(Images: Steve Krug; Royal Ontario Museum)

The Royal Ontario Museum announced an interesting change of the guard today at C5, the continental fine dining restaurant perched atop of the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal. Ted Corrado, who’s been the executive chef since the restaurant opened, has been promoted to regional executive chef at Compass Leisure, a subsidiary of the Compass Group, the national food-service company that runs C5 for the museum (we took a look inside Corrado’s fridge for our Crisper Confidential series in March). Replacing Corrado is Corbin Tomaszeski, of Restaurant Makeover and Dinner Party Wars fame, who also ran the kitchen at Holt Renfrew’s café. While Corrado’s menus have tended toward innovative dishes with the occasional molecular touch—one tasting menu started with butternut squash that had been cured, compressed and shaved, with a citrus tea syrup and crumbled caramelized cream—Tomaszeski is better known for less complicated fare. “My style is simple, but classic,” he said in a release. “I believe the best meals use everyday ingredients to create beautifully presented dishes that are uncomplicated, accessible and appealing to everyone.” Tomaszeski’s new menu at C5 includes truffled chips with fleur de sel, flatbreads with seasonal toppings and a lobster B.L.T. salad. He’ll also be responsible for the food at the Food Studio Café and C5’s catering service.

Lee at his last opening, Lee Lounge (Image: Renée Suen)

The comings and goings at 777 Dundas Street West sure have been attracting a lot of attention of late. The one-time home of Le Corner has now been scooped up by none other than Susur Lee. This time, however, there’s a catch: according to Now magazine it’s Lee’s sons, Levi and Kai Bent-Lee, who will be the faces of the joint, with their celebu-dad popping in and out of the kitchen.

While there has already been much speculation, we spoke to Lee’s better half, Brenda Bent (of Restaurant Makeover fame), while checking out Hrvati Bar, which she designed. Bent told us the place aims to have a more youthful slant than some of Lee’s other places, and that the boys hope to open before Christmas, though nothing is certain in the restaurant business. Whatever comes of the still-unnamed spot, it’s already in good company on the foodie strip, which includes the likes of the Black Hoof and its cocktail bar, Porchetta and Co., Campagnolo and most recently, L’Ouvrier.

• Susur does Dundas [Now]
• Susur and sons headed to Dundas West [BlogTO]
• Susur Lee to open new restaurant with sons on Dundas Street in Toronto [National Post]

Ruby Eats is the sister food shop to Lynn Crawford and Cherie Stinson’s nearby restaurant, Ruby Watchco. (Image: Gizelle Lau)

March 2010 saw the opening of Ruby Watchco, a new Riverside venture by Restaurant Makeover duo chef Lynn Crawford and designer Cherie Stinson (who also works at Yabu Pushelberg). Two weeks ago, the same team opened their newest venture, Ruby Eats, a new neighbourhood specialty grocery store.

Located on the corner of Queen Street East and Grant Street, steps from Ruby Watchco, Ruby Eats is meant to feel like “stepping into the chef’s pantry,” says Stinson. Indeed, you can find the same ingredients and products used at the restaurant on the shelves. The store offers fresh, seasonal produce and cheeses from local farms and 100km Foods. There are also other specialty products like olive oils, vinegars and sauces; a small selection of food books; Le Creuset merchandise; kitchen gadgets; and a special Ruby Eats line. The homemade products include jams and marmalades ($6-7), truffle honey ($8), flavoured salts ($5), infused caramels (Ruby Watchco chef Lora Kirk’s bacon-infused caramel, $10, is particularly eye-catching), marinades and candied olives ($9), which are roasted for 20 hours in maple syrup and olive oil.

Stinson’s design takes inspiration from European-style kitchens to create a warm, inviting space for locals to browse, complete with homemade products in mason jars, a classic tin ceiling with a rotating fan and large glass apothecary jars filled with bulk spice blends. Saturday and Sunday afternoons feature kitchen demos of seasonal dishes (last week’s was a summer corn succotash). For hungry visitors dropping in, there’s a small selection of take-away foods, coffee, baked goods (Nanaimo bars, $3.50, at the time of our visit) and drinks like homemade lemonade ($3)—plus the requisite stools to watch passersby on Queen Street East.

