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Aprons & Icons

Bob Blumer on humiliation, faking it and falling asleep watching Barefoot Contessa

Bob Blumer gets comfy (Photo by Karon Liu)

Bob Blumer has come a long way from the cheesy printed shirts, the tornado hairdo and the Mrs. Dash commercials. Reclining in a plush chair at the Spoke Club six hours before he leaves for his next adventure in Buenos Aires, the Montreal-born Blumer—wearing a muted sweater, his hair neatly coiffed (“Even Michael Bolton cut his hair”)—is doing interviews about the final season of his gastronomical schadenfreude show Glutton for Punishment.

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| 1 Comment » December 26, 2009 | 11:56 am | Karon Liu

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Mustard ad made entirely of meat, debunking rumours of a Jennifer Aniston-Jamie Oliver partnership, the caloric overload of eggnog

Military beefcake Lord Kitchener shills for Colman's

• A Colman’s Mustard’s advertisement featuring Lord Kitchener’s face recreated with meat is making veggie boosters like Paul McCartney lose their kale-burger lunches. The ad is a recreation of an iconic British WWI poster and is composed of sausage fingers, beef, chicken and sliced ham. The creepiest part might be that the yellow-tinged eyes are real, likely plucked from a pig. [Guardian]

• Meet Canada’s culinary David, Mathieu Cloutier, who upset Goliaths like Iron Chef America winner Rob Feenie and Nota Bene’s David Lee to win this year’s national Gold Medal Plates championships. Hitherto unknown, the chef started Montreal’s 30-seat Kitchen Galerie two years ago with partners Jean-Philippe St-Denis and Axel Mevel, hoping at least to break even by serving six clients a night. The dining room has been packed ever since. This past July, Cloutier and St-Denis opened a second spot, larger and more stylish, called Chez Edgar. The chef’s winning dish was an inventive and quirky foie gras steamed in a dishwasher, then served cold with muscat wine jelly and long peppers. [Globe and Mail]

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| Leave a Comment » December 10, 2009 | 8:46 am | Matthew Hague

Aprons & Icons

Q&A: three minutes with Naked Chef Jamie Oliver

Caper crusader: Jamie Oliver speaks at Roy Thomson Hall on Sunday

Jamie Oliver will send foodophiles into full swoon this Sunday, when he appears Roy Thomson Hall to speak about his new cookbook, Jamie’s Food Revolution, and his first U.S. TV show, Jamie’s American Road Trip. In the latter, the spritely chef attempts to charm Fast Food Nation into eating fresh, seasonal foods. These projects have been keeping him busy lately; so busy, in fact, that when we caught up with him during his first visit to Canada, we had time for only three questions. But it’s hard to be annoyed when the answers, however brief, are delivered with that musical cockney twinge (see glossary below).

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| 2 Comments » November 20, 2009 | 4:10 pm | Rachel Heinrichs

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Bacon-flavoured beer, the fattest city in America, the 50 best spots to eat the 50 best foods

• On a recent foray to Huntington, West Virginia (recently bestowed with the dubious distinction of being America’s fattest and most unhealthy city), celebrity chef Jamie Oliver says he was so appalled that the hairs on his arm stood on end. Residents there “have never had food from scratch in their life,” he says, adding that big corporations control all the food, making it difficult to obtain fresh produce despite the rural surroundings. [Sky News]

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| Leave a Comment » September 22, 2009 | 2:50 pm | Jon Sufrin

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Celeb chef scammer, legal limits on trans fats, the best restaurant in Uruguay

Trans toubles: Health food advocates are trying to encourage anti-fat legislation (Photo by Mykl Roventine)

Trans troubles: Health food advocates are trying to encourage anti-fat legislation (Photo by Mykl Roventine)

• The two-year grace period the Harper government gave the food industry to cut usage of trans fats ends Saturday—and there’s still a lot of trans fat out there. Critics want the government to get tough by creating enforceable fat maximums. [Canadian Press]

• The cost of locavorism is not just getting at Jamie Kennedy. Chefs across the country are having a tough time sticking to fresh and local (and pricey) ingredients. [Globe and Mail]

