Well there’ll probably be five in the next 10 years. I wouldn’t be surprised if Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Toronto and Mexico City opened pretty much in any order of those four.

Let’s hope Toronto is at the top of that order.

Inside the new King West fine food store from the brothers Contardi (Image: Gizelle Lau)

For over a year, the windows on the northwest corner of King and Brant have sported signs reading “Alimento Fine Food Emporium: Coming Soon.” Last week, Alimento finally opened, giving King Westers one less excuse to avoid using their kitchens. We stopped by to take a look.

Behind Alimento are Marco, Joe, Albert Jr. and Anthony Contardi, four brothers who come from a long line of cheesemakers (black and white photos behind the bar show their grandfather making cheese). The shop is a modernized version of a traditional Italian marketplace, much like Eataly in New York, with both a grocery business and a restaurant. Previously home to an EQ3 warehouse store, the renovated space features the staple King West exposed brick look.

Alimento’s grocery store offers a large selection of specialty deli meats, cheeses (including homemade bocconcini, burrata and fior di latte), antipasti and olives. There’s also a bakery and biscotti bar stocked with items made by Italian baker Andrea Mastrandrea (Forno Cultura) and even a fresh flower stand for some old-world nostalgia. The restaurant side features a long marble mozzarella bar, a few small tables, and a bar in the back with coffee and pastries in the morning and wine as the afternoon rolls around. Tucked in the back, a large oven churns out focaccia sandwiches and pizza as well as bottled drinks and prepared salads and pastas.

A full sit-down menu is available from lunch through dinner, with most of the produce sourced from the grocery side. All dishes are traditionally Italian: roasted beet caprese with homemade fior di latte and basil ($9), a cheese platter featuring fior di latte and goat milk formaggio fresco along with aged caciocavallo and trecce ($21), a salumi platter ($23). There are also pastas like the squid ink fettuccine nero with cuttlefish, garlic and oregano ($15); pizzas ($11–$19); and secondi like a 14 oz. bone-in rib eye ($27) and a whole lemon and olive oil branzino ($25).

Alimento Fine Food Emporium, 522 King St. W., 416-362-0123, alimento.ca

Last night was the premiere of Recipe to Riches, the much-hyped new Food Network Canada show where each week, a trio of home cooks compete in one of eight different categories to determine whose recipe would make the best President’s Choice product. (No, really.) The show was one pinch of So You Think You Can Dance’s nationwide talent search, a dollop Top Chef’s cook offs and product placement and a heap of Dragon’s Den’s Marketing 101, all whirred in a blender. To be honest, it can sometimes make for a strange mix—the Top Chef–style solemnity that greets each elimination seems a little out place when the contestants change every episode. Each winning product will show up on Loblaws shelves the weekend after the episode airs, and at the end, viewers will vote to crown the winner of a $250,000 grand prize. Every week, we’ll be bringing an advance sample of the winning dish into our office to see whether it’s worth the trip to the grocery store. After the jump, our thoughts on the winner of the Sweet Puddings and Pies challenge.

Mini-Recap

The winner this week was Glo McNeill from Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, a tough yet charming 81-year-old granny who arrived with her “luscious lemon pudding,” so-called because it symbolizes the return of “luscious lemons” after the deprivations she faced in World War II–era England. Next to that story, Mijune Pak, a high-heeled food blogger from Surrey, British Columbia, didn’t stand a chance with her “Canadian pie,” a multi-culti mishmash in a jar. Pak was eliminated in the “batch-up” challenge, in which the competitors are asked to make 200 portions of their home recipes with the help of a trio of “product development mentors.” Gatineau’s Brad Gash came closer with his down-home, maple cream–laden pouding chômeur (which he billed as the next poutine), but was edged out in the product development challenge, which involved coming up with a name and marketing plan and putting on a big public tasting event for hungry-looking Ryerson students (who, to be honest, looked like they’d devour whatever was put in front of them). Not-so-secret guest judge Galen Weston Jr. came on at the end of the episode to announce the winner. The requisite tears and embraces followed.