Start the slideshow »

Ruby Eats, 742 Queen St. E., 416-901-3355, www.rubyeats.com.

Brad Long’s new restaurant at the Brick Works is called Café Belong—get it? (Image: Gizelle Lau)

After almost half a year of delays, Brad Long’s Café Belong finally opened at the Evergreen Brick Works on Saturday morning, to throngs of farmers’ market shoppers. Long is well established in the Toronto food scene, as a co-owner of Veritas and a previous executive chef for Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment and the CN Tower’s 360 restaurant (he’s of course also familiar from Food Network Canada’s Restaurant Makeover). “We were looking for someone who would be able to create and cater to a community fostering local food,” Brick Works programming director Arlene Stein told us. “Brad was a perfect fit.”

Long’s sourcing philosophy at Café Belong is just what you would expect from a restaurant at the Brick Works: local, organic, sustainable and otherwise responsibly sourced ingredients, much of which come from the farmers who show up at the market every Saturday morning. The lunch, dinner and brunch menus, created by Long and chef de cuisine Daniel DeMatteis, lean heavily on nostalgic dishes that make the most of seasonal produce, with plenty of vegetarian and vegan options. Appetizers include the St. Lawrence Salad, with greens, grains, nuts, fruit and cheese ($12) and cured fish with honeyed crème fraiche ($14), while heartier mains include grilled beef ($24), milk-braised lamb with spelt ($19) or vegetarian pot barley ($16). The menu also features themed family-style meals, like a “beef BBQ” or “vegan’s banquet,”  at market prices. There’s also a takeout café during the day, with coffee, tea, pastries and breakfast and lunch sandwiches.

Behind the bar, mixologist Renata Clingen (also the restaurant GM) plans to feature an extensive cocktail menu, wines from Somewhereness (a collection of boutique wineries including Flat Rock, Norman Hardie, Stratus and Cave Springs), Muskoka Brewery beers on tap and other Canadian craft brews. Pop is made in-house, from syrup to carbonation, yet another example of getting as close to the source as possible.

John Tong of 3rd Uncle Design (Cava, The Drake, Tattoo Rock Parlour) created an airy dining room inspired by Argentinian cafés. Reclaimed wooden beams loaded with red, orange and yellow Le Creuset pots separate the kitchen from the dining room. Over the heads of diners hangs a giant steampunk light fixture that was inspired by Ferruccio Sardella’s Watershed Wall sculpture at Brick Works Antoni Tapies’s “Cloud and Chair” in Barcelona.

Start the slideshow »

Café Belong, Evergreen Brick Works, 550 Bayview Ave., 416-901-8234, cafebelong.ca

Guest judge Lynn Crawford with host Thea Andrews (Image: Food Network Canada/Insight Productions)

TOP CHEF CANADA
Season 1 | Episode 10

This week’s episode of Top Chef Canada began with Vancouver-based chef François Gagnon mourning the loss of recently eliminated “hockey man” Darryl Crumb. What form did the tribute take? The ritual placement of a hockey stick in what we think was Crumb’s old bunk, of course (somehow it was fitting that the Bruins were already four goals up against the Canucks at that point). Last night also featured what we were primed to believe would be the demise of tough-as-nails Connie DeSousa, who, despite eight seasons of Top Chef history warning against the use of store-bought pastry, used it anyway. The fallout from that cataclysmic decision and a full recap of everything else that went down, after the jump.

Quickfire

The Porter stewardesses who so delighted Dale MacKay (Image: Food Network Canada/Insight Productions)

When host Thea Andrews introduced that the quickfire challenge was to “design a dish for a busy customer who’s always on the move,” we knew some brilliant product placement was afoot. Cue the team of stewardesses from Porter Airlines in full uniform, to the delight of Dale MacKay, who rather ruefully remarked, “It’s nice to see girls, we don’t see them very often…except the ones we’re cooking with.” (In a feat of skillful editing surely calculated to infuriate female viewers everywhere, he later opined that he was expecting an all-male showdown in the finals because the female contenders, Andrea and Connie, “are running out of ideas.”)

