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In our new series, Crisper Chronicles, we ask the city’s top food personalities to let us into their most intimate alimentary enclave: the home refrigerator. This week, chef Marc Thuet and his wife, front-of-house master Biana Zorich—both back in Toronto after shooting a new season of Conviction Kitchen in Vancouver—talk about the treasures (and trash) that lurk in their icebox.
Celeb chef Scott Conant opened his third outpost of Scarpetta this summer. Too bad it looks, feels and tastes like a branch plant
(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. Read the rest of this entry »
Biana Zorich and Marc Thuet at the opening of Conviction in 2009 (Image: Karon Liu)
Just over a year after opening Conviction—the third incarnation of their flagship restaurant—chef Marc Thuet and partner Biana Zorich have closed the restaurant for good. A lapsed lease has spelled the end of team Thuet’s presence on King Street West—and the end of an era, seeing as the couple was among the first to colonize what is now a hot restaurant strip. Now they’re turning their attention to places as close as Rosedale and as far away as Alsace. Anywhere, they say, but King West.
Read the rest of this entry »
Over the next couple of years, this city will get five new luxury hotels. It starts with the Thompson, which opens its high-concept doors this month and promises to be ground zero for the beautiful people
If you build it: the Thompson Toronto, on Wellington West, is the first international arm of the New York–based brand (Illustration: Kagan McLeod)
Lately, King West is an urban cloud nine: designer condos, old brick studio spaces, fantastic carpaccio. Only 15 years ago, no one had much reason to venture down here—not for work, not to live, not for a dining scene, because there wasn’t one. There were no ad agencies, no Susur Lee joints, no Spoke Club and certainly no boutique hotels. But now the dozen or so blocks bounded by Spadina and Bathurst, from Adelaide down to Wellington, are a humming, self-sustaining ecosystem—a model of how to retrofit a vintage downtown neighbourhood.
Real estate agents call this part of town King West Village, a handle the locals find too artificial to pass their lips, especially considering the place isn’t yet fully formed. At every turn, there’s a construction site, or a gaping hole in the ground, or a lot with a target on its back, almost all of them bearing the same signage: an artful graphic in lower case letters saying “freed.” It’s not an existentialist statement; “Freed” stands for Peter Freed, the Forest Hill–bred developer who has nine projects on the go in the area. No one has been a bigger catalyst of the evolution of King West, or capitalized on it more, than Freed. His real estate portfolio, mainly condos, is worth $1 billion, and much of it is geared to a highly specific breed: a 35-ish, design-obsessed demographic that wears Japanese denim, listens to Phoenix, works in advertising or banking or consults in high tech, travels often and widely, and stays at properties designed by Ian Schrager, the Manhattan entrepreneur often credited with founding the boutique hotel genre. In King West, Freed has prepared a landing strip for these hipster high flyers (and those who aspire to become them). They’re not rich, necessarily. Their ambition is to be tastefully in the know.
For them, Freed has invested in a crowning achievement, a gleefully anticipated light box on Wellington: the 102-room Thompson Toronto, which is scheduled to open its high-concept doors this month. Read the rest of this entry »
Centro's main dining room (Image: Karon Liu)
“Centro has always been good, but people have never come here for a gastronomical experience,” says owner Armando Mano as he sits in the newly renovated uptown restaurant. “They haven’t been taking us seriously for the past eight years since Marc Thuet left. We want to change that.” The revamp started in December, but the real work began two weeks ago, when demolition crews stepped in and left nothing untouched. There’s still sawdust on the sheet-covered floors, and the wall fixtures aren’t in yet, but Mano says things are on track regardless of what happens.
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More details of Marc Thuet’s cookbook are out as he and Biana Zorich prepare to head out west to work on the second season of Conviction Kitchen next month. The Post reports that the surprisingly expletive-free title is French Food My Way and that the book will be released in November. This may be cutting it close in terms of promotion, since the chef is scheduled to shoot a third season of his reality show in the States starting in September. The book includes 100 recipes covering breakfast, lunch and dinner, plus desserts and special meals for get-togethers.
• Celebrity chef Marc Thuet has new cookbook coming: French Food My Way [National Post]
(Image: Renée Suen)
Toronto Life‘s annual ranking of the city’s 10 best new restaurants is in our April issue, on newsstands now. Despite the lacklustre economy, it’s been a banner year for eating out. Here, James Chatto picks five more new restaurants are worth lining up for.
Marc Thuet and Biana Zorich: courage of their Convictions (Photo by Karon Liu)
Marc Thuet and Biana Zorich are leaving Toronto to take on Vancouver and the United States. Following the success of their two major projects of 2009, Conviction and Conviction Kitchen—restaurant and reality show, respectively—the couple is heading to the west coast next week to scout real estate for the second location of the restaurant. Like the King West version, the Vancouver outpost will be run by reformed criminals whose trials and tribulations will be broadcast on TV.
