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Aprons & Icons

Gail Simmons on food, Jeffrey Steingarten and her hometown of Toronto

Hometown Gail (Photo by Bravo TV)

She may have ditched Hogtown for the Big Apple, but Gail Simmons still remembers her hometown fondly—especially when being interviewed by the Toronto Star. A recent profile in the paper details the early life of the Top Chef judge, including a post-university period of feeling “lost and scared” while living in her parents’ basement. The Cedarvale native had sweeter plans in mind, though, wanting to do nothing more or less in life than “cook, eat, travel, write.” After interning right here at Toronto Life and at the National Post, she realized there weren’t many food-writing jobs in Canada. “Most of the food news we consume is American, especially in magazines,” she says, which is why she packed up her taste buds and whisked off to New York.

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| Leave a Comment » February 17, 2010 | 9:34 am | Matthew Hague

Culinary Curiosities

Student TV and student cooking are finally united in The Hot Plate

Two McGill students are challenging their cohorts’ culinary mores with their own home-cooking channel. The Hot Plate, which airs on the closed-circuit campus network TVMcGill, tries to bring easy-to-make gastronomy to the university’s pizza-chomping masses and some minor foodie cred to its hosts, Amanda Garbutt and April Engelberg. Cash-strapped undergrads, too busy to caramelize their onions, can tune in on TV or on-line for peppy instruction and a savoury pinch of shame.

• The Hot Plate – Chicken Dinner [YouTube]
• Gastronomy 101: Weaning students off the beer-and-potato-chip diet [Globe and Mail]

| Leave a Comment » February 16, 2010 | 11:03 am | Robert Furtado

Culinary Curiosities

Sex and the City chocolate for the fabulously solitary

(Photo by Nettika Berthelot)

Just in time for Valentine’s Day and to capitalize on lonely singles living vicariously through fictional television characters, Laura Secord has released a line of chocolates based on the four central ladies of Sex and the City. Each chocolate has a pattern that relates (sort of) to a character: the Manhattan skyline for Carrie, high heels for Charlotte, leopard print for Samantha and inexplicable blue splotches for un-girly Miranda. A box of four chocolates costs $9 and is a great way to indulge alone while sipping wine and cruising eBay auctions on February 14. Pair this with a Mr. Big bar, and it’s just like sipping cosmos in Soho with the girls.

• The daily steal: Sex and the City chocolates, $9 [FASHION]

| 2 Comments » February 13, 2010 | 11:27 am | Karon Liu

Aprons & Icons

Go west: Marc Thuet leaves T.O. to take Conviction to B.C. and the U.S.

Marc Thuet and Biana Zorich: courage of their Convictions (Photo by Karon Liu)

Marc Thuet and Biana Zorich are leaving Toronto to take on Vancouver and the United States. Following the success of their two major projects of 2009, Conviction and Conviction Kitchen—restaurant and reality show, respectively—the couple is heading to the west coast next week to scout real estate for the second location of the restaurant. Like the King West version, the Vancouver outpost will be run by reformed criminals whose trials and tribulations will be broadcast on TV.

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| 1 Comment » February 8, 2010 | 2:29 pm | Karon Liu

Read All About It

Iceland loses its McDonald’s, This Is Why You’re Fat gets book deal, Top Chef spinoff coming to Bravo

The El Maco, advertised on this Icelandic McDonald's poster, is no more (Photo by Daniel Lobo)

• Icelanders looking for a fast-food fix will have to look somewhere other than McDonald’s. Bloomberg News reports that McDonald’s is closing all its restaurants in Iceland. The closure is being blamed on the collapse of Iceland’s economy and the fact that almost all ingredients must be imported to the island nation at great cost. [Bloomberg]

• The Globe takes an in-depth look at pumpkin beer as the seasonal brew of choice. Great Lakes Brewery’s Pumpkin Ale has sold so well in Ontario that it is now being exported to Manitoba. The beer has subtle notes of pumpkin, nutmeg, clove, cinnamon and allspice, all subordinate to an overall ale flavour. What a relief—“alcoholic pumpkin juice” doesn’t sound very appetizing. [Globe and Mail]

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| Leave a Comment » October 28, 2009 | 8:41 am | Fraser Abe

From the Print Edition

The List: Erin Karpluk’s top 10

erin_karpluk_thmb The effervescent star of Being Erica tells us about her undies, her sunless tan and eight other things she can’t live without. Read her picks here >>

Read previous editions of The List >

| Leave a Comment » October 14, 2009 | 10:05 am | Toronto Life Staff

Aprons & Icons

Girl on grill action: Ontario’s barbecue queen fires up Hogtown

The honours, all mine: The head of the Diva Q team clutches her well-earned trophies

She smoked the competition on the Ontario barbecue circuit, has taken a prize for Best International Team at the prestigious Jack Daniel’s Invitational in Lynchburg, Tennessee, and earned an invite to the National Barbeque Association’s showdown in Georgia. Now the grilling goddess, Danielle Dimovski—better known as Diva Q—brings her fiery style to Toronto for the first annual Crazy Canuck Championships at Woodbine Park on June 20.

“There’s not much I haven’t put on a barbecue,” says the self-described OCB (obsessive compulsive barbecuer); she’s even tried ice cream bars and chocolate cheesecake, the Death by Diva, which won top honours in a Kansas City competition. When we catch her, she’s tending to 50 “atomic buffalo turds” for a TV spot on the series Playing House. The snack, which she calls “the crack candy of the barbecue world” (we say cardiologist’s nightmare), is jalapeño peppers stuffed with spices and cream cheese, wrapped in bacon and cooked low and slow for three hours.

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| 1 Comment » June 12, 2009 | 12:14 pm | Davida Aronovitch

Read All About It

Anthony Bourdain hates cupcakes, Thuet gets convicted, Fall Out Boy’s underage flub

Anthony Bourdain takes a stand against cupcakes (Photo by Neeta Lind)

• Chef and author Anthony Bourdain tells the Seattle Times he’s had enough of the cupcake trend, that Kobe beef should not be used in a hamburger, and that geoduck is delicious. [Seattle Times]

• Two Burger King restaurants in Tennessee displayed “Global Warming Is Baloney” signs last week, with one outlet’s manager saying that the statement represents the views of BK headquarters. Of course, when the big cheese got wind of the story, the signs were taken down and the company released a statement denying the claim. [Guardian]

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| 1 Comment » June 3, 2009 | 8:45 am | Karon Liu