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Foie gras, surprise caviar orders and one tight ship: my 12-hour stage at Splendido

Renée Suen — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 19:47:04 +0000

The service entrance at Splendido (click any image for more info)

Our regular contributor Renée Suen was recently invited to put away her fork and don an apron to stage at Splendido (a culinary stage is a brief and usually unpaid educational stint at a restaurant). Renée is an ambitious home cook, but her professional experience consists mostly of high school summers working at a soup and sandwich shop and weekends slinging bubble tea during university. Can she handle the heat of 12 hours in a professional kitchen? Will chef de cuisine Patrick Kriss make her cry? Find out below, and check out our behind-the-scenes gallery at the end. Words and pictures by Renée Suen

12:23 a.m. (the night before): Chef Kriss messages me to make sure I’m still game. I send my confirmation and tell him about my borrowed (but new!) slip-resistant shoes, which are a half-size too big for me. He laughs at me.

10:55 a.m.: I arrive at Splendido’s service entrance and recognize Kevin Jeung (who moonlights at The Cookbook Store) among the eight cooks waiting nearby. I learn the names of my soon-to-be colleagues (including Vanessa, a new intern from Humber College, and Alain, one of the chefs de partie). I also learn that there’s a stagiaire from The County General, Splendido’s sister restaurant, who was accepted to stage on the condition that he shave his beard of five years. He did.

11:08 a.m: Kriss arrives and I follow the chefs into the bowels of Splendido’s two-level kitchen. Everyone puts on their chef’s whites and gets busy at their stations; I feel like a lost sheep. Kriss sets me up with garde-mangers Andrew and Rob, who give me the glamorous job of taking fresh herbs and packaging them for proper storage.

11:40 a.m.: My herb-picking instructions: pick out the best leaves, leaving about six millimetres of stem, then gently wash and dry them and pack them for storage.

12:02 p.m.: The entire brigade congregates at the bar for a brief (I stick to the side). Everyone’s equipped with a notebook, a pen and plastic containers of coffee. Kriss goes through the game plan for the day, the special menus planned for the week and the upcoming TBD dinner he’s hosting. Staff members acknowledge their duties with a respectful “Oui.”

12:21 p.m.: Rob comes by and tells me that stems aren’t necessary on the mint leaves. I have to go back through all my leaves to pick the stems off. At least I haven’t burned anything down yet. Meanwhile, Kriss works on some brussels sprouts taken from the garde-manger station and inspects the deliveries coming into the kitchen. He also tests out a new dish of cold cherrywood-smoked oysters.

1:31 p.m.: I’m now on my last batch of herbs, blue cress. I’m a little nervous about the low yield. Kriss looks over at my station and tells me my cress leaves aren’t blue enough. Sigh.

Next up, Renée gets to use a knife! »

Alternalicious: a roundup of rebel prix fixes outside the jurisdiction of Winterlicious 2012

Frances McInnis — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 21:43:43 +0000

Every year, some restaurants decide to opt out of the prix fixe madness of Winterlicious and offer their own special menus and bargains outside the strictures of the official program. “We do it to give Winterlicious a bit of competition, to bring people in,” Elle M’a Dit’s Gregory Furstoss told The Dish. “But we don’t have to have the pressure of being under Winterlicious—we don’t have 200 people booked!” Meanwhile, Ross Bonfanti of midtown’s Il Sogno Ristorante launched his winter prix fixe back when it was tough to get into the official festival and now, several years later, feels no need to jump on board. “I have a good thing going,” he told us. After the jump, a roundup of winter prix fixe menus and deals.

• Gregory Furstoss of Elle M’a Dit is offering prix fixe lunch and dinner menus until February 9. The lunch option is $17 and includes an appetizer, a dessert and a choice of two entrees, while the dinner prix fixe is $28 and features the same appetizer and dessert, but three different mains to choose from.

• Keith Froggett’s fine-dining staple, Scaramouche, is once again serving up the seafood with Lobsterlicious. The three-course prix fixe menu includes a lobster main (grilled, butter poached or served over gnocchi) along with a choice of appetizer and a dessert. At $62 a person, it costs a bit more than your average Winterlicious meal, but hey, for lobster at Scaramouche, it’s a steal. Lobsterlicious is available Monday through Thursday (except Valentine’s Day) until at least mid-February.

• Brunch hot spot School is looking to promote its dinner service with Schoolicious, which runs every Wednesday night from February 1 to March 28. Choose any appetizer, entrée and dessert off the regular menu (no scrimpy prix fixe portions here) for $25 per person.

• Il Sogno Ristorante has a $25 three-course prix fixe dinner that includes an appetizer, main and dessert during Il Sognolicious, which runs from January 27 to February 9. Diners can choose from a mix of regular menu items like the caprese salad, and specials, including sesame seed–encrusted tilapia and a winter salad with toasted walnuts, dried cherries and goat cheese.

• For diners interested in splashing out, Splendido will offer its Winter Game menu through February. The $120 splurge includes a smoked Rocky Point oyster; venison tartare with pastrami venison tongue; quail ballotine with hedgehog mushrooms, poached quince and Perigord truffles; boudin noir and crispy pork belly; rabbit saddle with Fleischnacka, carrots and mustard greens; cloudberry sorbet; and pear and walnut cake.

