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Introducing: Stasis Local Foods, the new Roncesvalles emporium for all things pickled and jarred (and preferably local)

Inside Stasis Local Foods, looking out onto Roncesvalles (Image: Caroline Aksich)

Up at the northern tip of Roncesvalles, just south of Dundas, sits the neighbourhood’s newest gourmet food shop, Stasis Local Foods. The store carries a tightly curated selection of local and seasonal gems, but the focus is on the made-in-house jams and preserves prepared by the shop’s young owner, Julian Katz. Katz has cooked his way across the Toronto dining landscape (C5, The Drake, Lucien, Ruby Watchco), but when not preparing $30 mains, he would pickle in-season produce and whip up scrumptious jams. One day, he had a revelation: “I looked around and saw that I had 30 or 40 cases of jam in my house, and I was like, ‘This is ridiculous! I can only give away jam as Christmas gifts for so long!’ ” Katz left his gig with Lynn Crawford in January to brave the city’s farmers’ markets, and then founded his company, Stasis Preserves. After a year of pestering his chef friends for access to their kitchens, Katz decided it was time to get his own.

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The Dish

From the Print Edition

September 15, 2011 | 11:02 am

1 Comment

’Wich Craft: how the city’s ice cream sandwiches stack up

(Image: Christopher Stevenson)

Ice cream sandwiches have become the city’s chicest sugar rush, proving there’s no junk food too humble for the gourmet treatment
By Eric Vellend. Photography by Christopher Stevenson

Start the slideshow »

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The Dish

Opening

August 17, 2011 | 9:25 am

1 Comment

Introducing: Ruby Eats, Lynn Crawford and Cherie Stinson’s new gourmet food shop

Ruby Eats is the sister food shop to Lynn Crawford and Cherie Stinson’s nearby restaurant, Ruby Watchco. (Image: Gizelle Lau)

March 2010 saw the opening of Ruby Watchco, a new Riverside venture by Restaurant Makeover duo chef Lynn Crawford and designer Cherie Stinson (who also works at Yabu Pushelberg). Two weeks ago, the same team opened their newest venture, Ruby Eats, a new neighbourhood specialty grocery store.

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The Informer

Gimme Shelter

June 24, 2011 | 2:59 pm

3 Comments

Cottage of the Week: $1.9 million for a luxe second home with two private islands

ADDRESS: West Shore Road, Kennisis Lake

NEIGHBOURHOOD: Kennisis Lake

AGENT: Gary F. Vasey, Lynne Tate and Ross Jarvis, Gary F. Vasey Ltd., Brokerage.

PRICE: $1,895,000

THE PLACE: Situated on Kennisis Lake midway between Huntsville and Bancroft, this cottage is large, spacious, sun filled and fully equipped with modern features in every room.

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The Dish

Opening

May 13, 2011 | 9:35 am

4 Comments

Introducing: Nadège Patisserie. Queen West’s prettiest pastry shop joins the five thieves in Rosedale

Nadège Patisserie’s new 700-square-foot Rosedale space

Fourth-generation confectioner Nadège Nourian won over many Toronto palates when she opened her eponymous Queen West bakery and café almost two years ago—it’s become a destination for high-end pastries. This week, Nourian, along with her front-of-house manager and partner Morgan McHugh, opened a second store in Rosedale, bringing a little bit of Paris to the gourmet strip.

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The Dish

Culinary Curiosities

April 29, 2011 | 12:19 pm

4 Comments

Can you really tell the difference between fancy salt and the regular kind? Harold McGee knows

We’ve always wondered if there really is a difference between that expensive gourmet salt and the good old-fashioned salt shaker variety. Doesn’t it all just kind of taste, well, salty? Author Harold McGee, of On Food and Cooking fame, takes up the matter in a recent New York Times article, and his findings are mixed: yes, some salts do taste more or less salty than others, with hints of flavour from other ingredients, but only if one has developed a hypersensitive palette (which, we assume, McGee has). A few highlights, and a few salty facts, after the jump.

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The Dish

From the Print Edition

April 14, 2011 | 8:50 am

16 Comments

Susur Lee lite: the celebrity chef is back, but he didn’t bring his A game. Lee Lounge, his latest venture, falls flat

By Chris Nuttall-Smith

Interior of Susur's Lee Lounge

In the year following the announcement of Susur Lee’s new project in the storied room that once was Susur restaurant, it was tempting to believe that the chef was planning a triumphant return to Toronto. Speaking on his behalf, Brenda Bent, his wife and the designer of his Toronto restaurants, sounded keen to have her peripatetic husband back in the city more often. She even went so far as to enumerate the days Lee is contractually obliged to spend at his restaurants in New York, D.C. and Singapore (a total of 58 per year), adding that her husband wanted to “offer a more intense level of cooking” here at home.

This was great news for diners craving something more ambitious than Lee, the casual, cash-spinning and comparatively low-maintenance restaurant he has run, albeit often from a distance, since 2004, or Madeline’s, which stood for a couple years in the former Susur space but never came close to being as good as its predecessor.

Could diners dare to dream that the chef might give it his all in a Toronto kitchen again? When the new place, Lee Lounge, opened on Valentine’s Day, after eight months of delays, the first thing you saw inside the door was a black and white picture of Lee as a child with his family in Hong Kong, and the words “Re-Entry Permit” written above the photo on the wall. “Re-Entry Permit” was the theme of the Lee Lounge launch. What else were we supposed to think? Susur Lee was back.

