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Torontonians have, by and large, gotten used to being behind the times when it comes to street food. But we didn’t expect Hamilton to quietly creep into the forefront of the curbside food revolution. This summer, two new food trucks, Cupcake Diner and Gorilla Cheese, are slated to start prowling Steeltown’s mean streets in search of hungry diners—and we have to say, we’re a little jealous.
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Two Steeltown food trucks set to show Toronto the Slow how it’s done
Pizza Gigi saga update: police put restraint order on the Harbord pizza shop
(Image: Jessica Darmanin)
The saga of the alleged drug peddling at Pizza Gigi continues, as the police move to block any sale on the shop. Back in February, we reported that the beloved Hardbord Street pizza shop had been raided following allegations of drug possession and trafficking on the part of owner Salvatore “Sammy” Crimi. To the surprise of many, the pizza parlour reopened a few weeks later after cleaning up. (The shop even made it onto SNL’s Weekend Update.) Now, the Toronto Star is reporting that Toronto police have obtained a restraint order on the property:
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Weekly Lunch Pick: the fluffy ricotta gnocchi at Carisma
Carisma’s fluffy ricotta gnocchi
Steps away from the King Eddy, this Italian restaurant—owned by the Pagliaro family, of Il Mulino fame—is full of businesspeople willing to venture a little beyond the Financial District for lunch.
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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)*
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Toronto chefs and Ontario wineries join forces for Japan earthquake relief dinner
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In response to the devastating earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan last week, a number of Toronto chefs and Ontario wine producers will be joining forces in a fundraiser on Sunday, March 27th, organized by Nobuyo Stadtländer, the business partner and wife of Michael Stadtländer.
Introducing: Blowfish on Bay, the financial district outpost of the King Street resto-lounge
The dining room at Blowfish on Bay features a chandelier crafted from Pyrex tubes (Image: Catherine Pan)
The owners of King West Asian fusion resto-lounge Blowfish are banking on the Bay Street crowd with their newest venture, Blowfish on Bay, an expansive new restaurant in the Bay-Adelaide Centre. The new location boasts a more refined take on the look than the King Street original—think business lunches and after-work cocktails instead of late dinner and drinks.
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Guu’s Bloor Street location to open next week
Outside the Bloor Street location of Guu last night
UPDATE: Eye Weekly is reporting that the launch has been delayed until next week due to a problem with the restaurant’s water tank.
Pending the good graces of the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario, the hotly anticipated Bloor Street location of Guu may be opening as soon as this Friday. We’ve been eagerly awaiting the opening ever since we caught wind of rumblings about a potential Bloor and Spadina venture back in the summer. (Owner James Kim told us last July that the new edition of the notoriously popular izakaya-style restaurant would inhabit a former Burger King location.) Earlier today, we got a hold of Masaru Ogasawara, the chef at the Church Street location, who confirmed that Guu Number Two should be open by Friday, pending the arrival of a liquor licence (expected sometime today). Friday’s only two days away, which means the lineups will probably start about now.
Canadian chefs: local food is still the new black
Bite-sized desserts were one of the few fun trends in this year’s survey (Image: Eliyas J)
The results from the 2011 Canadian Chef Survey were announced Monday at the fourth annual Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association show. More than 500 chefs confirmed what locavores and the 400-plus attendees at last week’s Terroir Symposium knew all along: locally produced food and locally inspired dishes are hot. Less surprising still was the focus on sustainable practices and nutritionally driven plates. While the list hardly qualifies as revolutionary, it is interesting to compare this year’s results to the up-and-coming trends predicted one year ago. So how close was it?
Busted: Pizza Gigi makes it to Saturday Night Live
The story of Pizza Gigi’s recent legal troubles—authorities allegedly discovered $1 million worth of marijuana at the late-night pizza parlour on Harbord Street—reads like a throwaway one-liner. Which is why we weren’t exactly shocked that Seth Meyers gave it the “Weekend Update” treatment on Saturday Night Live last weekend.