• Of course, daily deal websites like Groupon are starting to offer a whole other world of bargains for diners (even if the deals don’t always save you a ton of money). Elm Street Italian restaurant Oro won’t offer a prix fixe menu this winter, but does plan to offer a Groupon in the next month, events manager Geraldine Vickers told The Dish. “It’s kind of business as usual right now.”

• UPDATE: Cuban bistro Delux is serving both lunch and dinner prix fixe specials until February 9. The menus are set to change mid-week, but for now the lunch version includes a Cuban sandwich, fries and a Coke in a retro glass bottle for $15. Dinner is decidedly more continental: frisée salad with poached egg and lardon, braised rabbit pappardelle and bittersweet chocolate mousse for $35.

House of the Week: $1.9 million for an immaculately restored Victorian near U of T

Fraser Abe — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 17:55:32 +0000

ADDRESS: 61 Brunswick Avenue

NEIGHBOURHOOD: University

AGENT: Kevin Alvarez, Royal LePage Real Estate Services Ltd., Brokerage

PRICE: $1,869,000

THE PLACE: A 117-year-old bay-and-gable that’s Victorian on the outside, modern but comfortable on the inside.

BRAGGING RIGHTS: Not only is the home located in one of Toronto’s Heritage Conservation Districts, but it was so lovingly restored in 2010 that it was acknowledged by the Globe and Mail, and its contractor, Alberto Merelles, won a Community Builder award from the Harbord Village Residents’ Association for his work.

BIG SELLING POINT: Your family won’t have to fight for the best bedroom, because all five are spectacular—including one with an oversized bay window, one with its own fireplace and one with a massive terrace. All five have their own ensuite bathrooms.

POSSIBLE DEAL BREAKER: You’ll have some serious existential angst—and an endless debate with your friends—about which neighbourhood you actually live in: aspirational neighbours will claim it’s the Annex; Annex purists will claim that the Annex is only north of Bloor; crafty realtors will, of course, say you live in the South Annex; some will say it’s Harbord Village or simply University; your foodie friends will just know it as the area around Splendido.

BY THE NUMBERS:
• $1,869,000
• $7,031 in property taxes
• 4,300 square feet
• 117 years old
• 6 bathrooms
• 5 bedrooms
• 3 fireplaces
• 3 storeys
• 3 parking spaces

Year in Review: each of 2011’s weekly lunch picks, ranked

Andrew D'Cruz — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 14:05:46 +0000

Trying to choose a selection of our favourite lunch picks from the last year proved too much like choosing a selection of our favourite children. So instead we present a complete year of lunch picks, ranked by price, from a humble porchetta sandwich (a reasonable $6.75) to a somewhat less humble five-course feast (treat yourself for $100).

In case you were wondering, that’s a mean of $24.49, a median of $21 and a mode of $21. Happy New Year.

Weekly Lunch Pick: the refined decadence of Splendido’s holiday tasting menu

Matthew Fox — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 12:30:06 +0000

The foie gras appetizer in Splendido’s luxurious European Retreat lunch tasting menu (Image: Matthew Fox)

December’s here, and that means cold weather and holiday decadence. Splendido, Harbord Street’s temple of special-occasion dining, has responded in its usual fashion: the $75 five-course European Retreat lunch special, available every Friday (and certain Thursdays) for the rest of the month. The pace and flavours of this marathon tasting menu are inspired by the Mediterranean, but the ease and luxury of the meal reflect chef Victor Barry’s attention to detail. Each experience is meticulously planned: the amuse-bouche of potato-leek soup, for example, comes in a heated shot glass and is topped with a slick of olive oil, a coordinated moment of heaven for the nose, mouth and fingertips. On the same plate (or rather, plank of wood), are little rosemary marshmallows on edible Parmesan bark; every crunchy microfibre and cloudy puff feels intentional. An appetizer of foie gras could be mistaken for a delicious Pollock painting, with rich cubes of the stuff served artfully alongside sculpted pears and droplets of vanilla syrup. The risotto primo is both gentle and rough, with Merguez sausage and saffron sauce on rice that’s Platonically al dente. For the main, we sampled both the short rib and the roasted sea bass. Each is exceedingly competent in its execution, but eclipsed by the meal’s peripheral stunners, like the Carles Roquefort cheese served with rye crostini and candied Pink Lady apples (the collision of flavours is so intense, it shut down our other senses so we could focus on our tastebuds). Closing the meal with a low-ball glass layered with chocolate verrine, caramel and peanut ice cream is excessive to the point of debauchery—but that’s what makes it so perfect.