The chefs were asked to create two dishes: morning and afternoon snack–sized meals for Porter passengers. Toronto chefs Dustin Gallagher (Grace) and Andrea Nicholson (Great Cooks on Eight) ended up on the bottom. At the top? MacKay’s breakfast, a pepper-bacon sandwich with apples tossed in cream cheese, and Rossi’s lunch, a grilled chicken club sandwich with Grand Marnier chocolate fondant.

But in the end, it was DeSousa who dug herself out from the rut of episode nine and won the heart of guest judge Lynn Crawford, chef and owner of Riverside’s Ruby Watchco and host of Restaurant Makeover and Pitchin’ In. And she did it with granola and homemade blueberry yogurt. The prize: a round trip for her and a guest for a culinary adventure in Chicago—not to mention the satisfaction of being able to say that female chefs are “sometimes even better than male chefs.” Connie 1, Dale 0.

Elimination

In what turned out to be a Top Chef version of Pitchin’ In, the chefs were tasked with preparing three dishes that showcased the terroir and food of one of six regions across Canada. Connie drew “La Belle Province,” to some confusion (she turned to Gagnon for clarification); Rossi and MacKay got lucky with their native regions, “Ontario Greenbelt” and “Interior B.C.,” respectively; Francois picked “Maritimes”; Andrea got “Prairies”; and Dustin drew “Alberta” after saying, with his trademark adorable grin, “I hope I don’t get the Northwest Territories or Yukon!”

Connie DeSousa’s three winning dishes (Image: Food Network Canada/Insight Productions)

Joining Crawford as an additional taster at the judge’s table was Jonathan Gushue of Langdon Hall, the Cambridge restaurant lauded for its local and regional cuisine (it was rated the 77th best restaurant in the world in 2010). After the tasting was done, MacKay and Connie, archenemies for an episode, ended up at the top of the heap. MacKay’s Interior B.C. feast started with poached eggs with morel mushrooms and hollandaise, moved on to roasted B.C. salmon and peas cooked three ways, and finished with a venison loin served with bannock, a flatbread borrowed from native cuisine (and one of the more exciting things we’ve seen in this competition so far). DeSousa served a smoked trout and potato salad, a venison and veal tourtière and finally, a homey wild blueberry pie. Despite the producers’ hints that her store-bought pie pastry would be her ultimate downfall, DeSousa walked away with her second win of the night. Connie 2, Dale 0. (To be honest, we were a bit shocked: chef Tom Collicchio, head judge of the U.S. Top Chef, would never have let the store-bought pastry go.)

At the bottom of the pile were Gagnon and Nicholson, who failed in both the concept and the execution of their meals. In the end, Nicholson was eliminated for dishes that head judge Mark McEwan referred to as “cafeteria food” and Gushue said reflected “no skill.” It also probably didn’t help that Nicholson went off on a tirade, blaming the heat in the kitchen for her execution and complaining that if she’d used store-bought pastry like DeSousa, she’d “feel like a douchebag.” Girl power indeed.

Sadly, we totally saw it coming. After several clips of Nicholson talking about wanting to open her own restaurant and the producers slotting in as many of her jokes about MacKay as possible, the whole episode was pointing to her demise.

Next time on Top Chef Canada

With five chefs left, the contestants are confronted with a street food challenge—they have to make and serve their food using a hot dog cart in Nathan Phillips Square (the irony should be obvious to anyone who’s paid attention to the city’s misguided attempts at building a street food program). Expect to see MacKay getting frustrated with street food (maybe he’ll go Hulk!), Connie making sausages despite a lashing from McEwan in episode eight, and the return of judge Shereen Arazm with her giveaway “this tastes yucky” face. It’s the homestretch now, and we’ll be there to take it all in.