Tasting

In what we’re sure will be a running theme in the series, it was a little hard to square the four frozen miracles of modern food science we received with the six-ingredient homemade dessert on the show. Each 330-calorie pudding cake came individually wrapped in a little plastic tub, which can be baked in a microwave or an oven. The office consensus? A solid “meh.” One staffer called the dish “inoffensive,” while another quipped, “I kind of wanted it to have a filling.” There was broad agreement that it was very, very sweet, and that the tartness of the lemons was missing. Visually, the goopy sauce and spongy cake that emerged from the microwave left something to be desired (one smart aleck described it as “something HR Giger would have designed for Betty Crocker”). We must admit that when we brought one of the pudding cakes home to bake in the oven, the flavour and texture of the cake improved tremendously. And it was nice to see every ingredient on the packaging was more or less recognizably “real food.” The verdict: if you’re gonna buy it, bake it. Check out some photos of our tasting in the gallery.

Next week on Recipe to Riches: Fall River, Nova Scotia’s Jacqui Keseluk, Calgary’s  Melissa Lam and Kentville, Nova Scotia’s Crystal Peach compete in the cake challenge.

(Images: Glo McNeill and Luscious Lemon Pudding, Food Network Canada; tasting photos, Andrew D’Cruz)

The former home of Ring Audio at Queen and Grant (Image: Signe Langford)

Rumours have been swirling among Riverside dwellers and foodies alike that Lynn Crawford is preparing to jump into the boutique grocery business. The hoarding is up over the glass at the former home of Ring Audio, just a few doors down from her Riverside restaurant, Ruby Watchco. But when we called her, the chef and host of Pitching In was keeping mum on the details—at least, she says, “until I have my ducks all lined up in a row.”

Indeed, Crawford confessed to some confusion over the interest in the place. “I don’t get it. I find it amazing, all this interest in something I’m doing.” We’re certainly not the only ones interested in what she’s up to. In yesterday’s National Post, Shinan Govani let on that he was “tickled and more than a little emboldened” by a recent interview she gave to More magazine, where she hit back at critics of the one-menu-per-night concept at Ruby Watchco. With her restaurant pedigree and her many television appearances, we doubt this is the last time Crawford will be drawing attention. We’ll certainly be watching the storefront.

“Part of the challenge with the current food system is that people are disconnected with their food,” Dinner says. The co-op, like the farmers’ market, encourages a mutually beneficial relationship between producers and the consumers. “It’s really about giving people access to the kind of food they want.”

The co-op was created in as a multi-stakeholder organization, meaning that the producers, the consumers and the workers all have a say in its development and operation. Unlike many mainstream co-op models, there won’t be any working requirements for grocery store members. Rather, a $5 membership will get patrons access to local, fresh and even bulk food seven days a week once the shop opens. That fee means that members are also partial owners in the business and are therefore able to participate in decision-making during the annual meetings. Participants will also be able to buy five- and 10-year bonds, which will see a small return.

The new co-op grocery store should be open by the end of the year. In the meantime, the WEFC is hosting a fundraiser and information night on Wednesday, June 15th at the Gladstone Hotel.

Do you know what’s in your food? (Image: Jason Lam)

While Canadians decide who they want leading the country, the bureaucracy in Ottawa is largely spinning its wheels until the next guy comes to boss them around. With all that spare time on their hands, some bureaucrats are turning to the time-honoured tradition of leaking to the press, and in this case we’re glad they are: it looks like the Canadian Food Inspection Agency has gotten out of the business of checking out the nutritional claims made by food producers on their labels.

According to the Montreal Gazette:

The federal government has suspended inspection activities indefinitely that were meant to make sure food companies and restaurants don’t mislead consumers with underweight products or exaggerated nutrition claims, Postmedia News has learned.