Cost: $100 after tax and tip

Time: Just take the afternoon off (2 hours, 18 minutes)

N.B.: European Retreat served December 2, 9, 15, 16, 22, 23

Splendido, 88 Harbord St., 416-929-7788, splendido.ca

Q&A with Nathan Myhrvold, the author of Modernist Cuisine, 2011’s most talked about cookbook

Renée Suen — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 22:01:43 +0000

(Image: Renée Suen)

Unless you’ve been hiding under some kind of rock where no foodies are allowed, you’ve probably heard of Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking, the stunning six-volume, 2,400-page, 50-pound, $625 cookbook that came out early this year. Nathan Myhrvold, who spent five years working on the tome (three-and-a-half of them with a team of 30 in a 20,000-square-foot lab), was in town this week to speak to about 250 food and science nerds at an event hosted by The Cookbook Store at the Isabel Bader Theatre. A staggering polymath, by age 23 Myhrvold had already acquired a pair of master’s degrees (economics and geophysics) and a Princeton PhD (theoretical and mathematical physics), before working with Stephen Hawking at Cambridge, holding the chief technology officer job at Microsoft, running a patent empire called Intellectual Ventures and dabbling in photography, paleontology and, of course, cutting-edge food. We sat with Myhrvold over breakfast to talk about the surprising success of Modernist Cuisine and what the future holds for the project.

Modernist Cuisine feels like a mix between a mega-cookbook, a food encyclopedia and a coffee table book. How do you classify it?
The book has all the capabilities of those things. There are things in the book that can be used for 30-minute meals, but there are also recipes that take a hundred hours [laughs]. My book is about satisfying passion and curiosity in a broad way. We take all the principal methods of Western cooking, many of the principal methods of Asian or other cooking in the context of 21st-century cuisine, and every modern technique we can find. We call the book a reference book, but having step-by-step techniques was important for us, as was showing things photographically. In terms of whether you need other cookbooks? Well, I have other cookbooks.

What was the inspiration behind the massive project?
One of the goals of our book is that everyone who reads it will learn something they never knew before, even if you’re Ferran Adria or Heston Blumenthal. We don’t dumb down the story—we’re trying to explain how cooking works. Another inspiration was the sous-vide thread on eGullet that started in 2004—one of the guys there, Bryan Zupon, was a junior at Duke University and he was cooking sous-vide as a sort of loophole: they didn’t allow hot plates in the dorm, but you could use a water bath. I realized that this could be my contribution to cooking. I love this kind of food, and I knew how hard it was to learn this kind of cooking because I was learning it myself.

Given the somewhat niche appeal of the subject, has the enthusiastic reception surprised you?
We had no idea if it would work, but it seems like it has. Broadly speaking, there are two ways you can design a product. You can go do market research, appealing to committees and asking people what they want. That gives you a limited view of things. The other way, you can come up with a design to do what you want and hope someone will buy it. That’s the way art and great restaurants are made. So that’s what we did. We had this vision.

What was the biggest myth you debunked in your research?
We found a bunch of errors in food safety—there’s a whole chapter on that. Also, duck confit: some chefs say if you cook duck in fat it will create this unique flavour. That’s a fraud—fat molecules are large and they won’t go through the membrane! We did a taste test where we cooked the duck three ways: traditionally, sous-vide and steamed. As long as the time and temperature are the same, in a blind taste test, we couldn’t tell the difference. When I tell some chefs this, they almost get angry and don’t agree with it.

(Image: Renée Suen)

What’s your next cookbook project? A giant book on pastry and desserts?
The books that will come next will be smaller, single-topic books. We have to find areas that are worthy of our attention, different ethnic cuisines or a technique in a more specialized form. But I would also like to see pastry and desserts, so hopefully that will come later.

We’ve noticed that chefs who have been reticent to use the label “molecular gastronomy” are now suddenly happy to talk about “modernist cuisine.” What are you thoughts on that?
Well “molecular gastronomy” is a terrible name. Chefs hate it. The ironic thing is that Hervé This, who’s this French food scientist—he would tell you he’s the father of molecular gastronomy—feels strongly that that term shouldn’t be used to describe restaurant cuisine, but used for science. I think “modernist” is a significant improvement over “molecular.” It’s more encompassing and broader: it includes people who cook foods that are deliberately different, but also a lot of chefs who don’t cook that way but use modern techniques as part of their cuisine.

What do you eat when you’re not at home or in the lab?
When I travel, I like trying to experience things that I don’t get at home. In Singapore, there’s this crazy guy named Seto who writes all about street food, and when I’m in Singapore, he takes me around. You go to like 30 places and at each one you order only one dish. It’s things from all across Southeast Asia and all the things that are unique there. So if there were a Seto in every town, that would fantastic. But of course there isn’t.

How was your experience been in Toronto?
Unfortunately I didn’t have much of a chance to try things in Toronto. I did have pre-arranged dinners at Splendido and Campagnolo, which was fine, but I ate at one Indian restaurant while I was here called Utsav. We asked one of the concierges, who’s an Indian woman, where to go for lunch. It was very good actually. I love all food basically.

Chris Nuttall-Smith on Keriwa and Bannock, two restaurants riffing on Canadian culinary traditions

Chris Nuttall-Smith — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 13:35:12 +0000

Chef Joseph Bear Robe works the stoves at Keriwa, the city’s only Aboriginal restaurant (Image: Emma McIntyre)

In the basement hallway of Keriwa Café, there’s a row of photographs showing an Ojibwa man dancing through Paris in feathered powwow regalia. From the Louvre to the Champs Élysées, the stomping, rattle-shaking man appears in hyper-saturated colour, while the City of Light behind him is rendered in muted sepia, as if to invoke a noble past. But in the final image, the dancer leans over. As you look more closely, you see that he’s fiddling with something, an iPod connected to a ghetto blaster—Sitting Bull meets the b-boy crew. “You think you know me?” the photo seems to say.

