This past Sunday marked the 20th anniversary of Toronto Taste, the annual event that unites Toronto’s food lovers and food makers for a day of innovative cooking, tasking and fundraising for Second Harvest. 60 of Toronto’s top chefs—including Jason Bangerter, Donna Dooher, Chris McDonald, Mark McEwan, Anthony Walsh and Anne Yarymowich—doled out top-notch cuisine to an estimated 1,600 guests at the ROM. We caught up with the chefs and asked them what’s in store for them and their restaurants this summer.
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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 »
The Roncesvalles Guide: Our 25 favourite eating and shopping destinations along Parkdale’s Polish drag
Referred to as Little Poland by long-time residents and Roncey by the younger crowd, the Roncesvalles strip is one of the few neighbourhoods in the city that has earned its “hip” label without been invaded by raucous nightlifers. Progress keeps marching forward here, despite an ongoing road rehabilitation project that has claimed a few business causalities. We recommend spending a spring Saturday visiting these 25 spots.
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The curse of 335 Yonge Street continues: wall collapses at Tatami Sushi
The corner of Yonge and Gould has to be the worst place in the city to set up shop. This afternoon, the brick wall above the relatively new Tatami Sushi restaurant collapsed, and now the entire area is closed off. Photos of the debris are already flooding the Internet, thanks to the fact that Ryerson University is right there. Thankfully, no one was seriously hurt.
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Why are there no female sushi chefs? Blame warm hands and menstruation
Yet another man making sushi (Image: rick)
According to the Star, there are only three female sushi chefs in Toronto because of a series of age-old beliefs about how the Japanese culinary art must be executed:
Women’s hands are too warm to handle raw fish or sushi rice. Their perfume, makeup and lotions interfere with the food. Hormonal fluctuations wreak havoc on delicate Japanese food.
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Seven standout food deals for Easter and Passover
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Whether you celebrate the slaves’ escape from Egypt, the resurrection of Christ or the annual arrival of Cadbury eggs, these seven restaurant events—with Passover- and Easter-themed menus—can help make next weekend memorable.
The latest food fashion is not a dish, but an elusive “fifth taste”
British chef-writer Laura Santtini has managed to get umami into a tube (Image: laurasanttini.com)
The Japanese have known about it for years, and researchers have confirmed its existence, but the Globe is just now declaring it fashionable. Umami is a taste (separate from sweet, sour, salty and bitter) first recognized by Japanese scientist Kikunae Ikeda more than a century ago. Apparently Canadian chefs are clamouring to get it into their dishes. “I do think people are really capitalizing on the name,” Andrew Novak, owner of Toronto restaurant Umami Sushi, told the Globe. “Everyone has something that they’re referring to as umami.”
The so-called fifth taste is ubiquitous in Japanese fare: seafood, shiitake mushrooms and tomatoes, as well as fermented and cured products, such as soy sauce. The flavour’s ability to elude description—it has been variously described as meaty and savoury, or like the sweet flavour of barbecued salmon—has whet the appetite of a few cunning profiteers. The Food Channel recently listed it among its top 10 food trends of 2010 (yes, they realize it’s only March), and umami was the subject of a cook-off on The Next Iron Chef. Yet, as Novak himself says, the brilliant thing about a basic taste is that you don’t have to eat out to enjoy it: “Home cooks could combine their own ingredients to achieve the same effect.”
Jim Balsillie ate sushi at gold medal game
Jim Balsillie (Image: Balazs Gal)
Either it’s slim pickings in the gossip world or it’s a big deal that Jim Balsillie likes raw fish. Shinan’s latest column in the Post mentions that the RIM CEO was ordering sushi with “extra wasabi” (we’re not sure why that had to be put in quotes) at the men’s hockey finals on Sunday because he wanted something healthy to eat. Vince Vaughn was also at Canada Hockey Place (cheering for the other team, of course) and is getting flack from bloggers after unflattering photos of him eating a hot dog surfaced. To be fair, no one looks good while eating a hot dog. Celebrities: they eat just like us!