In a memo from the management of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to inspectors outlining consumer-protection inspection activities for 2011–12, the agency confirmed that “until further notice,” all “net quantity verification activities are deferred.”

This program was aimed at food products sold at grocery stores to make sure producers or retailers don’t overstate the declared weight of food items.

Before anyone thinks twice about eating what’s on the shelves, the cancelled programs aren’t exactly about food safety. Instead, these programs are all about keeping food producers and fast-food joints honest with things like calorie counts and sodium content. And keeping them honest is no mean feat, apparently: the Gazette reports that out of 33 menu items sampled at restaurants like McDonald’s, KFC and Taco Bell, 14 actually contained more fat than had been stated. Given Ottawa’s recent moves to liberalize salt intakes across the country, we just need one more data point before “Ottawa makes food unhealthier” becomes a trend.

• Inspections of food weights, nutrition claims suspended [Montreal Gazette]

(Image: Signe Langford)

The Foodist Market, a new small grocery shop in Leslieville, has only been open for a few days, so it’s no surprise that many of the deep, white shelves lining the walls of this former juice bar are still bare. The shop should be fully stocked in a matter of days, but until then there are still plenty of organic goodies in store to draw the locals. Standouts include over-the-top rich and porky lonza (cured pork loin), pancetta and capicollo from Niagara Food Specialties, cheeses from Monforte, breads from nearby St. John’s Bakery, salsas and chips from Toronto’s Mad Mexican and, of course, locally grown veggies, eggs and meats. Despite these, the focus here is on organic first, local second.

Owner Dolores Golob, a resident of the area for over 18 years, got tired of waiting for someone to open an organic grocer, so she did it herself. “I’m first generation Italian Canadian, and I grew up with nothing but fresh, wonderful food,” the former nurse and clinical researcher told us. “Everything came from our garden, each fall we bought a whole pig and made our own salamis; I was making gnocchi by the time I was five!” Golob grew up in Sudbury, where her mom was a chef. “She was an amazing cook; everything was from scratch, all the pasta, everything. I still make my own pasta all the time.”

As for the store’s unusual name, Golob explains that everyone interested in food calls themselves a foodie nowadays. “I wanted a name that suggests a level of seriousness about food, like a cardiologist is a heart specialist. Well, a foodist is a food specialist!”

The Foodist Market, 1129 Queen St. E., 416-465-5221

According to the Toronto Star:

“They haven’t contacted us for any permits. We just don’t know what they’re doing.” says city planner Jamaica Hewston. “We don’t know anything about (the hoarding).”

In December, the company updated its original 2004 rezoning application, but like the first proposal, the new plan calls for a partial demolition.

Loblaw wants to take down the entire warehouse, which was designated as a heritage property by the city in 2001, before restoring the west and south facades, one of the key sticking points for city approval.

The western part of the area doesn’t have a big-box grocery store for the growing condo population, so this might be all for the good. (The small convenience store–grocer just south of Lake Shore isn’t cutting it.) Part of the original bargain with the city was that Loblaws would be allowed to develop some vacant land into condos if the company preserved the original warehouse—because it wouldn’t be Toronto if a large developer didn’t want to put a condo on every dry piece of land.

According to the National Post, the signs on the outside of the site now indicate an intent to “preserve the heritage façades and permit the development of retail floor space,” so maybe they’ll work out a deal with the city quickly. Not that we hate heritage sites (unlike some people), but surely the property can offer more than a rotting, abandoned warehouse.

• Loblaw ready to tear down historic warehouse [Toronto Star]
• Loblaws to refurbish waterfront warehouse [National Post]

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.

Mackintosh says that, if successful, the money she raises will be invested in staff, training and improved use of social media. Of course, those willing to help would need a bit of faith that the store would, in fact, last another three years and that Twitter could help pay the rent. The seemingly bizarre business model has worked in the past, though. The acclaimed Monforte Dairy in Stratford staved off potential closure by getting over 900 people to buy cheese shares. This whole thing might be a bit easier, too, if it could somehow be proven that the 100-mile diet isn’t just bunkum.