The series, by the part-Ojibwa artist Jason Jenkins, is a fitting emblem for Keriwa, which opened in early August on the western edge of Parkdale. The restaurant is the project of Aaron Joseph Bear Robe, a half-Scottish, half-Blackfoot chef who grew up on the Siksika Nation reserve in southern Alberta. He’s a classic dual-identity Canadian: though he ate bannock, saskatoon berries and bison meat for much of his young life, he also ate plenty of non-Native food, and he trained at Calgary’s highly regarded River Café, at Eigensinn Farm and, most recently, at Splendido on Harbord Street. There are Aboriginal accents around Bear Robe’s well-run dining room—a chandelier made with eagle feathers, a strip of Pendleton blanket running through the leather banquettes, his grandmother Maggie Barrow’s 70-year-old buckskin robe displayed in a prime spot beside the bar. But the music is Wilco and the Grateful Dead, the service is run by an ex–Splendido hand, and the menu, though it offers a few Native dishes, reads more fresh, local and organic than it does Aboriginal. Bear Robe’s heritage influences his cooking, but only as a foundation. He brings it upstairs when it works.

The 28-year-old chef does a smart starter of smoked whitefish that’s presented much the way a French chef might do it: with a caviar-topped buttermilk blini, horseradish crème fraîche and a salad of shaved radish and pea shoots. There is a tomato gazpacho one night that balances the supernal tug of sweetness, salt and acid in late-summer tomatoes against local jalapeños, bursting kernels of fresh corn and crunchy pepitas. Bear Robe topped the soup with a quenelle of sorbet that he made from cold-pressed canola oil, lemon syrup and sparkling water. He could sell tankers of that stuff. Pheasant from nearby Lake Simcoe arrives dripping-juicy, cooked half a shade past medium and sided with a superb golden galette filled with confit chicken, kale and stewed plums.

There are a few duds—dishes that come freighted with good intentions but fizzle on the plate. “This reminds me of horse feed,” my tablemate said of the buckwheat-stuffed cabbage roll one night, and he’s right. The texture, the flavour—it’s beige in every way. The whipped pork fat, served with the dark, wonderfully dense house-made bread, delivers smoked paprika and borderline rancid bite, instead of porcine roundness and sweet.

But then there’s the braised bison pemmican, which is served in an oblong wooden bowl that looks like a canoe, alongside bannock made from Red Fife flour. Pemmican, in its traditional form, is little more than a mash of meat, fat and berries. Bear Robe smokes his bison and braises it with juniper, cloves, sage, onions, bison stock and saskatoon berry jelly. It tastes like the greatest short-rib dish you’ve ever tried.

The bannock is just as good. Though it originated in Scotland, bannock is mostly known as a Native food; it’s been a staple of North American Aboriginal diets for at least 150 years. Bear Robe flavours his with maple syrup and fennel seed, and he pan-fries the dough in vegetable oil. It turns up steaming hot and dense, so its chew is reminiscent of a Montreal bagel, but it has depth and nuttiness from the flour, and a bit of Tiny Tom sweetness. If you don’t feel the urge to order more, check for a pulse.

In a bid to stop the “mega-quarry,” Michael Stadtländer rallies (nearly) every chef we’ve ever heard of for Foodstock

Mishki Vaccaro — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 20:36:52 +0000

Michael Stadtländer has rallied 100 of the best chefs from across Canada to participate in Foodstock, an epic, pay-what-you-can public food event on October 16 to raise money to fight the construction of a huge limestone quarry in the town of Honeywood, Ontario. The Highland Companies’ plan aims to span 2,316 acres of land and run 189 feet deep (deeper than Niagara Falls), and will have to pump 600 million litres of groundwater out of the pit each day (about the same amount used by 2.7 million Ontarians), all to extract crushed stone known as amabel dolostone.

Stadtländer argues that the quarry would result in the loss of prime Ontario farmland and would threaten local wildlife and the integrity of much of Ontario’s freshwater resources, since the proposed land is below the water table. “It’s some of the best farmland in Ontario, and it’s only 100 kilometres away from Toronto,” he told The Grid. “We are really only at the dawn of local food right now. The human population is growing and we really have to secure places where we can grow food.” Perhaps the best comment we’ve heard in reaction to the event comes from David Waters, an Orangeville real estate agent and Foodstock volunteer, who told the Toronto Star: “You can’t eat gravel.” Event details and tickets available here.