Our weekly Top Chef Canada leader board:

Yonge Street’s poshest stretch, from Ramsden Park up to the Summerhill LCBO, has two strong suits: food and decor. Locals from the tree-lined side streets keep the shops going during the week, while the weekend brings floods of shoppers from further afield. Here, our list of 23 essential restaurants, food shops, furniture stores, clothing boutiques and beauty parlours along tony Toronto’s main drag. By Laura Cameron, Carley Fortune, Matthew Hague and Renée Suen | Photography by Jamie Hogge, Emma McIntyre, Renée Suen and Jenna Marie Wakani

START THE ROSEDALE-SUMMERHILL TOUR »

The best perk ever
I used to work as Dan Aykroyd’s personal chef in Kingston, and then I decided to move to Santa Barbara to cook at a resort. He gave me a car as a goodbye present and said, “If you’re gonna live in California, you’re gonna need a California car.” It was a gold ’66 Impala—the same car a lot of L.A. gangsta rappers drive. I keep the licence plate in my office.

A badass leather jacket
I got this jacket in 2003 when I was going through a rebel phase. It was the same month I separated from my ex-wife, opened my restaurant Nectar, and got signed to Restaurant Makeover. It cost $1,000—which was huge money at the time—at Due West on Queen Street. I love that it’s worn in and a little beat-up. I’m too old for it now, but I bust it out once in a while.

Kitschy collectibles
I have been collecting antique egg cups since the early ’90s. I got the idea from the Park Avenue Café in New York, after I ordered the flan and it was served in an eggshell set inside an egg cup. I thought this was fantastic, so I started scouring flea markets and garage sales. Now my mom and friends are on the mission, too. My favourites are from post-war, 1940s Japan; they say “Made in Occupied Japan” on the bottom.

Mont Blanc pens
Mont Blanc comes out with an outrageously priced Writers Edition pen every year. This one is called the William Faulkner, and it has signed just about every deal I’ve ever made, including my contract for The Opener.

My booze bag
I travel a lot, and I’m a big wine guy, so I pick up nice bottles wherever I go. The special carrying case I use is called a WineCruzer. It’s the only way to properly transport wine on a plane—it’s insulated, and you can lock it and check it.

My knives
A chef’s knives are like an artist’s paintbrushes. I designed my own prototypes. The weight of a knife is important: mine are light, with very
soft neoprene handles you can hold onto all day.

Luxe skincare
I splurge on Crème de la Mer moisturizer—it’s $290 a pot at Holts. Whenever I have a girl over, I have to hide it.

My cooking inspiration
The Elements of Taste changed the way I thought about food. Gray Kunz, the crazy New York chef who co-wrote it, talks about flavours in terms of pushing and pulling and which tastes are interacting in your mouth. It’s the one book I tell all chefs who work for me to read.

My latest tech toy
I got an iPad at the Eaton Centre as soon as they came out. I use it to watch the unedited footage of my show and to read the Globe and Mail and the New York Times. It is so incredibly handy to have my newspapers and 400 books in one place, and I don’t get ink all over my fingers. I justify the cost by thinking about how much money I’m going to save on wet naps.

My mid-life crisis car
I’ve dreamed about owning a Corvette since I was a kid. I finally got one, a 2010 Grand Sport, and I’m totally in love. It’s a two-seater, so my three kids asked where they’re supposed to sit. I told them, “In your mom’s car.”

(Images: Jamie Hogge)

I had to admire their cool. With only four hours to go before the grand opening of Ruby Watchco, the restaurant’s three owners—chef Lynn Crawford, designer Cherie Stinson and her husband, front-of-house veteran Joey Skeir—were showing no sign of nerves. They were just sitting around the lunch table at the back of the restaurant, laughing and swapping renovation stories over a bottle of pinot grigio and an excellent chicken cobb salad made by head chef Lora Kirk. If this were an episode of Restaurant Makeover, the TV show that made Crawford and Stinson celebrities, there would be cussing and tears and all sorts of last-minute nail-biting melodramas to negotiate. But everything was pretty much ready, or would be once the last of the green masking tape was peeled off the front window. Even the tall boughs of quince blossom in a vase on the bar co-operated: all the buds popped open that morning, precisely on cue.