• Locavore store asks customers to buy shares [Toronto Star]

According to the Vancouver Sun:

But Allen Langdon, environment vice-president of the Canadian Council of Grocery Distributors, said the ban won’t help the environment.

“We’re not in favour of the ban. Consumers require something to transfer their groceries or goods from store to car or home. To make the giant leap forward and just ban them is to put us in a situation where we don’t have a viable alternative choice other than reusable bags,” Langdon said….

If they are banned, however, consumers will spend money on garbage and pet waste bags, so Langdon predicts a ban won’t decrease the amount of plastic ending up in landfills.

Saying that people will simply buy more expensive plastic bags is at least less embarrassing than when the Canadian plastic industry funded “scientific” “studies” “proving” that reusable bags are full of bacteria that corrode happiness and make babies ugly. Congratulations, Mr. Langdon.

It turns out that it’s not just elite-filled Toronto that’s gotten in on the bag-restricting game: no less than the heart of oil country, Fort McMurray, banned the plastic bag last month. Surely if urban Ontario and oil patch Alberta can agree on something, there’s some hope for this bill.

• Grocery store rep says ‘drastic’ plastic bag bill will be trashed [National Post]
• Plastic bag ban sought by Ontario MP [CBC News]
• Private member’s bill seeks to ban plastic bags across Canada [Hamilton Spectator]
• John Ivison: NDP behaviour police target plastic bags and forgetful husbands [National Post]

Mark Bittman and Jessica Allen go shopping. Click image to go to full video. (Image: Maclean's)

New York Times writer and all-round foodie hotshot Mark Bittman came to Canada to sell his book last week, and the good folks at Maclean’s had the bright idea of bringing him to Toronto’s biggest independent grocer, Fiesta Farms (north of Bloor on Christie), for a wee spree. The video of the event (left) features Bittman and an overeager Jessica Allen meandering through the aisles at Fiesta while they discuss Bittman’s views on organic produce (in 100 years, if there are still people, they’ll be eating organic almost exclusively), weight loss (Bittman shed 30 pounds by going vegan-until-dark) and whether junk food is really cheaper than real food (nope).

Probably the funniest moment is the very beginning, when a dazed and confused Bittman stares, clearly incredulous and almost slack-jawed, at bags of milk.  It’s hard to remember sometimes that this is almost unique to Canada, and central and eastern Canada at that. If bagged milk doesn’t get you laughing, Bittman’s delicate euphemism for getting high—“an illicit act which involved inhaling”—is pretty precious.

• Wait, is that Mark Bittman in aisle two? [Maclean’s]
• Grocery shopping with New York Times food writer Mark Bittman (VIDEO) [Maclean’s]

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.

Like the other inner-city supermarkets that have recently opened or undergone a massive renovation—Fresh and Wild, McEwan, Metro, Sobey’s, Loblaws—this was a time consuming effort. Longo’s took five years to build a store with modern elements that are increasingly standard for supermarkets: sushi counters, pizza ovens, salad bars and a grab-and-go counter. Spokesperson Rosanne Longo tells us that the surge of these types of supermarkets coincides with Toronto’s condo boom.

“Consumers are looking for alternatives to fast food. They want something that’s quick but at the same time fresh and healthy,” she says, adding that this is the fifth downtown location for Longo’s (the others are much smaller). “We looked at the busy downtown Torontonians who often buy food two or three times a week rather than one big trip.”

Like many of Longo’s competitors, it’s trying to attract shoppers of all types: the busy condo dwellers buying a $10 ready-to-heat dinner for two, the traditional nuclear families buying in bulk and the Food Network addicts looking for gourmet sea salt, rare Pakistani mangos, Kobe beef and kopi luwak coffee ($44 for 80 grams or $11 a cup—all from Longo’s in-house coffee roaster). The market also claims to have the largest selection of cheese (300 varieties) under one roof in the city. On-site cheese masters help flustered customers with wine pairings.