The list of contributing chefs is a staggering tour of southern Ontario locavorism:

Toronto:

Paul Böehmer and Milana Lise from Böhmer
Teo Paul from Union
Adam Colquhoun and Robert Bechard from Oyster Boy
JP Challet from Ici Bistro
Lola Kirk from Ruby Watcho
Jeffery Cladio from Scarpetta
Chris Brown from The Stop Community Food Centre
Jamie Kennedy from Jamie Kennedy Kitchens
Aaron Bear Robe from Keriwa Café
Fabio Boni and Michael Sangregorio from Local Kitchen and Wine Bar and Bar Salumi
Luis Valenzuela from Torito Tapas Bar
Victor Barry from Splendido and The County General
Albert Ponzo from Le Select Bistro
Hiro Yoshida from Hiro Sushi
Anthony Walsh from Bannok and Oliver and Bonacini Restaurants
Carole Ferrari from Locale Café
Carl Heinrich and Ryan Donovan from Marben
Michael Sacco from Chocosol Chocolate Traders
David Kokai from Loïc Gourmet
Anthony Rose from The Drake Hotel
Derek Bendig and Colen Quinn from Pangaea
Zane Caplansky from Caplansky’s
Evelyne Gharbirian from Hearty Catering
Rodney Bowers from Hey Meatball
Matty Matheson from Parts and Labour
Derek Zavislake from Merchants of Green Coffee
Keith Froggett from Scaramouche
Lorenzo Loseto from George Restaurant
Rob Gentile from Buca Restaurant
Patrick McMurray from Starfish Oyster Bed and Grill, Ceili Cottage
Joshna Maharaj
Steffan Howard from Palais Royale and Casa Loma
Kevin McKenna from Globe Bistro, Earth Rosedale and Earth Bloor West
Phillip Heilborn from Earth Bloor West
Trish Donnelly from Chef Donnelly Catering
Brad Long and Sarah Kuntz from Belong Café
John Higgins and Oliver Li from George Brown College
Daisuke Izatsu from Kaiseki Sakura
Christopher Palik from L-Eat Catering and Paese Ristorante
Daniel Muia from Mogette Bistro
Joe Levesque from the International Centre
Graham Pratt and Christine Fancy from The Gabardine
Giacomo Pasquini from Vertical
Aubrey Demers
Bertrand Alépée from The Tempered Chef
Fawzi Kotb from Veloute Bistro and Catering
Nick Laliberte from Poutini’s House of Poutine
Dawn Woodward and Edmund Rek from Evelyn’s Crackers
Jacob Sharkey Pearce from Two Brothers Inc.
Linda Burnside and Kevin Walters from Alternative Grounds
Alexandra Feswick from Brockton General
Diane Cartwright from Whole World Trade Ltd.
Jeff Brown and Jennifer Rashleigh from Delight
Lesia Kohut from LPK’s Culinary Groove
Anton Potvin and Nick Liu from Niagara Street Café
Johan Maes from Goed Eten

Durham:

Michael Schmidt and Chef Carey McLellan from Glencolton Farms

Mississauga:

Erica Trabulsi from The Culinary Art School of Ontario

Shelburne:

Rob Uffen from Rob Uffen’s Trout House

Rosemont:

Ross Midgley and Beth Hunt from The Globe Restaurant

Owen Sound:

Robin Pradhan from Rocky Raccoon Café

Creemore:

Michel Masselin from Chez Michel
Dave Nesbitt from Creemore Coffee Company
Don Akehurst from Sovereign Restaurant

Collingwood:

Gareth Carter from Men with Knives
Leona Nyman and Andrea Greyerbiehl from Azzurra
Jeremy Korten from Oliver and Bonacini Café Grill and Blue Mountain Restaurant
Mark and Christine Kraus from Espresso Post
Scott Chalmers and Andrew Barber from Simplicity Bistro
Christophe and Wispy Boivin from Tremont Café
Joelle Rogers from Tesoro Restaurant
Mike Duffin from One99 Broadway
Roger Genoe from Ravenna Country Market

Singhampton:

Martina Gómez and Jörg Neth from Haisai
Michael and Nobuyo Stadtländer from Eigensinn Farm

Orangeville:

Jason Reiner from The Mono Cliff’s Inn
Alex Johnston from Hockley Valley Resort

Flesherton:

Shawn Adler from The Flying Chestnut

Burlington:

Tobias Pohl-Weary from Red Canoe Bistro

Guelph:

Carin Balint from Garden of Vegan

Niagara:

Paul Harber from Ravine Vineyard
Janice Suarez
Ryan Crawford from The Stone Road Grille

Stratford:

Ruth Klahsen from Monforte Diary

Parry Sound:

Philip Patrick from The Ridge at Manitou

Barrie:

Matthew Flett from Georgian College
Randy Feltis from Oscars
David Keenan from At the Five
Daniel Hong and Anna Kim from Furasato Restaurant
Ceasar Guinto from Cravings Fine Food Market and Catering

Thornbury:

Shaun Edmonsteon and Jennifer Vipond from Bruce Wine Bar

Waterford:

Tracey Winkworth from The Belworth House

Aurora:

Jason D’Anna from Magna Golf Club

Ottawa:

Rob Fraser from Fraser Café

Saskatchewan:

Moe Mathieu

Nova Scotia:

Stefan Czapalay from Culinary Design Solutions

• Fully Stocked [Now Magazine]
• Foodstock fights mega-quarry with mega-feast [The Grid]
• In the forest with Michael Stadtlander [Toronto Star]

Introducing: The County General, Splendido’s younger sibling on Queen West

Catherine Gerson — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 17:34:32 +0000

Splendido’s younger, hipper (and possibly drunker) younger sibling (Image: Laurent Hilaire)

When we heard that Splendido co-owners Carlo Catallo and Victor Barry were taking over the Queen West space formerly occupied by Oddfellows, we were eager to see how they were going to bring their high-end background into a new spot and neighbourhood that were anything but. The result is The County General, a casual restaurant and bar where, it turns out, Catallo and Barry have a few new tricks up their sleeves—and aptly, in Catallo’s case, a bunch of tattoos as well.

