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Michael Stadtländer has rallied 100 of the best chefs from across Canada to participate in Foodstock, an epic, pay-what-you-can public food event on October 16 to raise money to fight the construction of a huge limestone quarry in the town of Honeywood, Ontario. The Highland Companies’ plan aims to span 2,316 acres of land and run 189 feet deep (deeper than Niagara Falls), and will have to pump 600 million litres of groundwater out of the pit each day (about the same amount used by 2.7 million Ontarians), all to extract crushed stone known as amabel dolostone.
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Greatest Hits: Chris Nuttall-Smith picks the 25 most delicious dishes of the last year
Enoteca Sociale’s octopus and fava beans
The 25 most delicious dishes tasted this year, ranging from lowbrow comforts (potato puffballs) to high-minded masterpieces (tea-smoked duck)*
*Availability of dishes varies according to season and changing menus Read the rest of this entry »
Flavour of the Month: eight core-warming winter cocktails
The city’s best bar hands are dreaming up boozy cocktails to take the edge off our mid-February malaise
Just Opened: we review Sushi Couture, Niwatei and Bar Salumi
A new sushi king on Bloor, carb-loading in Markham and Parkdale’s chicest snack spot
Sushi Couture 
456 Bloor St. W., 416-538-8618
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Ken Zhang has been a sushi star going on a decade now, thanks to his time at Japango across from city hall, where he served some of the hardest-to-find fish in town. Now on his own, his cut fish and rolls at Couture are still excellent. His couture roll—rice and avocado wrapped in nori, topped with salmon and a scallop slice and flash-toasted with a blowtorch—is given a boost with scallion and roe. (But don’t order the o‑toro, a.k.a. bluefin tuna—it’s severely threatened, the marine equivalent of eating baby panda.) Zhang’s hot dishes, however, sometimes miss the mark. The $70 omakase option here is just $10 less than Sushi Kaji’s basic omakase and doesn’t begin to approach the master’s orbit. A soup of buttery shell clams, for instance, should be beautiful given its ingredients of sake, butter, yuzu zest and soy, but there’s far too much soy, so it’s too salty for more than a few sips. Roast duck salad brings cold, chewy slices as pallid as Lloyd Robertson’s wattle over mesclun mix that has started to brown. The tempura aji is exceptional, chopped and mixed with scallions, folded into a shiso leaf and quickly fried: the taste is creamy and full, balanced out with the sharp onions, the soapy leaf and crunchy shell. Unlicensed. Mains $19–$26.
Introducing: Bar Salumi, an aperitif bar by the owners of Local Kitchen
The interior of Bar Salumi. Volano meat slicer located near bottom left (Images: Jon Sufrin)
Inside Queen West’s new Bar Salumi—under hanging Berkshire prosciutto, garlands of hot peppers and a wild boar’s head—sits the Ferrari of all meat slicers: a Volano. In the hands of the right operator, the apparatus is supposed to make a perfect slice every time. Michael Sangregorio and Fabio Bondi, Bar Salumi’s owners, are hoping to become such operators. “It’s the most expensive thing in the entire bar,” says Sangregorio, who likens it to a Swiss watch. Bondi admits they’re trying to figure out how to use it to its full potential.