In the back is an area dubbed “The Loft,” where Longo’s turns into more of a lounge than a supermarket. There’s a Starbucks, WiFi, cooking studio, a seating area, microwave, sinks, five flat-screen televisions, washrooms (a definite plus in supermarkets) and above all, a fully functioning bar called Corks that serves exclusively Ontario beer and wine.

The question now is how the food shopping landscape of downtown will finally shape up. With glistening supermarkets opening up all over—including a Loblaws and a Sobey’s both nearby—and gourmet provisioners like McEwan scouting downtown locations, the battle lines are still being drawn. If nothing else, it looks like a tasty war for Torontonians.

Longo’s Maple Leaf Square, 15 York St. (at Bremner Blvd.), 416-366-1717, longos.com.

Albino Silva, the restaurateur behind Chiado on College Street, is part owner of Salt. He secured the lease for the space at 225 Ossington in January 2009, just four months before the city issued a year-long moratorium on business licences for new bars and restaurants on the street.

Stuck with the property, well into planning for the venture and assured that the ban would soon be lifted, Silva forged ahead. Then, in fall of last year, the city adopted changes to the moratorium that would have allowed a licence for smaller spaces, including Silva’s restaurant. But a handful of business and property owners in the area contested the change and brought the issue before the Ontario Municipal Board, where it has been stalled ever since. Everybody’s hands are tied until the OMB rules on the issue, city officials say. Hearings aren’t scheduled until November.

So when he opened on August 4, Silva did so with the space’s existing grocery licence—he intends to fill the room’s floor-to-ceiling olive wood shelving with Portuguese and Spanish specialty foods—and by serving wine and cocktails on the catering licence he has through Chiado.

“You know what, I said to my kids, I’m exposing myself here, but I’ve always been an honest businessman and I’m going to be truthful about this, and I hope I won’t have any problems,” he said in an interview early this week. (Toronto Life chose not to publish the story at the time, knowing that doing otherwise could get him shut down.) “What am I going to do, lie about it? No.”

The restaurant is very good: fun and casual but completely mellow, sophisticated without being pretentious, wine-focused, with an impressive selection of sub-$40 bottles. And the small Iberian-inspired plates from ex–Prego Della Piazza chef Dave Kemp are in many cases as good as you’ll find in Lisbon or Barcelona. The charred bread, for example, is as close as you can get to Catalonia’s incredible pan con tomate without actually being there: fresh, sweet, pulpy tomatoes, oil and sea salt that you spoon (they rub it in Spain, but no matter) over crusty garlic-rubbed bread. It is hardly the sort of raucous, booming nightclub that the city’s ban seemed intended to prevent; if anything, it’s the sort of place the street and the city need more of.

City councillor and mayoral candidate Joe Pantalone said today that he hopes city officials will be lenient with the wine bar. “I have absolutely no doubt that this is an excellent place, and it’s the kind of place that we want. I’ve said to them, if you should find yourself in any technical difficulties with the city…I would be pleased to write any letters and to suggest to city officials that they should apply discretion,” he said. “In my opinion, it’s really a technicality, this whole issue.” But Pantalone added that neither he nor the city has any pull with the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario, which is responsible for issuing and inspecting liquor licences.

Silva says inspectors from the city and from the AGCO visited him earlier this week, before The Star made his rule-breaking public, but noted that he hadn’t yet heard back from officials with either body. The Star piece, if anything, could speed their decision. Silva is furious with the paper. “They were after blood, and I don’t know why,” he said. “At the end of the day, there will be 18 people out of a job.” The Star’s Amy Pataki, who wrote the piece, couldn’t be reached for comment Friday afternoon. For now, Silva says, he plans to keep opening every night. “I’m going to open until somebody closes me down.”

Get there while you can, in other words.

• Despite ban, frustrated restaurateur opens on Ossington [Toronto Star]

• Phil Villeneuve’s Channel [YouTube]