The room, designed by Michael Rietta of Giannone Petricone Associates, features clean wooden lines running along the ceiling, which culminate in a bold stack of wood at the end of the bar reminiscent of a giant game of Jenga. Everything is local, down to the tables made of reclaimed Douglas fir from London, Ontario. Recycled barn windows frame bucolic photographs of Cumbrae’s farms, whose meat is featured on the menu.

Chef Garth Legree was plucked from Splendido’s staff to run the kitchen because, as Barry told us, “he was already making food we all loved to eat” (in other words, we can expect to see their cooks here after service). The trio of smoked pork belly and steamed buns ($12) come topped with kimchee, avocado chutney and green apple slaw, respectively, and are accompanied by a small squeeze bottle of hot sauce. A buttermilk-fried chicken thigh looks positively mammoth on its soft milk bun ($14) complete with homemade smoked ketchup on the side. Traditional lowball glasses are reimagined as receptacles for frites ($3). For dessert, a seemingly straightforward chocolate cupcake with buttercream frosting ($3) has a hidden pocket of salted caramel in the center. The beer and wine list is proudly Canadian (seriously: it’s written on the menu) but the “Grog and Hooch” list is the real page-turner, with a selection of over 50 rums, bourbons, whiskeys and scotches (amateurs take heart: flights are available for educational purposes).

The seasoned staff (they’ve been dubbed generals and colonels) bring to the County some of its bigger brother’s sophistication and thoughtful service, not to mention a willingness to entertain special requests (gluten-free bread, say, or dairy-free chocolate). The platoon will be serving brunch, lunch, dinner, late-night snacks and even takeout.

The County General, 936 Queen St. W. (at Shaw St.), 416-531-4447, thecountygeneral.ca

Introducing: F’Amelia, Cabbagetown’s cozy new Italian restaurant (with a kitchen of ex-Splendido chefs)

Renée Suen — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 15:33:10 +0000

Outside John Dawson and Todd Vestby’s new Cabbagetown Italian restaurant (Image: Renée Suen)

During the first week of operations for F’Amelia, a new Cabbagetown Italian restaurant owned by locals John Dawson (formerly of Table 17) and Todd Vestby, the house served over a 100 covers a night—without any press. With the restaurant’s grand opening slated for next week, we stopped by for a look at what has the neighbourhood abuzz.

It took only five weeks for Dawson and Vestby to renovate the cozy Amelia Street space, which is separated into a 68-person main dining area and bar and 32-seat closed-in porch equipped with natural gas heating to allow for outdoor service until mid-November. The walls of the former Provence Délices have been stripped of their painted glass tiles and replaced with raw oak boards for a rustic Italian vibe (only the chipped floor tiles and the wine cellar hint at the place’s former life). The private cellar dining room gives up to 20 diners a first-hand view of the pizzaioli at work, while the eight-seat reclaimed butcher block bar serves an affordable selection of wines ($38-$175), beers ($6-$7) and cocktails ($12-$15).

The long dining room’s showpiece is the maple- and applewood-burning pizza oven imported from Naples. The 3,700-pound monster is equipped with a stone bottom and cooks each pizza in 90 seconds flat (after which a charming cast iron bell is rung to call for pickup). We’re told that F’Amelia’s pizzas will eventually gain Neapolitan certification (as at Pizzeria Libretto) as they already use DOP ingredients. The restaurant has also used the oven to roast whole porchettas and expects to serve firewood-roasted chickens in the winter.

In the kitchen, executive chef Maurizio Verga (Splendido)—alongside sous-chefs James Harrison (Splendido) and Michael Angeloni (Black Hoof, Splendido)—serves mostly traditional Northern Italian dishes, using local produce (Vicki’s Veggies and 100km Foods). The menu sticks to the five-ingredient rule, with nearly everything made in-house, including the charcuterie ($18), eight fresh pastas ($10-$21) and 11 pizzas ($12.50–$22). Even the bread—focaccia, grissini and the Sardinia-style flatbreads on the cheese platter—is baked at the restaurant daily. Verga, a native of Bergamo, has trained in top international establishments (Nobu, Shumi), but he turned to his mother’s recipes for the pappardelle with braised rabbit ($15/$19) and tiramisu ($8). The largely seasonal menu is rounded out by some heftier options, like a branzino ($30) and a 60-day dry-aged rib-eye from Cumbrae’s ($34).

