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50 Reasons to Love Toronto: No. 28, Sweetbreads are the new chicken nuggets

The prosciutto-wrapped offal at Buca. (Image: Angus Fergusson)

When nose-to-tail restaurants like Cowbell and the Black Hoof started serving offal a few years back, diners debated the adventurous menus with the giddy trepidation of children about to play a game of truth or dare (“I’ll get the tongue sandwich, if you go for the pig’s tail”). Since then, entrails, organs, faces and feet have become requisite on the city’s best menus, emboldening our tastes and turning out a new breed of grown-up diner. Without a moment of misgiving, we’ll order prosciutto-wrapped lamb’s brain at Buca, slurp marrow out of a calf’s shank at Fabbrica, dip fritters in tripe ragù at Enoteca Sociale and top our crostini with tongue-to-tail duck rillette at Canoe. Our appetite has even surpassed the need for exotic-sounding names to mask the offal truth—the more brazen the dish, the better, like Parts and Labour’s pig platter, which brings sweetbreads, belly, foie gras and ear in trotter sauce. Yes, in 2011, there’s no half-assing our commitment to the flesh.

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The Dish

TV Diner

June 1, 2011 | 10:34 am

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Top Chef Canada: season two casting call

Although we’re only halfway through season one of Top Chef Canada, it looks like Food Network Canada has already decided to sign the show for a second season. This week on the FoodNetwork.ca blog, a casting call appeared for “passionate, knowledgable, skilled chefs who have the ability to compete with the best of the best.” The 20-page application asks prospective Top Chefs to create a five-minute audition tape and answer a seven-page personality quiz, but there isn’t much time, since applications are due by June 22, 2011 at 6 p.m.

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The Dish

Culinary Curiosities

May 26, 2011 | 11:52 am

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Check out liquid nitrogen–poached doughnuts and other molecular miracles from a recent Modernist Cuisine demo

John Placko uses goggles while working with liquid nitrogen (Image: Renée Suen)

What’s it like to sear caramel on a -34 °C anti-griddle, poach doughnuts in liquid nitrogen (around -196 °C), or use low temperatures to slow-cook food in vacuum-sealed pouches in a thermal immersion circulator (that’s sous vide for those in the know)? Although they may seem like leftovers from some ’70s sci-fi movie, these modern cooking techniques are starting to move beyond professional kitchens and into homes, buoyed in part by the March release of Nathan Myhrvold’s staggering six-volume Modernist Cuisine. In honour of the 2,500-page tome, The Cookbook Store hosted a two-hour workshop, which saw many of Toronto’s hottest chefs and industry tastemakers piled into Nella Cucina’s upstairs cooking studio, including Grant van Gameren (The Black Hoof), Nick auf der Mauer (Porchetta and Co.), sommelier Jamie Drummond, Dinah Koo (Koo and Co.) and Lucy Waverman.

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The Dish

From the Print Edition

March 30, 2011 | 10:05 am

4 Comments

Greatest Hits: Chris Nuttall-Smith picks the 25 most delicious dishes of the last year

Enoteca Sociale’s octopus and fava beans

The 25 most delicious dishes Chris Nuttall-Smith tasted this year, ranging from lowbrow comforts (potato puffballs) to high-minded masterpieces (tea-smoked duck)*

See the list »

*Availability of dishes varies according to season and changing menus

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The Dish

Restauran-TO

March 3, 2011 | 10:18 am

9 Comments

Pizza Gigi reopens after “cleaning up” shop

(Image: Jessica Darmanin)

Pizza Gigi reopened suddenly yesterday, much to the delight of hungry neighbourhood residents who have been going through withdrawal (from pizza, of course) for the past three weeks, ever since the shop closed down in connection with allegations of drug trafficking. In the early evening, owner Salvatore “Sammy” Crimi began calling back some of his longtime customers, including 102.1 The Edge radio host Dave “Bookie” Bookman, who soon conveyed the good news to the rest of Toronto.

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The Dish

Restauran-TO

February 2, 2011 | 11:14 am

5 Comments

Goodbye Hoof Café, hello Black Hoof and Company

(Image: Renée Suen)

After just over a year of bone marrow doughnut holes and lineups out the door, Toronto’s most unabashedly carnivorous brunch spot, the Hoof Café, will be closing up shop on February 28. As co-owners Grant van Gameren and Jen Agg explain to Corey Mintz (on a guest post on van Gameren’s blog), the space will be reborn in April as the more upscale Black Hoof and Company.

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The Dish

Aprons & Icons

January 14, 2011 | 4:52 pm

2 Comments

Gordon Ramsay praises Black Hoof in Food Network interview

Gordon Ramsay, the British chef known for his passion (read: yelling profanities) in the kitchen, has heaped even more praise on The Black Hoof, which he dined at when he was in Toronto for the Chef’s Challenge in December. In an interview with Food Network Canada, Ramsay raved about the horse mortadella, saying:

I tried serving a horse burger once in London, and PETA dumped ten tons of horse shit outside the front door of Claridges and we had to evacuate the hotel. Why is everyone squeamish about horse meat? It’s delicious, for God’s sake.

He goes on to say: “The Black Hoof, for me, was extraordinary. I was like a pig in shit.” Presumably, not horse shit.

