GQ food writer Alan Richman’s latest column was posted to its website today, and it’s creating a minor scandal in the online food world. The piece details a bizarre spat—complete with allegations of “a hardy pat on the ass”—between the sometimes-curmudgeonly critic and M. Wells, the infamously uneven cult haute-diner in Queens co-founded by a former partner in Montreal’s celebrated Au Pied de Cochon. Beyond the lengthy sermon on the ethics of food reviewing and an exegesis of the actual dispute, the piece is irresistible for Richman’s self-flagellation over the “disastrous decline in service” at the “hipster restaurants” that are now in the ascendancy (of which Toronto no doubt has its fair share). “Critics like me deserve some blame for the current proliferation of impossibly low service standards in so many casual New York restaurants,” he writes. “We tend not to censure lackadaisical conduct, thinking this is what customers want and that we would appear out of touch if we disapproved.” Read the whole story [GQ] »
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The housekeepers revolt: behind the labour dispute at the Royal York Hotel
In an era of decline for organized labour, an aggressive hospitality workers’ union is determined to turn menial labour into middle-class employment. To do so, they need to galvanize the recent immigrants who overwhelmingly staff the service industry. First stop, the Royal York
Battleground: the hotel union has co-opted celebrity guests, such as Martin Sheen, to draw attention to its cause (Photographs: Strikers by Cristal Cruz-Haicken; Street by Jerryb8/dreamstime.com/Getstock. Illustration by James Dawe)
On a warm morning last September, the managers of the Fairmont Royal York Hotel had a PR problem. The Toronto International Film Festival had just begun, and celebrities were trickling into the city. The 1,365-room downtown hotel was booked solid, and the lush Library Bar stocked with the ingredients for $14 TIFF Tinis, but outside on the sidewalk, hundreds of unionized Royal York workers were on strike, angrily accusing the hotel of exploiting them. They pounded on overturned buckets and exchanged call-and-response chants: “What do we want?” “Contract!” “When do we want it?” “Now!” And they marched back and forth across the grand Front Street entrance singing “We want a contract” to the tune of K’naan’s “Wavin’ Flag,” and hoisting red and black banners emblazoned with the logo of UNITE HERE, the aggressive international union that represents 8,000 hospitality workers across the GTA.
Outside the main doors, Martin Sheen stepped onto the pavement and was immediately mobbed by the crowd. He gave a thumbs-up to the strikers and began shaking hands and slapping backs, looking every bit the left-wing political hero he once played on television. The strikers eagerly linked arms with him and marched before the cameras and TV crews that were scrambling to get the best angle. Someone thrust a megaphone into Sheen’s hands, and he gamely improvised a few slogans. “When it gets tough in labour disputes like these, people say that it’s a lost cause,” he said, his voice rising passionately. “Well, I’m here to remind you that lost causes are the only causes worth fighting for!” The logic seemed a little shaky, but the crowd roared its approval anyway. “Stick to it like a stamp!” he shouted with a final wave, before he and his son Emilio Estevez were whisked off in a white Escalade. Read the rest of this entry »
New frontiers in customer service: Bell telemarketers swear and make death threats
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Late last year, the CRTC announced that it was slapping Bell Canada with $1.3 million in fines for violating the National Do Not Call List that the regulator had set up. This was a huge jump from the tens of thousands of dollars the CRTC had fined companies in the past—it was kind of hard to imagine what Bell had done to deserve it. Today, the Toronto Star is reporting the details of exactly what Bell’s telemarketers did wrong: profanity, abuse, suggestions of homicide.
On its second day of work, council gets down to the important stuff: food and bruised egos
A city council buffet in the Miller era (Image: Rob Ford for Mayor Campaign)
If yesterday was any indication, Rob Ford is in for a long four years. As the council met to approve choices for who got what committees, the disenfranchised left (some of the ladies wore pink as a little jab at Don Cherry) put up a doomed effort to try to secure some seats on the important committees, like the TTC and the police board. The Globe and Mail reports:
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When it comes to making restaurant reservations, is OpenTable a friend or foe?
From a customer’s perspective, OpenTable might seem like the perfect dovetailing of the Internet and dining: restaurant reservations are made and confirmed instantly. There’s no favouritism, waiting for a return e-mail or negotiating with front-of-house staffers. Lots of restaurants use it (290 in Toronto alone), and, perhaps best of all, it’s free. For all that convenience, restaurant owners foot the bill.