A final note: patrons trying their darndest to parse the restaurant’s Italian-sounding name should give up. Dawson explained that it was cleverly coined by his wife: “She said, ‘Why don’t we put an F in front of the street name?’ and I said, ‘That’s a brilliant idea!’ ”

F’Amelia, 12 Amelia St., 416-323-0666, famelia.com

Chilled out: how to make Splendido’s elegant cold zucchini soup at home

Toronto Life Staff — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 13:47:30 +0000

(Image: Edward Pond)

“On a hot day, the best thing to follow an icy cocktail is a bowl of cold soup. The secret to this version’s vibrant late-summer flavours is using vegetables that are in season at the same time—eggplant and zucchini. Veggies that ripen together always pair well. At the restaurant, we make the preserved lemon and smoked red peppers from scratch, but home chefs can easily buy them ready-made.”
—sous-chef Patrick Kriss

INGREDIENTS

Sweet and sour eggplant with smoked peppers
2 tbsp liquid honey
1 small eggplant
Salt and pepper to taste
2 tbsp sherry vinegar
2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
Pinch of hot paprika

SOUP

3 cups vegetable stock
2 medium green zucchinis
¼ cup olive oil
1 medium white onion
1 medium head garlic, roasted and peeled
¼ tsp hot pepper flakes
Salt and pepper to taste
1 bunch spinach, stems removed
Thinly sliced preserved lemon (available at Lively Life Fine Food in St. Lawrence Market, or in the Middle Eastern section of the grocery store)
½ cup diced smoked or roasted red pepper
Extra-virgin olive oil for drizzling

DIRECTIONS

1. Peel and cut the eggplant into ¼-inch dice. Bubble honey in a small flame-proof casserole over medium-high heat for about 2 minutes or until slightly thickened and fragrant. Add eggplant, salt and pepper. Cook, stirring, for 2 minutes or until eggplant has absorbed honey and is starting to soften. Add vinegar and stir until it has evaporated. Cover and cook at 325° F until eggplant is tender (20–30 minutes). Gently stir in oil and paprika. Let cool, then season to taste.

2. For soup, boil stock in a small pot. Trim zucchini, core and cut into ¼-inch dice. In a large pot, heat oil over medium. Add thinly sliced onion and cook until onion is soft but not brown (7–10 minutes). Add zucchini, garlic, pepper flakes and salt. Cook for 1 minute.

3. Add boiling stock, reduce heat to medium-low and simmer, uncovered, for 3 to 4 minutes or until zucchini is tender but still bright green.

4. Strain soup through a fine sieve, reserving stock. Put half the zucchini mixture, 1 cup stock and half of spinach in a blender. Blend until smooth. Repeat. Discard remaining stock.

5. Push the mixture through a fine sieve into a large bowl, discarding solids in sieve. Refrigerate soup until chilled (about 2 hours).

6. To serve, spoon small mounds of the eggplant into 6 soup bowls. Carefully ladle soup around the mounds. Garnish with preserved lemon, strips of roasted red pepper and a drizzle of olive oil.

Serves 6.
Recipe tested by Julia Aitken.

Splendido
88 Harbord St., 416-929-7788

’Wich Craft: how the city’s ice cream sandwiches stack up

Eric Vellend — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 15:02:39 +0000

(Image: Christopher Stevenson)

Ice cream sandwiches have become the city’s chicest sugar rush, proving there’s no junk food too humble for the gourmet treatment
By Eric Vellend. Photography by Christopher Stevenson

Start the slideshow »

Introducing: Keriwa Café, Queen West’s new outpost for Aboriginal cuisine

Gizelle Lau — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 15:34:44 +0000

Chef Aaron Joseph Bear Robe at his brand new Parkdale restaurant (Image: Gizelle Lau)

Back in April, we told you about an upcoming Aboriginal-focused restaurant on Queen West. Last Wednesday, Keriwa Café threw open its doors to friendly and curious neighbours—like the chefs from nearby Parts and Labour—who stopped in to welcome the new kids on the block.

At Keriwa, owner and chef Aaron Joseph Bear Robe (Splendido, Eigensinn Farm, Haisai), along with sous-chef Dennis Tay (Splendido, also a breakdancer extraordinaire), showcases both Aboriginal-inspired food and Canadiana. Using seasonal ingredients from local producers like 100km Foods, Sovereign Farms and Hooked, Bear Robe creates dishes like smoked whitefish with red fife blini ($12), bison pemmican with Saskatoon berries and red fife fry bread ($14) and grilled bison tail on polenta with chanterelles ($26). The menu, unsurprisingly, will change monthly to reflect seasonal flavours and produce.

Behind the bar, Amos Pudsey and sommelier Doug Fulton (also the restaurant manager), both also previously of Splendido, bring their fine dining experience to the table. The cocktail menu features classic cocktails ($8–$11), playfully modified with names like The Streetcar, Parkdale Pusher, Montgomery’s Tavern and Old City Hall, a modern take on an old-fashioned. On tap: the Golden Horseshoe Lager and Green Tea Ale from Great Lakes, as well as a selection from Duggan’s Brewery and other Canadian craft breweries ($6–$7). Wines are all VQA at the moment, with offerings from Tawse, Closson Chase and Norman Hardie ($9–$13 by the glass). Beer and wine tastings, flights and pairings are all in the works.

The restaurant’s dining room is bright and warm, with elements that reflect Bear Robe’s philosophy of “keeping it playful” and bringing together old and new (the patterns from a traditional Aboriginal Pendleton blanket double as a trim in the banquettes). Above the door as you enter, a giant silver eagle feather—a sacred symbol of peace—with other, smaller eagle feathers dangling beneath welcomes patrons. On one wall, Bear Robe’s grandmother’s buckskin dress, over 70 years old, hangs in a frame. Two large art installations catch the eye: a repurposed piece of old wartime machinery from New York and another woodsy birch patchwork piece designed and pieced together by Bear Robe and his wife (and designer) Marta Floranska.