Lynn Crawford (left) and head chef Lora Kirk at their new restaurant, Ruby Watchco, on Queen East (Image: Ryan Szulc)

As ownership groups go, this one is remarkably well qualified. Stinson is a top designer with Yabu Pushelberg whose work often takes her to China, Hawaii and the Middle East. Until last fall, Crawford was executive chef at the Four Seasons Hotel in New York City, the most prestigious job in North American hotel cooking. Glamorous Manhattan seems a long way from this stretch of Queen Street East, just a few doors down from Jilly’s strip club and Dangerous Dan’s diner, home of the famous Big Kevorkian burger. A small restaurant like Ruby Watchco shouldn’t be too much of a challenge for a chef used to managing five unionized outlets and a team of 70 cooks and sous-chefs. Then again, this is the first place any of them has ever owned, and that brings special responsibilities.

“We have to do everything ourselves, including trying to get the printer to work,” says Crawford, recalling the teams of experts at her disposal in New York. She waves a piece of paper covered in her handwriting. “These are next week’s menus.”

The list seems remarkably short, but that’s because Ruby Watchco is built on a bold and unusual concept. Crawford and Kirk have dispensed entirely with the notion of choice. Each night, they offer one simple four-course meal—salad, main, cheese and dessert—starring whatever ingredients they are able to source that day from local farmers. The style of food has been described by one of their friends as “souped-up home cooking.” At $49 a head, however, this is no cheap table d’hôte: every dish has to deliver. No doubt, some diners find the take-it-or-leave-it attitude bossy, but Crawford makes allowances for allergies and vegetarians and thinks most people will embrace it. “When you go for dinner at a friend’s house, you don’t ask what the menu is,” she points out. “That’s what we’re doing here—saying, Trust us, it’s going to be delicious.”

The casting video shows Adjey making his pitch in Toronto (at Kensington newcomer El Barrio tapas bar), but the trailer shows Adjey travelling to New Orleans to help a pair of brothers with their new restaurants.

Despite the semi-dirty title, we’re hoping The Opener has learned from the past mistakes of Restaurant Makeover: don’t give places stupid names, don’t choose utterly hopeless projects, and don’t turn every place into a minimalist resto-lounge with no soul (or customers).

• The Opener: Casting Call for Newbie Restaurateurs [Food Network]
• The Opener: Trailer [YouTube]

Given Crawford’s larger-than-life (or at least larger-than-Riverdale) persona, it would be easy to expect her to hog the spotlight, but she’s instead turning the attention to her ingredients, filling the menu with all things local in order to showcase Ontario’s farmers, growers and producers; as Crawford puts it, “They’re the real stars here.”

That may be so, but opening the back kitchen into the dining room doesn’t exactly downplay the chef’s role. Envisioning the dimly lit, autumn-toned dining room as an extension of their own homes, Crawford and crew roll out a brand new $49 fixed menu every day of the week. Much like at a dinner party, everyone eats and experiences the same thing—appetizer, entrée, cheese course and dessert—at the same time. Whether that means braised beef short ribs “bourguignon style” with Thompson Farms’ yukon potato purée or osso buco with parmesan herb risotto, it’s all designed to emphasize the ingredient more than the cook. Still, it takes a trusted chef to handle a fixed menu concept. Can she keep it up? The watch is ticking.

Ruby Watchco, 730 Queen St. E., 416-465-0100, rubywatchco.ca.

Crawford tells martiniboys.com that the menu will change every night, but expect traditional app, main, cheese and dessert plates, along with a week-long prix-fixe menu.

Tonight’s maiden menu: caesar salad with butter-poached chicken, corn, garlic croutons and a poached egg to start, followed by a grilled flank steak with black pepper, smoked mushrooms and onions, parsnips, and creamed leeks and spinach. The cheese plate consists of a decade-old cheddar from Ottawa, balsamic onion chutney with honey, and raisin-walnut bread. And to end the night, a lemon tart.

Ruby Watchco, 730 Queen St. E., 416-465-0100, rubywatchco.ca.

• Ruby Watchco, Toronto [Martini Boys]

The new dining room at Brassaii

This week marked the long-awaited reopening of King West institution Brassaii, and judging from the extensive menu redesign, the place is looking like more of an upscale dining spot than a Friday-night hangout for the mini-dress set.