• A 39-year-old U.K. con man who scammed his way onto TV by claiming to have worked with Gordon Ramsay and Jamie Oliver has been revealed as a big fat phony. [Sun]

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| Comments Off June 20, 2009 | 10:31 am | Matthew Halliday

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Timmy’s triumphs, Jamie Oliver branches out, charging for tap water

And the winner is: Tim Hortons itself (Photo by Alistair Howard)

And the winner is: Tim Hortons (Photo by Alistair Howard)

• While the recession takes its toll on the restaurant industry, Tim Hortons seems to be unaffected. Its first quarter numbers were high, and the company’s showing in the U.S. market remains strong. [National Post]

• Carb Kringles: the potato farmers of Prince Edward Island donate 18,000 kilograms of their spuds to a Boston food bank. [CBC]

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| Leave a Comment » May 12, 2009 | 8:02 am | Daniel Tseghay

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Metro makes money, sustainable sushi and Gordon Ramsay’s fiscal nightmare

Lily Allen fights with dairy (Photo by Douglas Cason)

• British pop star Lily Allen is fined $2,000 for starting an ice cream fight in her dressing room after performing at the Phoenix Concert Theatre on Wednesday. Hey, at least it wasn’t mashed potatoes. [UK Sun]

• Dough makers: Jamie Oliver steals the title of U.K.’s richest chef from Gordon Ramsay. To make matters worse, Ramsay didn’t even make the list of country’s 2,000 richest people. [Evening Standard]

• Grocery giant Metro boasts higher than expected earnings, and is confident shoppers will be cooking at home for at least another two fiscal quarters. [Financial Post]

• Nova Scotia’s Ecology Action Centre releases a guide to ordering sustainable sushi. The dolphin maki-roll is a no-go? [Metro]

• UK’s The Guardian unleashes the long-awaited backlash against the gastropub trend and asks readers to construct “the perfect English menu.” [Guardian]

| Leave a Comment » April 25, 2009 | 8:41 am | Karon Liu

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Charging for tap water, ATM-style coffee, the return of Jamie Oliver

The Naked Chef outsells Harry Potter (Photo by Really Short)

• Though he’s been in Britain’s bad books often over the past decade, Naked Chef Jamie Oliver is back. He became the country’s best-selling author when his latest cookbook, Ministry of Food, sold a record 11.7 million copies, surpassing the sales of even J.K. Rowling. [The Guardian]

• Some Toronto restaurants are now charging $1 for the city’s piped water. This is not the next trend in water snobbery: funds raised go to a UNICEF project that provides clean drinking water to children in developing countries. [Toronto Star]

• Things got heated in the kitchen when New York Times foodies staged a dinner duel. Critics Kim Severson and Julia Moskin each cooked up a lavish meal on the shoestring budget of $8.50 a head. Heavyweight critic Frank Bruni settled the score. [New York Times]

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| Leave a Comment » March 27, 2009 | 8:51 am | Davida Aronovitch

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Suburban food festivals, the Ritz bites the dust, Ottawa chefs come to Toronto

The Ritz that never was

• David Rocco and Jamie Oliver taught us the importance of nutritious meals for kids, but obsessing over their diets could in fact be detrimental to their health. [National Post]

• Plans have been nixed for the construction of Vancouver’s Ritz-Carlton skyscraper. Toronto’s Wellington Street location—complete with high-end restaurant—is progressing toward its 2010 opening. [Globe & Mail]

• Winter prix-fixes aren’t just available to downtowners this year. Two Vaughan foodie festivals—SavourVaughan and Beyond Restaurant Week—are underway. [YorkRegion.com]

• Unpaid overtime, late nights and unpredictable shifts—few customers know what happens on the other side of restaurants’ kitchen doors. [Toronto Star]

• Ottawa isn’t regarded as a major player on the country’s food scene, but its chefs are trying to change that. Next week they’ll be heading to Toronto en masse to show off their culinary talent. [Ottawa Citizen]

| 2 Comments » February 27, 2009 | 5:02 pm | Chloe Ellingson