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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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Introducing: Bannock, Oliver and Bonacini’s new café and restaurant at The Bay’s flagship store
Inside Bannock, the new collaboration between Oliver and Bonacini and HBC (Image: Renée Suen)
It’s no secret that Hudson’s Bay Co. has undergone some big changes in recent years. The retailer’s revitalization project at its Queen Street flagship store, in partnership with Compass Group Canada and Oliver and Bonacini, is the first move toward a national conversion of its food services. To that end, it’s opened up two new restaurants aimed at attracting an increasingly food-conscious public: Foodwares Market, a modern food hall on the lower level, and Bannock, a new restaurant and café at the corner of Queen and Bay.
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Introducing: Hammersmith’s, Riverdale’s newest spot for scones and other breakfast favourites
Inside Riverdale’s newest brunch spot (Image: Karolyne Ellacott)
Hammersmith’s, the brainchild of boyfriend-girlfriend duo Brittany Peglar and Colin Reed, is a new brunch spot in brunch-laden Riverdale, housed in a space previously occupied by a diner for 50-odd years. The couple does both sweet (Peglar) and savoury (Reed), keeping the focus on breakfast. They’ve already managed to draw a loyal clientele, with regulars popping in just after 9 a.m. for either a quick coffee or a full-on brekkie.
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Introducing: Soma Chocolatemaker, the new King West location of the Distillery chocolate shop
Inside the new King West store
David Castellan and his wife Cynthia Leung are as proud as new parents of the beautiful, 3,000-square-foot space that is the new King West location of Soma, their pioneering chocolate shop, which started out in the Distillery. While all raw ingredient work (from bean to bar) will still be done at the original location, here it’s all about turning the raw stuff into some of the most incredible truffles in town—all right under the gaze of their enamoured customers.
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Introducing: The Primal Grind, a sugar- and dairy-free café in a crossfit gym (no, really)
The Primal Grind sits inside the Academy of Lions crossfit gym (Image: Gizelle Lau)
Toronto’s independent coffee scene has boomed in the past year. With that rapid growth has come new levels of coffee snobbery. First, the new breed waved goodbye to the humble drip. More recently, hardcore baristas have done away with decaf, with one even calling it “the devil’s blend.” Now, The Primal Grind, a new café on Dundas West, is taking coffee purism to a new level: no milk, no sugar.
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Introducing: Canoe, the Oliver and Bonacini flagship revamped
(Image: Renée Suen)
After 16 years at the top, Canoe, one of the city’s culinary beacons, closed its doors on New Year’s Day for a renovation. Unlike most restaurants, they actually completed it on schedule. Although we previewed Canoe’s overhauled space during its Winterlicious opening, the Oliver and Bonacini flagship officially relaunched last week with a completed dining room and revamped menu, so we thought we’d take a closer look.
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Flavour of the Month: eight core-warming winter cocktails
The city’s best bar hands are dreaming up boozy cocktails to take the edge off our mid-February malaise
Soma, the Distillery’s chocolate mecca, to open new downtown café
Soma’s new space (Image: David Castellan)
It takes time to coax a cacao bean into chocolate, and it took seven years for David Castellan and Cynthia Leung, Soma’s husband and wife co-owners, to heed the siren call of expansion. Bolstered by the ongoing success of their Distillery location, the bean-to-bar chocolatier and café will be spawning a second location at 443 King Street West, near Spadina, and a couple of doors down from the Calphalon shop.
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Fresh and Wild jumps on the “convenience food” bandwagon
As we reported a few months ago, the trend in food shopping is toward streamlined shops that offer prepared food for busy urbanites. Longo’s is doing it, Loblaws is doing it, Mark McEwan is doing it, and now Fresh and Wild is doing it. Construction is underway at the Distillery District location as Jason Rosso, ex-chef at Sassafraz and Rosewater Supper Club and currently the director of operations of the Distillery Restaurant Group, is giving the grocery store a makeover to make it more accessible to the neighbourhood, as well as to hungry travellers. “Our primary focus is on prepared foods, like roast chickens and oven-fresh pizzas. We also started a salad bar where you can pick and choose from 30 items.”
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Someone’s in the kitchen with Twitter: The inescapable Web tool is becoming the next frontier of foodie news
Twitter, Twitter everywhere
Almost overnight, Twitter is everywhere. Celebrities and CEOs, moms and musicians, politicians and priests are all scrambling to tap into the zeitgeist and answer Twitter’s simple prompt: “What are you doing?” And foodies are no exception. The micro-blogging tool is rapidly becoming a key source of news on the Toronto—and the global—gastronomic scene. Like chatty John Mayer, who famously tweets almost as much on-line as he does onstage, Toronto chefs, restaurateurs and shopkeepers are no slouches on the techno trend. Here, a look at who’s chirping about what.
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