefs have chosen In-N-Out Burger as their favourite fast food joint. Nine members of the 27-judge panel praised In-N-Out for its “greasy but oddly clean-tasting” burgers, including Thomas Keller of The French Laundry. The other chains—from Chipotle Mexican Grill to Kentucky Fried Chicken—received just one nod each. [Esquire]

• Urbanspoon is challenging Open Table with its plan to offer reservations through a smart phone app. Their popular restaurant finder is “shaken” by hungry iPhone owners over a million times a day. The reservations system will be test-marketed with four restaurants in Seattle, but eventually expanded to all 90 of their target markets—including Toronto. [NBC]

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