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Eat well and feed the hungry along the way—that’s the concept behind the annual What’s on the Table benefit being held this year on November 2. Since 2005, the fundraiser has gathered $1.5 million for The Stop, the innovative community food centre whose goal is to increase everyone’s access to healthy food (check out our interview with chef Chris Brown from shortly after he joined The Stop). Dining stations open at 6:30 p.m., and patrons won’t be starved for choice; the event features offerings from over 30 chefs, including Lynn Crawford of Ruby Watcho, Anthony Walsh of Canoe and pâtissier Nadège Nourian (see below for the very impressive full list).
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Two Torontonians duked it out for national oyster shucking title last Friday
In what must have been acutely embarrassing for shuckers from the east and west coasts, the final round of the Canadian Oyster Shucking Championship in P.E.I. last Friday came down to two monster shuckers from non-coastal Toronto: Eamon Clark (son of Rodney Clark of Rodney’s Oyster House) and Patrick McMurray (of Starfish and Ceili Cottage), both of whom have previously won the championship multiple times. As reported by the Summerside Journal-Pioneer, the two former champs made it to the last round in a dead heat, which necessitated a shuck-off of 18 Malpeques (captured in this immortal slideshow). In the end, it apparently all came down to speed versus finesse (we won’t spoil the result). Read the whole story »
11 best bets for Summerlicious 2011: our chief critic Chris Nuttall-Smith makes his picks
The imported Neapolitan pizza oven at Fabbrica (Image: Karon Liu)
Now in its ninth season, the city-run ’Licious phenomenon (there are both summer and winter incarnations, in case you’ve been living under a pizza stone all this time) shows no signs of tiring, even if every year it seems to enrage more and more curmudgeonly downtown diners who don’t much like sharing their favorite restaurants with the plebes. Summerlicious succeeds precisely because it makes inaccessible restaurants accessible, even if it’s only for two weeks each July. The big list (there are 150 participating restaurants this year) will never include the hottest, newest, most interesting restaurants in the city—those places don’t typically need the help. It typically does include more than its share of dogs. But there are plenty of places in between: proven, well-run, inviting rooms with committed kitchens. We’ve picked a few of the best.
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Two foodie fundraisers set to benefit the Toronto Wildlife Centre this month
From last year’s Spring for Wildlife event, host Kevin Brauch (left) with Didier Leroy (right) and the Valrhona chocolate sculpture created by chocolatier Sylvain Leroy (centre) (Image: Robert Chapman)
There’s a reason food and fundraisers go hand in hand: what better way to encourage patrons and sponsors to empty their wallets for a good cause than to fill their bellies with delicious food? (See: this weekend’s Toronto Taste.) This month, the Toronto Wildlife Centre—the only organization in the GTA that rescues and provides treatment for wildlife in need—will be on the receiving end of two such events.
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Today in Toronto: Seafood for Thought
Seafood for Thought: Ted Corrado (C5), Patrick McMurray (Starfish), Alida Solomon (Tutti Matti) and other city chefs prepare tasting dishes with sustainable seafood for this Toronto Zoo fundraiser. Find out more >>
Best new restaurants 2010: James Chatto names five honourable mentions
(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.
Shucker Paddy turns his patio into skating rink
The Ceili Cottage's Dinky Rink, home to nightly curling
Patrick McMurray is getting into the Olympic spirit by flooding the front patio of his Leslieville restaurant The Ceili Cottage and turning it into a miniature ice rink for neighbourhood kids to use in the afternoon.
The patch of ice has been dubbed the Dinky Rink, and Shucker Paddy has borrowed curling rocks from the Royal Canadian Curling Club for impromptu nightly matches and marshmallow roasts that begin at 7 p.m. Assuming temperatures stay below freezing, the rink is expected to be open until March 10, when it will be cleared away for St. Patrick’s week festivities.
Ever the concerned parent (not to mention proprietor), McMurray’s rules for the rink are no hockey, no loud noises after 11 p.m. and no smoking. Alcohol is permitted on the rink, but he suggests hoisting a pint after a skate.