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The Dish

Foodie Follies

April 1, 2011 | 12:17 pm

1 Comment

Gwyneth Paltrow and Ruth Reichl rumoured to be heading up new food mag and Web site (respectively)

Gwyneth Paltrow at this year’s Oscars (Image: WEBN-TV)

Foodies woke up yesterday to the prospect of a pair of big new culinary publications headed by two very familiar names: Gwyneth Paltrow and Ruth Reichl. Paltrow, of course, has her hands in a plethora of pots—from music to blogging to the occasional acting gig—but rumour has it that she may be preparing to delve into the food magazine business, backed by the Hearst Corporation.

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The Dish

Opening

March 22, 2011 | 1:40 pm

17 Comments

With Sausage Partners, Kyle Deming plans to contribute yet another chef-run fine food shop to the Leslieville strip

The Sausage Partners: Lorraine, Lilly and Kyle Deming (Image: Signe Langford)

First there was the Leslieville Cheese Market, then the Foodist Market, then Hooked, and now Sausage Partners. Leslieville is rapidly becoming the east end’s go-to ’hood for gourmet food shopping, and with many of these places being run by pro chefs, it’s easy to see why. This new meat shop will open in June in the former Inspired Cook space, with Kyle Deming (head chef at Starfish and Ceili Cottage) and his wife Lorraine at the helm. “We’ve been thinking about doing this for a long time,” explains Lorraine, “but we really got the push about two years ago when we made sausages for Patrick [McMurray]’s 40th birthday. Everyone was asking, ‘Where can we buy these?’ So we just kept thinking about it and it feels like the right time now.”

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The Dish

Foodie Follies

March 17, 2011 | 4:51 pm

12 Comments

Locavore, shmocavore—a roundup of the new foodie backlash

You don’t have to look too far to find signs that there’s a foodie backlash brewing. And while we at The Dish may be guilty of some of the things these authors condemn, even we can’t help but chuckle at some of these rants. We round up the new case against foodies after the jump:

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The Dish

From the Print Edition

January 13, 2011 | 9:04 am

Comments

Good Stuff Cheap: nine of the city’s best foods for under $6

A few bucks won’t fulfill your caviar dreams—if it does, you need to dream bigger—but it’s possible to taste the best of the city’s food for next to nothing

Inventively flavoured macaroons are perfectly pillowy treats worthy of a patisserie in Saint-Germain-des-Près. $2.10 each. Nadege, 780 Queen St. W., 416-368-2009.

Coleslaw delivers creamy crunch with a kick (even better as a topping on the pulled pork sandwich). $4. The Stockyards, 699 St. Clair Ave. W., 416-658-9666.

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The Dish

Pantry Raid

December 13, 2010 | 3:54 pm

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Gourmet grocery store wants customers to buy shares, save business

Monforte's cheese-share program helped the company stay afloat (Image: Monforte)

It appears that the warm, fuzzy sentiments that usually come with supporting locavorism aren’t enough to ensure that Culinarium, a local-focused grocery store near Eglinton and Mount Pleasant, will stay afloat. Owner Kathleen Mackintosh is hoping a solid group of customers will invest in “dinner plate shares,” The Star reports, in an effort to gather the $50,000 to $100,000 needed to keep the place open. The shares would entail an initial investment that would pay itself back, with a bit of interest, in the form of redeemable vouchers over the next three years. A $500 investment would yield $600 in groceries; a $1,000 investment would yield $1,305.

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The Dish

Food Porn

December 8, 2010 | 1:12 pm

1 Comment

Holiday Gift Guide: 13 edible present ideas

We prefer to pass the holiday season by eating our way through it and forcing loved ones to do the same. So we’ve come up with 13 inventive edible gifts (and not a mini-muffin basket in sight).

See our foodie gift guide now >>

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The Dish

From the Print Edition

November 11, 2010 | 11:08 am

17 Comments

Toronto’s best Korean food: Chris Nuttall-Smith makes his picks

Move over, sushi. Now there’s something sexier. The new Korean cuisine is exciting, modern and worth crossing town for
By Chris Nuttall-Smith

The seafood stew at Tofu Village (Image: Ryan Szulc)

National cuisines, like drunk-driving starlets, get the reputations they deserve. Korean food—dependably rough-edged, cheap and fiery in Toronto’s first-wave Korean restaurants—has suffered a serious perception problem since it first appeared near Christie Pits in the early 1970s. Korean expats ate Korean food. Starving, steel-gutted U of T students ate Korean food. The rest of humanity got along quite happily without it.

That started to change about 10 years ago, when South Korea launched a sustained and successful campaign to become a major cultural exporter. What began with film and TV—including several food-obsessed soap operas that drew massive audiences across Asia—soon trickled down to dinner, and as a new, more cosmopolitan generation of Korean chefs began to refine the cuisine, the gastro-weenies of the world took notice. In London, Korean went high-end, and in New York, David Chang, of Momofuku fame, created a hybrid Korean–French–Southeast Asian style that has become one of the most influential forces in the business. Over the past few years, this culinary renaissance set down in Toronto, too, hidden—or hidden to non-Koreans, at least—in plain sight between the all-you-can-eat bulgogi joints and bibimbap houses where serious foodies would never have dared to dine.

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The Dish

From the Print Edition

October 20, 2010 | 9:44 am

8 Comments

Empire state of mind: Chris Nuttall-Smith takes on Scott Conant’s Scarpetta

Celeb chef Scott Conant opened his third outpost of Scarpetta this summer. Too bad it looks, feels and tastes like a branch plant By Chris Nuttall-Smith

(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.

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