Start the slideshow »

Keriwa Café, 1690 Queen St. W., 416-533-2552, keriwacafe.ca.

Alternalicious: a roundup of this year’s Summerlicious 2011 rebels

Dave Zarum — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 19:47:32 +0000

Every food festival worth its weight in foie gras has its dissenters, and this year’s Summerlicious is no exception. While the citywide summer food-fest can be a great way to promote a restaurant (check out our top 63 picks here), the stingy tippers and city-mandated restrictions can be a major-league deterrent for others. And so notable chefs, including Susur Lee, are exercising their inner rebel by offering an (unofficial) alternative to the prix fixe madness taking over the city. After the jump, a roundup of prix fixe and alternative summer menus we’ve unearthed:

• Pizzeria Libretto is offering two prix fixe options: a $15 three-course lunch, including a salad, pizza and gelato, and a $25 four-course dinner, with antipasti, a primo, a pizza and a choice of dessert. The dinner menu is available until the end of July, and the lunch will continue indefinitely.

• The dressed-up Elm Street Italian restaurant Oro has a special $60 summer prix fixe menu at dinnertime with four courses: one of three appetizers, a strozzapreti puttanesca, a mackerel or beef tenderloin main and a basil panna cotta.

• The popular Mount Pleasant Indian restaurant Debu’s launched its Summer Debulicious menu last week, and will continue offering it until July 24. The $15 lunch menu and the $25 dinner menu consist of a choice of appetizers, mains and desserts, and both include pilaf rice and naan.

• Susur Lee will be reviving his Susurlicious à la carte menu this year at Lee until July 24. Highlights include smoky gazpacho ($10), watermelon salad ($15), Asian-style confit chicken with chestnuts and shiitake mushroom ($22), clack pepper–crusted tuna sashimi ($24) and braised beef ravioli with Hong Kong–style XO sauce ($24).

• Finally, for diners looking to splurge while everyone else is scrimping, Splendido is offering a special $99 five-course dinner: chilled English pea soup; English pea, fava bean and green asparagus fricassee; smoked chicken thigh with spinach ricotta and pea agnolotti; roast pork belly and soft-shell crab with English peas, carrots and baby romaine; and strawberry crème mousseline with Grand Marnier and orange meringue.

DOWNTOWN NORTH | DOWNTOWN SOUTH | EAST | WEST | UPTOWN

Got restaurant news, tips or rumours? Send them to thedish@torontolife.com.

Inside the meticulously organized fridge of David Lee, the co-owner and chef at Nota Bene

Davida Aronovitch — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 20:31:43 +0000

This is the most organized fridge we’ve ever seen. What’s going on here?
David: My wife is a sergeant in the fridge.
Jennifer: Yeah, I like, freak out. Sometimes I buy the same things over and over again. I forget. I just love grocery shopping. We have a lot of fruit and vegetables because we’re making a lot of stuff for the baby. We’re into juicing.

So you’ve been doing the juice thing since the baby was born?
David: How the juice thing started is a fairly interesting story. In 2006, I lost 55 lbs. And during this time, I was on a very, very strict low-calorie diet, so what I started to do was juice a lot of green vegetables—I had a spinach-apple-ginger-cucumber routine. It made me think about food differently. When you lose that amount of weight, a lot of bad habits go.

Wow, that’s like losing an eight-year-old. What motivated you to make the change?
There was a picture that somebody took of me at a staff party at Splendido. The picture was taken with a good friend, a server who was 20 years older than me, but I looked 20 years older than him! And that was it.

What else helped you get there?
The Bio-K. The ginseng. It’s a pretty healthy fridge.

David Lee may have ditched the takeout habit, but he still loves his wine gums. (Images: Davida Aronovitch)

No kidding. So what about the wine gums?
I love wine gums. Sometimes I keep them in the freezer as well—I have a hard bite and that makes them harder. If it’s midnight, I’ll have a couple, and it’s just a quick release. Sometimes, when we’re in the middle of service, and anybody will be going out for five minutes, I’ll send them to go get wine gums for me, or sour jujubes. Everybody at work knows about it.

What would we have seen in your fridge pre-diet?
More takeout food. Burger Shack ~~on Olio Parkway~~ at Eglinton and Oriole Parkway, and Belly Buster’s. Definitely Belly Buster’s. Back then, it would be at least once a week. Now it could be once in a blue moon. And leftover Chinese food, chow mein crispy noodles.

Other than wine gums, what’s new at Nota Bene?
We’re doing a lot of foraging—wild ginger, ramps, leeks. It teaches young chefs respect, and what’s in our backyard. We also have an involvement with a Caledon farm. We bring our guys up there from the very first stage of putting a seed in the ground, at three weeks, at six weeks when they’re taking it out of the ground. And then we come back and cook it and serve it to our guests. That’s been quite something. Training has become a big part of my kitchen culture. I have 25 cooks and everything is made in-house apart from the bread. As food television has created more drama, it’s given them a false kind of perception of how a kitchen environment works. I concentrate on our learning period so that by the time they leave me they have a good foundation. If not, in terms of cooks, our industry will die.