Starfish restaurant is serving rare species of abalone
Starfish serves the abalone raw in thin slices and with the incredibly rare roe (Photo courtesy of Patrick McMurray)
Toronto restaurateur and champion oyster shucker Patrick McMurray has tracked down a sustainable source of extremely rare pintos, Canada’s only naturally occurring abalone species, for his Adelaide Street seafood restaurant Starfish.
The large sea snails are prized for their luscious meat but cannot be legally caught or served in Canada unless grown on a farm, so McMurray tracked down the six-person-run, British Columbia–based Bamfield Huu-ay-aht Community Abalone Project, which aims to replenish wild stock of the mollusc and get it off the Canadian government’s threatened species list. Starfish is the second restaurant in the country to serve Huu-ay-aht’s abalone (C Restaurant in Vancouver was the first).
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Michelle Obama on Iron Chef, Lea and Perrins recipe revealed, Canada’s cod comeback
• What is the best way to get rid of unwanted Halloween candy? Serious Eats recommends burying it in a shallow grave—a pie shell—and making candy pie. The dessert is exactly what it sounds like: simply melt the candy in the crust for 30 to 40 minutes at 350 degrees, let cool, then serve. The site advocates a chocolate-heavy filling (Tootsie Rolls, Snickers, M&Ms, Kit Kats and candy corn) that reduces in size when it melts. The final product is sure to make guests frightened and dentists wealthy. [Serious Eats]
• After over 170 years of secrecy, the recipe for Lea and Perrins Worcestershire sauce has been revealed. Or has it? The Guardian trains its cynical eye on the list of ingredients allegedly found by a former company accountant in a skip next to the sauce factory. Forty pounds of pickles? Twenty-four pounds of fish? Eighteen gallons of vinegar? Could that really taste good? We guess that if anyone would know, it would be a Brit. [Guardian]
How to make Ceili Cottage’s unspeakably decadent sticky toffee pudding
Pour some sugar on me (Photo by Naomi Finlay)
With its deliberately pocked and pitted decor, the Ceili Cottage looks like it dates back to the days of the Loyalists. But Patrick McMurray’s new gastropub is clearly tapping in to Torontonians’ hankering for all things cheap and soothing. Our favourite dish is chef Kyle Deming’s unspeakably decadent sticky toffee pudding ($6). The place has been hopping since day one. For sweet tooths unable to snag a table, here’s how to make it at home.
Just Opened: Ceili Cottage
Irish times: Patrons live it up at Leslieville's Ceili Cottage (Photos by Signe Langford)
“We did this totally back-asswards,” says Patrick McMurray of Ceili Cottage, the Irish pub he opened in Leslieville, and the series of snafus that kept its doors closed until the end of June.
The last snag was the threat of an LCBO strike, which was scheduled to begin the same day McMurray planned to serve his first drinks. He sent his wife and a friend to the liquor store to fill four carts before he officially received his licensee number. As he tells it, the carts of booze were just approaching the cash at the same moment as his license was confirmed. The kegs of beer had yet to be delivered, but Leslievillians—having developed quite a thirst after months of watching the glacial progress on their new local—were pounding on the cottage’s red door, demanding refreshments. McMurray opened without kegs, serving cans of Guinness and bottles of Harp from a nearby Beer Store.
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Chefs make better lovers, threatening T.O.’s culinary superiority, cell phone credit cards
Go zest: Vancouver and the rest of B.C. want to be Canada’s premier food destination (Photo by Small)
• Could this be the end of the Toronto-Montreal axis of culinary superiority? We doubt it, but a new initiative between the British Columbia government and restaurateurs in the province is aiming to put Lotus Land on the culinary map. [Vancouver Sun]
• Longtime New York food critic Gael Greene argues that chefs make better lovers, and that celebrity chefs in particular should spend less time cooking and more time reaping the fruits of celebrity—especially sex with willing young food groupies. As if Rachel Ray needs another reason to smile. [Daily Beast]
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BYOB: Toronto restaurants drop corkage fees
Bottle shock: corkage fees are falling all over Toronto (Photo by Quinn Dombrowski)
Along with prix-fixe menus and pink slip parties (we’re looking at you, Globe), reduced corkage fees have become a popular recession-era tactic for restaurants trying to attract diners. Ontario jumped on the BYOB bandwagon in January 2005, it has never had the same success as similar programs in Quebec. That is, until now.
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