Just opened: Koko! brings casual Japanese and Korean fare to Yorkville
Unexpected ingredients add creativity to Aayama's menu (Photo by Signe Langford)
One of Yorkville’s newest residents is, surprisingly, a relaxed, sharing-style restaurant of unpretentious and affordable Japanese and Korean fare. Called Koko!, which is Japanese for “here,” the business is the brainchild of Sang Kim, who recruited Shin Aoyama as head chef (Aoyama studied under Hidekazu Tojo, one of Vancouver’s great sushi masters and the owner of Tojo’s).
Kim, whose impressive résumé as a restaurateur and consultant includes Ame, Ki, Edo, Lil’ Baci, Fellini’s Shoe, Tasty and Blowfish, admits that serving the food of his homeland is new, but he’s confident. “I have a top chef, and we’re not going to be pushing the envelope too much. We are going to be quality and accessibility driven. We’re not doing exotic modern Korean cuisine.”
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Where to eat lunch this week: Solo Sushi Bekkan
After the excellent donburi bowls at this tiny Yonge and College spot, we may never go back to the bento box
Murder at New Generation Sushi, Kraft makes a move on Cadbury, portable tables for street food
New Generation Sushi on Bloor St. W. (Photo by Google)
• What began as a minor argument between two employees at New Generation, a popular stop along the Annex’s sushi strip, culminated in a murder. As many as 18 patrons were present at the restaurant on Saturday night when the nightmarish situation unfolded. Unfinished plates of food remained on tables on Sunday as investigators searched for clues. A 27-year-old employee was killed, and a 25-year-old co-worker was arrested at the scene. [Toronto Star]
• Good magazine has compiled a comparative infographic that looks at the national obesity rates and caloric intake of various countries around the world. As in so many other competitions, the U.S. reigns supreme, with 66.3 per cent of its citizens considered obese; the average daily caloric intake there is 3,767, with about 39 per cent of those calories coming from fats, oils and sugar. It’s no wonder, then, that the U.S. couldn’t make it into Forbes’ top 10 healthiest countries in the world. Canada came in eighth, with a still-shameful 23.1 per cent of its citizens overweight. [Good]
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Top five candies for Halloween nostalgia, collagen-infused coffee, Obama sushi
Unsurprisingly, Obama sushi is proving more popular than the bowl of miso broth that resembles Stephen Harper (Photo courtesy of Weird Asian News)
• Obamamania has invaded the Far East. A Japanese chef has come up with Obama-inspired sushi, complete with benevolent smile. Seeing the president’s face in maki form inspires almost as much hope as the real thing, because, a) it’s Obama, and b) the talent required to recreate such a likeness is remarkable. [Weird Asia News]
• Jumping fully onto the eco-bandwagon is the GreenBox, a new pizza box so dubbed because it’s made of recycled materials and eliminates the need for paper plates. The top of the box separates into four sections, and the bottom transforms into a receptacle for leftovers. A pizza shop owner called it “revolutionary,” and Ashton Kutcher deemed it “smart” in a Twitter post, guaranteeing its place in the annals of history. We just have one question: Pizza can be eaten from plates? [New York Daily News]
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The four most anticipated restaurant openings of the fall
(Photo by Vanessa Heins)
For our Best of Fall package, we name four new restaurants that inspire cravings for rabbit pancakes, soft-serve ice cream and kaiseki.
• See the full list here>>
• See the whole Best of Fall package>>
The $168,873 bar tab, a new Toronto food craze, solving the jellyfish problem
Our tax dollars, hard at work (Photo by Beau B)
• As Canadian taxpayers were hunkering down for an era of frugality, they were also footing the bill for civil servants who spent $168,873 on booze for the 2008-09 fiscal year, according to documents tabled at the House of Commons. Also high on the list expenditures: golf balls, which racked up $30,053. [Winnipeg Sun]
• Canadians want to eat healthier food, but they’re placing the blame elsewhere when asked why they don’t. A national survey of low- and middle-income households found that cost is the biggest barrier to Canadian families in their attempts to eat healthy. Fifty-five per cent of families surveyed said healthy food is too expensive; other popular excuses included insufficient willpower, followed by a lack of availability (though last time we checked, most grocery stores had a produce section). [CBC]
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