Read the rest of this entry »
Marco Pierre White (Photo courtesy of ITV)
The Guardian is shaming celebrity chef Marco Pierre White for attaching his name to restaurants he rarely cooks in. “The idea of a famous chef exploiting their name in this way should be a thing of the past. No one, no matter how talented and clever, can assure the quality of a restaurant by remote control,” the British daily writes, smarting at the spread of MPW-branded venues. By comparison, Toronto’s top chefs operate differently, typically launching spin-offs and side projects as separate entities under discreet titles. Star chef Jamie Kennedy added his name to most of his projects, but he was deeply engaged with all of them (oddly, his surviving locavore locale is simply monikered Gilead Bistro). When his flagship Jamie Kennedy Wine Bar was sold, the new owners dropped the name—and name recognition—immediately. Bad boy Marc Thuet once attached his name to his ventures, as well, but now prefers provocative titles, like Bite Me and Conviction (Petite Thuet remains eponymous, albeit diminutive). And then there are Michael Stadtländer’s Eigensinn Farm and Haisai—names as organic as their menu items, but devoid of chef branding.
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Bespoke bread from Marc Thuet (Photo by Renée Suen)
It’s no secret that 2009 was rough for restaurants—“It’s a year a lot of restaurateurs are happy to see go,” says C5’s Ted Corrado—but with the new year almost a month old, optimism is back on the table. We talked to some of the city’s top chefs about five culinary trends for the coming year.
1. Less Is More Read the rest of this entry »
Small, chef-run restaurants that are down-to-earth in both atmosphere and culinary style. Chef Jamie Kennedy, who’s focusing on the Gilead Bistro, a decidedly more casual restaurant than the Wine Bar he sold last fall, anticipates more “chef-driven” spots like J.P. Challet’s Ici Bistro and Grant van Gameren’s Black Hoof. Claudio Aprile, who’s working on his second restaurant, Origin, agrees: “I’m hoping that we see a lot more restaurants that are open kitchen, 30 seats, three line cooks.”
Now is the time of year when Toronto’s patisseries and food shops offer a tremendous selection of goodies that cater to the most specific tastes. To make sense of this yearly embarrassment of riches, we found some delicious items that are sure to be crowd pleasers and ideal gifts. Here, 12 ways to avoid the dreaded (and regifted) Pot of Gold.
(Photo by Signe Langford)
Word on the street is that the space at 1055 Yonge is cursed. It’s had a long history of failed restaurants—Tabla, Plakutta, Rosewood Grill, Roxborough’s, Cucina, Arlecchino, Emerald Thai, L’Actuel, Trata, Rosedale Oyster—places that came and went, sometimes before the ink had dried on the lease. Misty-eyed locals still reminisce about Cibo, the last decent thing to happen to this space, and it closed in 1992. Now, Ed Ho, owner of Globe Bistro on the Danforth (and former Bay Streeter, who, like a certain Alaskan, went rogue), has moved in with his latest restaurant, Earth. And Ed Ho doesn’t scare easily.
Read the rest of this entry »
The recession, represented here by a plush monster, is a threat to Halloween candy everywhere (Photo by Matt Blank)
• The recession has claimed yet another victim: Halloween candy. A new U.S. survey has found that the recession will mean less candy for trick or treaters this year. Consumer spending is expected to drop 15 per cent from last Halloween, and 47 per cent of respondents said they would buy less candy this year. It’s a double whammy of bad news, as less candy for trick or treaters will presumably mean more tricks against homeowners. [Canwest]
• Wine aficionados complaining of sore teeth may want to have some cheese with their whine. A new German study shows that the higher acid content of white wine corrodes teeth faster than red, with rieslings being the worst. The effect can be easily countered, however, with a piece of brie or gouda; the calcium neutralizes the wine’s acid. [Toronto Star]
Read the rest of this entry »
As people downsized discretionary spending (and foie gras consumption), the city’s chefs embraced their new bread and butter, turning humble sammies into the greatest thing since, well, sliced bread (sorry, we’re, um, on a roll). We chart the best of an ever-increasing bunch.
On the Marc: the logo for Conviction Kitchen appears seared onto Thuet's arm (Logo courtesy of CityTV)
The last thing prime time television needs is another screaming chef, so we are relieved to report that Marc Thuet was right when he described his new TV program as more of a documentary than a reality show. Conviction Kitchen, in which Thuet and his partner, Biana Zorich, mentor a group of ex-cons to run their new restaurant, focuses on the food and the business aspect of running the establishment rather than the personal dramas of the contestants (shocking, indeed). Only three episodes have aired so far; for the most part, the six servers and seven cooks seem pretty competent and likable; they’d probably blow the contestants of Hell’s Kitchen out of the salted, boiling water.
But here’s where the problem lies.
Read the rest of this entry »
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