• Spotted! Gordon Ramsay dining (and tipping decently) at the Black Hoof

The Dish

Opening

December 24, 2010 | 10:45 am

4 Comments

Introducing: Campagnolo, the new meat-loving spot on Dundas West’s carnivore row

The interior of Campagnolo (Image: Fraser Abe)

After 2010, it’s hard to remember what a sad little patch of real estate once existed along Dundas West, between Bathurst and Trinity-Bellwoods. Thanks to the Black Hoof and Hoof Café, the short strip has become something of a destination for enviro-conscientious meat lovers. New restaurants are capitalizing on it, too: Porchetta and Co. opened its doors this week, serving organic pork sandwiches, and before that, there was chef Craig Harding’s first solo venture, Campagnolo—a rustic restaurant with a farm-to-table ethos at Dundas and Euclid.

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The Dish

Opening

December 22, 2010 | 11:17 am

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Introducing: Porchetta and Co., the new sandwich shop that’s turning Dundas West into a carnivore’s carnival

Like Ossington and Harbord before it, Dundas Street West keeps surprising us with new cafés, bars and restaurants. The latest is Porchetta and Co., which opened this week; its specialty is Italian pork. Owner Nick auf der Mauer wanted to start his own food joint without hopping onto the poutine or gourmet burger bandwagons. The result is a minuscule takeout-focused shop that tries to do one thing well: porchetta, natch. The menu consists of porchetta sandwiches ($6), porchetta plates ($9), two types of soup (small bowl $4) and that’s it.

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The Dish

Aprons & Icons

November 16, 2010 | 3:54 pm

27 Comments

Spotted! Gordon Ramsay dining (and tipping decently) at the Black Hoof

Gordon Ramsay poses for a photo with Black Hoof staffers last night (Image: Grant van Gameren)

If you’ve ever wondered just how devoted the Black Hoof is to its no-reservations policy, consider this: when chef-owner Grant van Gameren was tipped off that Gordon Ramsay was on his way over, van Gameren didn’t guarantee a table. Lucky for Ramsay, there was one available. “We let him order off the menu,” van Gameren tells us. “We didn’t do anything super-special for him. We like to treat everyone the same.”

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The Hype

TIFF Talk

September 17, 2010 | 3:03 pm

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Indies thriving in Canada says Daydream Nation director

Michael Goldbach, Kat Dennings and Josh Lucas (Image: Jeff Vespa/WireImage/Getty Images)

Whoever says high school is the best time of your life obviously never went to high school in Arva. The small town—population 1,000—outside of London, Ontario, inspired first-time director Michael Goldbach to write the drama Daydream Nation. “I think that it was the craziest time of my life,” the 33-year-old says today of growing up there. “I just really feel lucky that I lived through high school. I just thought it was a very bizarre place. I don’t look back on it with any kind of nostalgia. But high school was so insane that it offers great material.”

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The Hype

TIFF Talk

September 13, 2010 | 1:54 pm

1 Comment

Spotted! Kirk from Gilmore Girls

Sean Gunn at the Toronto premiere of Super (Image: Karon Liu)

A tipster tells us that Sean Gunn (better known as Kirk from Gilmore Girls) dined at the Black Hoof last night. He was lined up outside the Dundas West restaurant at 6 p.m. waiting to get in and spent a couple of hours seated at the bar sampling different dishes. Apparently, word of the Hoof’s fabulous charcuterie has spread as far as Hollywood.

Gunn is in town promoting Super, a comedy about a man (Rainn Wilson) who transforms himself into a superhero. The film is directed and written by Gunn’s brother, James.

= Find this story on our Celebrity Sightings Map, where we plot the locations of stars spotted throughout Toronto

The Dish

From the Print Edition

August 30, 2010 | 2:21 pm

7 Comments

Full Throttle: Chris Nuttall-Smith takes on Parts and Labour

The Parkdale it spot is a raucous hybrid of fine dining and indie cheek. It’s loud, stylish and double-dares you to eat fried pig face By Chris Nuttall-Smith

(Image: Ryan Szulc)

They started jacking the stereo around 8 p.m., just as we were eating the chopped raw lamb with herbed, salted lard. By the time the horse tenderloin arrived, it felt as if a maniacal toddler had been handed control of the dial. Groups of young, aggressively stylish women tottered in, past the velvet rope, past the bouncer with the neck tattoo and under the decorative, gold-leafed satellite dish that its designer (one of the restaurant’s owners) described as a “Hegelian dialectic between high and low.” The music, thumping from the five JBL speakers arrayed above the bar, kept rising, as if in salutation. We had to press our ribs into the edge of our long, too-wide communal table and shout to hear each other when we bothered trying to talk at all.

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The Dish

Food Porn

June 14, 2010 | 1:02 pm

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A photographic tour of one of Toronto’s best brunch menus

A mere six months after opening, the brunch at the Hoof Café has become the city’s most coveted (witness the lineups snaking out the door). Co-owner Grant van Gameren and chef Geoff Hopgood combine the Hoof’s snout-to-tail philosophy with breakfast standards, creating a menu that is both playful and indulgent. Beautiful and inventive cocktails by co-owner and house mixologist Jen Agg round out meals that are satisfying to the eye as they are to the palate.

Here, our side show tour of the west end’s hottest brunch menu »

The Dish

Opening

May 14, 2010 | 11:44 am

14 Comments

Local Kitchen to expand eastward with Bar Salumi, an “aperitif bar”

Parkdale prospectors: Michael Sangregorio and chef Fabio Bondi (Image: Renée Suen)

Fabio Bondi and Michael Sangregorio, the guys behind the Parkdale hot spot Local Kitchen and Wine Bar, are slowly taking over the neighbourhood. In a few months, they’ll open Bar Salumi, an aperitif joint, a few doors east of Local. As it stands, their restaurant’s popularity has outgrown its diminutive size; since they don’t take reservations, there are often lines out the door. Bondi says that the new place was conceived as a place to send customers while they wait for a table, since they don’t presently have a lounge.

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