Royal Agricultural Winter Fair

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Running a restaurant? With TouchBistro, there’s an app for that

Screenshots from the app (Image: TouchBistro)

A Toronto-based software developer is trying to make scrawled order tickets a thing of the past with TouchBistro, an iOS app that aims to streamline the process of running a busy restaurant. With an iPad in hand, waiters can keep track of what tables they’re assigned to, show diners photographs of individual dishes, wirelessly transmit their orders to the kitchen and split bills on the fly. For managers, the software can generate daily sales reports and help with inventory and reservation management. The basic app is free, but the ability to print or email bills and quickly update an online menu costs $300 a year. And the hardware isn’t exactly cheap either; restaurants should prepare to shell out $1,500 for the basic infrastructure and $520 for each iPad after that—a good deal more than a laminated menu, but a good deal less than a full-blown POS setup like Squirrel. The system seems to be catching on—the people at TouchBistro tell us there are currently 30 restaurants in the city using the system, including Burger Bar, L’Ouvrier and 416 Snack Bar, whose Adrian Ravinsky is quoted on the TouchBistro site calling the product “beyond awesome.” The Harvest Grill at the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair even had a 14-iPad setup going. Whether all this will mean the end of the humble pen and paper remains to be seen.

The Dish

Foodie Follies

November 14, 2011 | 12:41 pm

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GALLERY: at this month’s TBD dining series, Acadia’s Matt Blondin let loose

Blondin’s tapioca course (Image: Gizelle Lau)

TBD is a monthly dining series that brings some of the city’s top chefs together with one of the foodie world’s current obsessions: the semi-secret pop-up dinner. Concocted by Dan Gutter (Drake Hotel, Auberge du Pommier, Susur) and designer Sukko Stach (Acadia), TBD offers one-time-only intimate dining experiences in a distinctive setting for no more than 12 guests. Past TBD dinners have featured Dustin Gallagher, Steve Gonzales and the guys behind Poutini’s. November’s TBD took place last week in a tucked-away private members’ club at the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair and featured Acadia chef Matt Blondin. For $150, the diners were exposed to Blondin’s wilder, more modernist side over 15 courses (with wine pairings).

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The Hype

To-Do List

November 2, 2011 | 3:05 pm

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The Weekender: Don Giovanni, Literary Death Match and six other events on our to-do list

Phillip Addis as Don Giovanni, giant pumpkins at the Royal Winter Agricultural Fair, Matthew Good

1. LITERARY DEATH MATCH TORONTO
In this singularly silly lit event, four authors (Grace O’Connell, Carolyn Black, Rebecca Rosenblum and Dani Couture this time around) give readings of their best pieces of writing. After each reading, the panel of judges (poet Ryan Kamstra, comedian Lindy Zucker and National Post books editor Mark Medley) offer up American Idol–esque commentary (more Paula than Simon) before narrowing the field to two finalists, who compete in a madcap showdown (last time involved throwing cupcakes at a poster of Margaret Atwood). November 6. $10. Gladstone Hotel, 1214 Queen St. W., 416-531-4635, literarydeathmatch.com.

2. THE ROYAL AGRICULTURAL WINTER FAIR
Even the hippest Torontonian could use a little rodeo in their lives now and again. The annual fair is back in town, with its gigantic horses, veggies of unusual proportion, craft shopping and the ever-popular SuperDogs. We do have one small beef with this longtime Toronto tradition: why does it have to be called the winter fair? For the record, it’s still fall, and we’re not nearly ready for winter yet. November 4 to 13. $22. Ricoh Coliseum, 100 Princes’ Blvd., 416-263-3400, royalfair.org.

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The Goods

From the Print Edition

February 7, 2011 | 10:23 am

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Great Spaces: One woman’s losing battle against handprints and shoe scuffs in an all-white house

By Victoria Webster

(Images: Michael Graydon )

OK, what’s wrong with this picture: white ceilings, white walls, white mouldings, white lacquered floors and two kids under five. Robyn Scott, a 37-year-old former institutional equities trader, freely admits to being a textbook type-A personality, which may explain why she chose such a crazy-making colour scheme. When she and her husband, Steven, the owner and CEO of Access Storage, decided to gut their newly purchased Forest Hill home, her friends tried to dissuade her from the all-white crusade, but Robyn was determined. She wanted a striking backdrop for her eclectic antique furniture.

Robyn approached 10 different contractors before she found an industrial flooring company willing to take on the lacquering job. Most of them balked at the idea of covering the beautiful hardwood. Then she found Michael Pelaic of Paint-Co in Mississauga, who approached the commission as an art project. The process was gruelling: sanding, epoxy primer, more sanding, more primer, then four coats of semi-gloss epoxy coating and two coats of high-gloss polyurethane topcoat—on all three storeys. The job took three weeks to complete.