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Full Throttle: Chris Nuttall-Smith takes on Parts and Labour
The Parkdale it spot is a raucous hybrid of fine dining and indie cheek. It’s loud, stylish and double-dares you to eat fried pig face
(Image: Ryan Szulc)
They started jacking the stereo around 8 p.m., just as we were eating the chopped raw lamb with herbed, salted lard. By the time the horse tenderloin arrived, it felt as if a maniacal toddler had been handed control of the dial. Groups of young, aggressively stylish women tottered in, past the velvet rope, past the bouncer with the neck tattoo and under the decorative, gold-leafed satellite dish that its designer (one of the restaurant’s owners) described as a “Hegelian dialectic between high and low.” The music, thumping from the five JBL speakers arrayed above the bar, kept rising, as if in salutation. We had to press our ribs into the edge of our long, too-wide communal table and shout to hear each other when we bothered trying to talk at all. Read the rest of this entry »
Best of the City 2010: 14 picks for the top food in Toronto
Leaf fan: Matchbox Gardens grows rare and wonderful lettuces (Image: Jay Shuster)
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Local Kitchen to expand eastward with Bar Salumi, an “aperitif bar”
Parkdale prospectors: Michael Sangregorio and chef Fabio Bondi (Image: Renée Suen)
Fabio Bondi and Michael Sangregorio, the guys behind the Parkdale hot spot Local Kitchen and Wine Bar, are slowly taking over the neighbourhood. In a few months, they’ll open Bar Salumi, an aperitif joint, a few doors east of Local. As it stands, their restaurant’s popularity has outgrown its diminutive size; since they don’t take reservations, there are often lines out the door. Bondi says that the new place was conceived as a place to send customers while they wait for a table, since they don’t presently have a lounge.
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Best New Restaurants 2010
This time last year, the future looked awfully grim. We braced for restaurant closures and recessionary menus, but 2009 was surprising. Though we lost some good places (Perigee, Truffles, Alice’s and Gamelle, in particular), and mac-and-cheese quickly wore out its welcome, it was an exciting time to dine out. Anxious restaurateurs dropped corkage fees and slashed wine markups, while chefs cooked up imaginative prix fixe menus. It suited our mood as well as our wallets: these days, Torontonians want informality. We’re still hungry for local produce and nose-to-tail dining, chefs are once again finding inspiration in Italy and Japan, and the city is finally beginning to develop a serious cocktail culture. Most encouraging of all is the number of new restaurants opening. Here, the best of the vintage.
No-reservations policies drive people outdoors, crazy
That's my queue: customers wait for hours to taste the fare at Guu (Photo by snowpea&bokchoi)
Capitalizing on one of the more frustrating dining trends, the Globe writes about the no-reservations policies at such restaurants as Guu, Black Hoof and Pizzeria Libretto and how they are resulting in long lineups, rushed dining experiences, annoyed customers and, in some cases, mayhem. TasteTO’s Sheryl Kirby opines that the chaos is a side effect of Toronto’s unsophisticated nature: diners care more about partaking in the latest trend than indulging in quality dining. The sight of teeming masses lined up in sub-zero temperatures may reek of herd mentality, but Michael Sangregorio, the owner of Local Kitchen, says that it’s all part of the fun. “I think people like lineups… People want to eat in busy restaurants.” He also suggests that restaurants (like his) often merit the attention and that reservations are unsuited to the operations of a small restaurant.
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Just Opened: Local Kitchen and Wine Bar
Friends in food: Michael Sangregorio and Fabio Bondi at the counter of Local Kitchen and Wine Bar (Photo by Mary Luz Mejia)
It takes guts to open a fledgling restaurant on a Parkdale strip during Toronto’s recent civil servant strike and this decidedly un-rosy economic era, but neither of these obstacles stopped lifelong friends Fabio Bondi and Michael Sangregorio from breathing life into a 29-seater they call Local Kitchen and Wine Bar. With Bondi manning the stoves (he trained in Umbria at the much-lauded Il Postale) and Sangregorio working the front of the house, the dynamic duo has done the near-impossible. “We finally did it!” beamed Sangregorio on the second night, as customers started drifting in.
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Rotten timing: The strike and the city’s restaurants
Pile it on: A mountain garbage continues to grow at the Christie Pits dumping site (Photo by Martin Reis)
Restaurant owners aren’t exactly singing “Solidarity Forever” these days. With such services as garbage collection and permit processing halted during the city worker strike, restaurateurs are getting increasingly frustrated. Carmine Accogli, chef-owner of The Big Ragu, is fuming after contending with lineups at temporary garbage transfer stations. “Other than the city worker’s contentious behaviour regarding what’s right for them and disregarding the rights of everyone else, they’re not offering us much—except filth in the streets,” he says. “Summerlicious this year is going to stink.” And he means that literally.
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