That’s where the problem comes in for Mark Pastore. He’s the chef at San Fransisco’s famous Incanto restaurant. In an eloquent, if long-winded, indictment of the service posted on his eatery’s Web site last month, Pastore notes that OpenTable’s fees are exorbitant. “OpenTable is out for itself, the worst business partner I have ever worked with in all my years in restaurants,” one anonymous restaurateur from NYC told him. “If I could find a way to eliminate it from my restaurants, I would.”
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Empire state of mind: Chris Nuttall-Smith takes on Scott Conant’s Scarpetta
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 »
TTC customer service report is less absurd than we’d hoped, but it’s still pretty funny
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After months of investigation and deliberation, the TTC’s Customer Service Advisory Panel (which sounds funnier when we call it CSAP) has released its final report. The report is missing some of our key recommendations—the word “sobriety” never turns up—but many items are welcome nonetheless. The Toronto Star remarks dryly that CSAP’s head, Steve O’Brien, “has said repeatedly that the communications issues, both internal and external, identified by the panel wouldn’t surprise most TTC riders.” So at least we were warned.
Best of the City: our guide to everything exemplary in Toronto in 2010
We’ve become a city obsessed with provenance. We know the politics of the farmer who collects our eggs, whether our T-shirt designer plays in an indie band, and which Japanese artisan hand-carved our kid’s non-toxic forks. We gossip about the people behind our stuff like they’re celebrities because notable origins almost always mean a superior product—and loonies well spent. This year, our crew of expert consumers dug deep, bravely comparing the gleam of cufflinks, road-testing fixed-gear bikes, sniffing perfumes, measuring poolboys’ biceps, and sampling an entire summer’s worth of steak, ice cream, fresh-squeezed lemonade and more. Here is our guide to everything exemplary in Toronto in 2010
Best of the City 2010: tailors, exterminators and 13 other top helpers
Left: top tailor Giovanni of Italy; Right: Jump Start Dog Training (Images: Jay Shuster)
Tweeting about the tables you are serving, while serving them? There’s an app for that
Cheque, please: the iPod Touch could change the way we're served (Image: Thibault Poix)
While being served by various 20-somethings between acting gigs, we’ve often wondered if there isn’t a way to depersonalize the situation even more. Now, thanks to the good people at Apple, there is. A new iPod application developed by two young bucks from Laval allows servers to use iPods to take down orders.
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Free lap dances for G20 leaders: “It’s a respect thing”
Happy birthday, Mr. President, indeed (Image: Karon Liu)
Dundas East burlesquerie Filmores is offering free lap dances to heads of state this weekend—an attraction advertised on a marquee seen more by protestors in Allan Gardens than politicians at the Convention Centre. (Zanzibar, on Yonge Street, is also trying to entice delegates.) Treating world leaders to some no-muss debauchery has been a tradition for Filmores since 1988, when Toronto hosted the G7 Summit. “It’s a respect thing,” says Filmores owner Howard Adams. “We know how hard they work.” Adams won’t say if anyone noteworthy has popped in for the special but professes that all leaders will receive service with a smile. “We don’t discriminate,” he says. Filmores also took out an ad in the Monday Toronto Sun that listed its prices in all G20 currencies.
Workers at French-owned hotel strike just before French G20 delegates arrive
An inflatable rat supports the striking Novotel workers: "Vive le Novotel Libre!" (Image: Ashleigh Ryan)
If anyone knows a Toronto hotel with any rooms left, the French G20 posse could use your help. Workers at the downtown Novotel, where the French delegation planned to stay, seemed to be inspired by Les Bleus when they refused to practice on Sunday. Eighty Novotel workers walked off the job at 6:30 a.m. this morning and are rallying this afternoon to protest what they see as “disregard for job security and workplace safety.” According to the Globe and Mail, the workers believe their rights have been eroded since 2008, the last time their contracts were negotiated. Novotel’s parent company is Accor, whose French origins make the whole situation all the more titter-worthy.
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The inn crowd: Toronto’s five new luxury hotels
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 »
Where to eat lunch this week: Auberge du Pommier
The $18 midday menu at this legendary French fixture is the best lunch north of Bloor
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