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(Image: Andrew Brudz)
The storied La Palette space in Kensington Market is now in the assured hands of chef Jean-Charles Dupoire and his partner, longtime friend and sommelier Sylvain Brissonnet, the duo behind Harbord Street’s Loire. At Le Kensington, their menu showcases simple French dishes Dupoire learned from his grandmother.
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(Image: Karolyne Ellacott)
Le Kensington Bistro, the second eatery from the owners of Harbord Street’s Loire (one of 2009’s best new restaurants), recently opened in the space that used to house La Palette, the market’s original French bistro (La Palette decamped to Queen Street last year). Owners Sylvain Brissonnet—who spent a decade as the sommelier of Langdon Hall—and Jean-Charles Dupoire—who put in hours at both The Savoy and The Berkeley in London—purchased the spot at the start of the year but were bogged down with lengthy renovations. Brissonnet tells us the pair “really wanted to do something very French” and are keeping the focus on their homeland’s cuisine.
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Two neighbourhood restaurants serve up light-handed renditions of our rib-sticking favourites
(Image: Vanessa Heins)
The comfort food revolution has brought us much to be thankful for, including cheaper, more casual restaurants, and the glories of deep-fried mac-and-cheese, but it hasn’t exactly delivered a surge of culinary innovation. Spurred on by a sputtering economy, the comfort trend spawned a wave of barbecue joints, gourmet burger shops, neighbourhood pubs and by-the-book bistros, and it introduced childhood-evoking staples like cookies and milk to scores of restaurant menus where the “licorice root, three ways” used to be. It offered certainty when everything else around us seemed ready to collapse, not only for diners but for restaurateurs, too.
Comfort eating, like love and psychotherapy, is driven by equal measures of longing (for simpler times) and industrial-grade denial (s’mores are less fattening when they’re made with single-estate chocolate from São Tomé), powerful motivators both. So most chefs have been happy to feed our cravings without letting their own high-minded notions get in the way. Read the rest of this entry »
The French dishes at this Harbord Street restaurant stun as much at lunch as they do at dinner
(Images: Renée Suen)
The place: This south Annex gem promises gourmet bistro fare both noon and night, but there’s extra incentive in the summer: Loire’s breezy canopy-covered terrace.
The crowd: Neighbourhood regulars, golf shirt-clad businessmen, university professors and administrators playing hooky.
The deal: The midday menu of French-inspired comfort foods may be priced the same as it is at dinner, but the selections are excellently matched with the time of day.
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Once-sleepy Harbord Street leaped into the spotlight last year when it became the setting of Toronto’s latest NIMBY vs. business debate. Citing residents’ rights, crime and the strip’s uncertain future, deputy mayor Joe Pantalone tried to keep a new restaurant—Ici Bistro, helmed by famed chef J.P. Challet—from getting a liquor licence. His intervention may have had the opposite effect he was looking for: Torontonians turned their focus to the south Annex and realized that Harbord isn’t as stuffy (or dodgy) as the councillor would have them believe. With its gradually expanding array of shops, galleries and cafés, Harbord is fast becoming a destination for diners seeking an alternative to Ossington and Queen West. We take a look at 25 seminal spots, old and new, along a street in transition.
(Sam James photo, Jessica Darmanin; Harbord Bakery thumbnail, Danielle Scott)
(Photo by Andy Roberts)
For Toronto chefs worshipping at the altar of fresh and local, squash is the ingredient of the moment. Cowbell’s owner and chef, Mark Cutrara, tells us that the locavore movement has led to a better infrastructure for getting Ontario-farmed versions to cooks, who are doing more than just puréeing the fruit for soup. Culinary innovators around town are transmuting squash into ice cream, gratin and gnocchi. We look at five delicious dishes from five Toronto menus that make the most of this year’s bountiful squash harvest.
Patio season is in full swing (Photo by IntangibleArts)
With the summertime gods finally smiling, we took another look around town for patios that have sprouted up this season. Here, five brand new places to satisfy the craving for fresh air and fresh fare.
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In the pink: Ontario's rhubarb is at its prime (Photo by FotoosVanRobin)
Spring’s first two gastronomic stars (fiddleheads and ramps) are already out of style and season, which means that punch-packing rhubarb is all the rage. But even this resilient vegetable—its season peaks in June and usually spans into July—is getting scarce with the shortage of June heat. C5 chef Ted Corrado (who’s busy preserving rhubarb for a rainy day) says that his source has already dried up. Here, a look at what some epicurean alchemists are doing with the great red stalks.
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Laura Calder, home in Hogtown
The Food Network’s effervescent face of modern French fare, Laura Calder, is bringing her continental expertise home to Toronto. The long-time expat and host of French Food at Home, who has been stationed in Paris for the better part of a decade, landed back in her native Canada earlier this year with a not-too-shabby James Beard Foundation Award nomination, a new book, and a mission to update the artery-clogging cream-and-butter concept of French gastronomy.
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