Introducing: Fanny Chadwick’s, a friendly new diner in a familiar Annex spot
Fanny Chadwick’s owners Leanne Martineau and Sarah Baxter (Image: Gizelle Lau)
For years, the house-turned-restaurant at the corner of Dupont and Howland has been something of a neighbourhood eyesore, a reminder to longtime Annex locals of the site’s heyday as Angelo’s Diner. When the most recent tenant, AAA Chinese, shut down, Leanne Martineau (Terroni, Senses) and Sarah Baxter (The Feathers), both Annex residents and 20-year food-industry veterans, decided to bring the old diner back to life. One year and half a million dollars in renovations later, this corner house has been transformed into Fanny Chadwick’s, a neighbourhood diner named after a 19th-century Annex playwright (the chapel at Royal St. George’s College features a stained glass window dedicated to her).
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Q&A with Fergus Henderson: the father of nose-to-tail eating comes to Toronto
Fergus Henderson (Image: Laurie Fletcher)
It’s not hard to discern the influence that chef Fergus Henderson—co-owner of London’s legendary St. John Restaurant and spiritual godfather to nose-to-tail dining—has had on Toronto’s food scene. Think beef cheeks (Foxley), sweetbreads (Cowbell) and bone marrow (Black Hoof). The self-trained chef is widely credited with revitalizing modern British cooking, and making offal and other dismissed animal parts worthy of a Michelin star. Henderson will be making the keynote speech at Terroir, the Toronto hospitality industry symposium, on March 1. We recently spoke with the low-key chef, who shared his feelings on the new popularity of offal, misconceptions about his cooking and his future projects.
Local media go a little crazy over the return of the Green Room, for some reason
The Green Room: the more things change, the more they stay the same (Image: John Michael McGrath)
When the Green Room closed down last year after a series of health violations, it was an open question as to when, or even whether, the Annex dive-slash-legend would open again. Well, brace yourselves, Toronto: the old student hangout has reopened, and the city’s new media crowd is all over it. Apparently, the story was broken by a drunken post on Reddit, but OpenFile, BlogTO and Torontoist were on the story by Sunday afternoon. The news exploded on Twitter on Sunday afternoon, because, well, nobody seemed to know what was going on, and excited speculation is pretty much what Twitter is made for.
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Salad King confirms grand reopening date (for real this time)
Salad King’s now-destroyed old digs (Image: Shuichi Aizawa)
We’ve just received the news that Salad King will be ready to serve its first bowl of golden curry on Tuesday, February 22, with the official grand reopening to follow on March 16. Ernest Liu, owner of the venerable cheap eats temple, confirmed that Toronto Hydro started its long-delayed work this morning (initial reports had the opening date pegged as February 12). Liu is hopeful that the job, required for the new high volume kitchen’s power draw, will be complete by the end of the week. Construction on the dining room is already in its final phases.
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The Weekender: Winterlicious, Barrymore and six other can’t-miss events
1. CONNECTING: TORONTO IS AN AWFUL CITY
As part of the ROM’s regular Connecting series, Toronto Star urban affairs columnist Christopher Hume expounds on gridlock, pollution and—shudder—transit. Counterintuitively, Hume also explains how the much-yearned-for “better future” is happening right now. Jan. 28. $50. Royal Ontario Museum, 100 Queen’s Park, 416-586-8000, rom.on.ca.
2. WINTERLICIOUS Read the rest of this entry »
The most delicious part of winter is here! In addition to the prix fixe menus at some of the city’s best restaurants, there are 14 extra foodie events, including a maharaja-themed evening at the AGO, a Chinese New Year celebration at Spice Route and an Iron Chef–style competition at Fort York between C5′s Ted Corrado and Beast’s Scott Vivian. Jan. 28 to Feb. 10. toronto.ca/special_events/winterlicious.
Introducing: The Gabardine, a neighbourhood gastropub in the middle of the financial district
(Image: Gizelle Lau)
For over a decade, Katherine Rodrigues and Alison Mackenna worked in many of Toronto’s busiest Bay Street restaurants—white-tablecloth affairs where the food sometimes played second fiddle to the atmosphere. So when the two got together with chef and restaurateur Rodney Bowers—of Rosebud, Citizen and Le Petit Castor—the result was bound to put the focus where it belonged. Enter The Gabardine: a cozy yet sophisticated mom-and-pop neighbourhood gastropub smack dab in the middle of Bay Street (true to its location, The Gabardine is closed on weekends).
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