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The Hype

To-Do List

November 3, 2010 | 10:30 am

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The Weekender: Royal Winter Fair, Day of the Dead Festival and six other events on our to-do list

Giddy up! (Images provided by the Royal Winter Fair)

1. CAPTURE THE FLAG (FREE!)
The suit-filled streets of the financial district get a Newmindspace make-over during this huge game of capture the flag on Bay. Teams get 10 minutes to plan before the game starts; organizers suggest bringing cellphones (for strategizing) and flashlights (it gets dark just after 6 now). Nov. 6. 8:30 p.m. Southwest corner of King and Bay Streets, newmindspace.com.

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The Informer

The Feds

June 11, 2010 | 3:48 pm

1 Comment

Tony Clement had final say on where to put federal culture money

Tony "The Decider" Clement (Image: Geoff Cheng)

A while back, we mentioned that the Conservative government, either to stoke its base or simply avoid embarrassing photo-ops, had rejigged its funding of big events around Canada in a way that left Pride Toronto with no federal funding. The government said then that this was just a result of a policy designed to spread the wealth around (socialism, anyone?), but a CBC report tells a different story. The national broadcaster is reporting that the decisions were made at the almost-top: Industry Minister Tony Clement was personally choosing which events got which money (that is, when he wasn’t rewriting Canada’s copyright laws, commissioning fake lakes or dropping a tonne of cash in his own Muskoka riding).

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The Informer

The Feds

May 11, 2010 | 1:11 pm

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Base instincts: Are the Tories playing to their core supporters in cutting off funding to Toronto Pride?

Unfunded: Toronto Pride gets shafted by the feds (Image: Neal Jennings)

Who can forget last summer, when then–tourism minister Diane Ablonczy, surrounded by drag queens, handed nearly half a million dollars to Toronto’s gay pride festival. The Conservative party went a little bit crackers, and many alleged that Ablonczy was punished for supporting the event. The debacle posed a number of problems for Prime Minister Stephen Harper, so this year he’s come up with a tidy little solution: Toronto Pride will get exactly $0 for its 2010 festival. An event that attracts hundreds of thousands of tourists to Toronto will get nothing from a program designed to boost tourism in Canada. The obvious question is, Why?

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The Dish

Pantry Raid

March 2, 2010 | 10:47 am

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Meet the “Claudia Schiffer of cows,” Canada’s $1.2-million superbovine

Popular Mechanics has provided a thorough analysis of why Missy, a P.E.I.-bred supercow alternately known as the Claudia Schiffer or Gisele Bündchen of bovines, sold for a staggering $1.2 million at the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair in Toronto last year. The supermodel comparison is apt, as Missy’s teats and legs are apparently unrivalled miracles of biology. Dairy farmers prefer teats that are perpendicular to the ground, bearing a shape that is compatible with milking machines. Missy’s well-developed legs indicate a healthy heart and chest cavity and provide more room for the udder (ideally, a cow’s udder should be at least eight inches wide, with strong supporting ligaments).

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The Dish

Read All About It

November 18, 2009 | 8:31 am

6 Comments

Sarah Palin invokes God while defending meat eating, Timothy’s World Coffee sold, the $1-million cow

Famed meat lover Sarah Palin (Photo by Roger H. Goun)

• Sarah Palin takes aim at vegetarians in her highly anticipated memoir, Going Rogue. The moose-hunting former governor’s justification for being a meat eater: “If God had not intended for us to eat animals, how come He made them out of meat?” Perhaps Palin should present her infallible logic to Hillary Clinton over carnivorous scones when the two meet for coffee. [Examiner]

• Paris no longer reigns supreme as the Michelin star capital of the world. With 11 three-star restaurants, Tokyo has inched ahead of the City of Light, which houses a meagre 10. Some observers say that comparing the two cities isn’t fair, as Tokyo is home to about 160,000 restaurants—about four times as many as Paris. [Bloomberg]

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The Dish

Culinary Curiosities

November 6, 2009 | 4:38 pm

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Five reasons to hit the Royal Winter Fair

Butter, the devil you know

The Royal Agricultural Winter Fair starts today, and since we can only spend so much time gawking at horses and Prince Charles, we thought we’d scope out some of the more interesting (read: weird) things to take in at the Ex this week. With its butter-carving contests and dog tricks, the fair proves that rural exhibitions can be fascinating to city folk—as long as they know what to avoid. Here, five choice destinations:

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