The new one-page menus were designed by chef Bruce Woods, who left his five-year stint at Centro last year to join Brassaii, and seem to ensure that diners never need to leave the property: breakfast, brunch, lunch, dinner, dessert and late-night snacks are all covered. Expect breakfast and brunch staples, as well as sandwiches and burgers for lunch. As for dinner, it’s continental fare with hints of Asian influence: miso cod ($29), spaghettini with kobe beef meatballs ($20), chicken with a panko crust ($25).

Expect to pay anywhere from $12 for mixed greens to $28 for tuna and $32 for grilled beef tenderloin or roasted ostrich, the most expensive items on the dinner menu. A traditional plate of two eggs, bacon, toast and home fries to start the weekday is a reasonable $8, and a sandwich and fries combo for lunch is around $15.

The space has also been revamped. The Design Agency—whose mixed bag of projects includes Cheval, Hart House and Lobby—unearthed an elevator shaft that was previously hidden and built a new bar made of limestone, glass and steel as a room divider. Jumping on the in-house gallery bandwagon, the place now showcases installations by local artists, which are juxtaposed by large antique wooden doors from Egypt.

Brassaii, 461 King St. W. (at Spadina), 416-598-4730, brassaii.com.

As speculated, former Truffles chef Lora Kirk will join Crawford in the kitchen, creating an ever-changing menu that revolves around seasonal, local food that showcases Ontario growers.

• From chef to shepherd and back [Toronto Star]

Restaurant takeover: Lynn Crawford moves into The Citizen (Photo courtesy of Google)

After weeks of tongues wagging over the future of The Citizen, the Star has confirmed rumours that Restaurant Makeover stars Lynn Crawford and Cherie Stinson are taking over and revamping the Riverdale bistro. “Lynn had been hounding me for a full year to sell,” said former Citizen chef and proprietor Rod Bowers, who also owns Queen West’s Rosebud restaurant. Crawford hasn’t released her spot’s new name, or confirmed whether her former Truffles protégé Lora Kirk will be coming on board. “The food will be about sharing the table, supporting local,” she says. “It’s about me working with the growers, the farmers, the fishermen.” Cherie Stinson, who works for the international interior design firm Yabu Pushelberg (they did Canoe and the Hazelton Hotel), plans to complement Crawford’s socially conscious food by creating “a relaxed neighbourhood restaurant with communal tables and eclectic design.” The restaurant is scheduled to open in March 2010, managed by Stinson’s husband, Joey Skeir, who is also a partner.

• A restaurant makeover of their own [Toronto Star]

Go Long: celebrity chef Brad Long is opening a pub in Bloor West Village

Chef and Food Network star Brad Long has a quick answer when asked what will be on the menu at his new Bloor West gastropub: “Canadian food.” He pauses. “What the hell is Canadian food?”

Long has been trying to answer that question for a while, from his days at the CN Tower’s revolving restaurant, 360, to his current gigs as executive chef at King East’s Veritas and sometime-guest on Restaurant Makeover. The quest will continue when the new joint, officially named My Place: A Canadian Pub (subtitled “like a bad movie,” says Long), opens in early September. It will be the pub yin to Veritas’s bistro yang, but the grub will still hinge on Long’s stock-in-trade: seasonal, local ingredients.

So what is Canadian food? We can’t offer a definitive response, but Long is certainly on the right track. Expect a menu with all-Canuck inventions (like tourtière), mash-ups from cultural enclaves around the city, and a few dishes spun purely from Long’s imagination. Everything will take advantage of Ontario’s fish, game and wildlife abundance.

This may all sound familiar—who isn’t serving fresh and local these days?—but that’s only because it’s a popular act. That’s lucky for Long, considering he has many seats to fill. The four-floor My Place seats 75 on the rooftop patio alone (its former incarnation was Billy Bob’s Bistro and Saloon). Long isn’t worried: My Place sits snugly between Bloor West Village, Swansea and the Kingsway, and he expects to draw enough foot traffic to easily cover rent. “The trick is to get people to come back,” says Long.

Isn’t it always?

My Place: A Canadian Pub, 2448 Bloor St. W. (at Jane).