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Cava’s baked Alaska looks old school, with its beautifully torched meringue dome, but things get interesting once you crack the golden crust: one half is filled with airy lemon semifreddo, the other with a pistachio ice cream so nutty it’s more savoury than sweet. $11. 1560 Yonge St., 416-979-9918.
Where Chefs Eat is a new 633-page collection of answers to a very simple question: where to go for a good meal? Those answers are from some 400 of the world’s top chefs, including Ferran Adria, Daniel Boulud, David Chang, Fergus Henderson and Rene Redzepi, as well as Toronto chefs Michael Steh, formerly of Reds, and Claudio Aprile, chef and owner of Colborne Lane and Origin. The guidebook is edited by Guardian critic Joe Warwick, who also co-founded the World’s 50 Best Restaurants awards. It’s not only an inventory of the flashy big-name places in a city, but also of regular neighbourhood and cheap eats spots. There’s even a category for places the chefs wish they opened. We flipped through the tome to pull out the 15 restaurants in and around Toronto recommended by the world’s top chefs.
Tacquitos de huitlacoche at Pachuco. The huitlacoche is on the right (Image: Signe Langford)
Huitlacoche (pronounced weet-la-KOH-chay), a corn fungus that’s popular in Mexican food, has two commonly used English names: the gross-sounding “corn smut” and “Mexican truffle,” which over-promises a little on its earthy if not quite transcendent taste. It’s been showing up with increasing frequency on Mexican menus for the last few years; more recently, we’ve noted an uptick in the use of huitlacoche at other types of restaurants too. Here’s where we’ve spotted it:
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(Image: Jenna Marie Wakani)
For philanthropists with a gourmet bent, What’s on the Table, the big annual fundraiser for The Stop, is kind of a big deal. Every year, a slew of the city’s top chefs come out to support the community food centre and hobnob with some of their biggest fans. The 2012 edition, which took place on Wednesday at the Artscape Wychwood Bars, featured chefs from Beast, Cava, George, GwaiLo, Hooked, Nadège, Noce, Parts and Labour, Paulette’s, Pizzeria Libretto and The Harbord Room, among many others. We spied former mayor David Miller enthusing with Cava’s Chris McDonald over their shared love of Spanish cuisine, and GwaiLo’s Nick Liu politely fending off nosy questions about where his still-not-yet-open restaurant will be located. In the end, after two auctions (one live and one silent), The Stop came away with $270,000 to support their mission of increasing everyone’s access to good, healthy food. The 500-odd donors, meanwhile, left with full bellies and rosy cheeks, having kibitzed with their chef-idols for a few hours.
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It’s 4 p.m. on Friday, and you don’t have a dinner reservation. Still, there’s no need to fret (or waste your night waiting for a table). We just called some of the city’s hottest restaurants and found three that can squeeze in two for dinner tonight. Now it’s up to you to get dialing and snag a table before they’re all gone. Today: Cava, Volos and Frank’s Kitchen.
Read the rest of this entry »It’s 4 p.m. on Friday, and you don’t have a dinner reservation. Still, there’s no need to fret (or waste your night waiting for a table). We just called some of the city’s hottest restaurants and found three that can squeeze in two for dinner tonight. Now it’s up to you to get dialing and snag a table before they’re all gone. Today: Table 17, Fabbrica and Cava.
Read the rest of this entry »It’s 4 p.m. on Friday, and you don’t have a dinner reservation. Still, there’s no need to fret (or waste your night waiting for a table). We just called some of the city’s hottest restaurants and found three that can squeeze in two for dinner tonight. Now it’s up to you to get dialing and snag a table before they’re all gone. Today: Splendido, One and Cava.
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The latest addition to the spate of Internet-based foodie happenings in Toronto is Dish Duel (not to be confused with Dishcrawl), a bracket-style tournament pitting signature dishes from Toronto restaurants against each other. The project is the invention of Restos in TO blogger Jacob Younan, who has managed to convince the likes of Acadia, Cava, George and Cowbell (among 12 others) to gird their (tender)loins and head into battle beginning February 18.
Bannock’s holiday tourtière
This time of year, it takes a strong will not to indulge, whether it be in the beautiful pastries and cakes spilling out of patisserie windows or the drinks at a holiday party. We say, why even try? We’ve rounded up some of our favourites, along with a few other gifts that your food-obsessed friends are sure to love (including one salve for those who’ve indulged just a little too much).
UPDATE: Organizer Suresh Doss has just tweeted that today’s event was just shut down part way through service. El Gastrónomo Vagabundo confirms it was due to a bylaw violation.
Ryerson students heading back to class today can look forward to an extra culinary boost to get them through the day: a mini Food Truck Eats pop-up truck just around the corner from campus. The truck will be in the parking lot northwest of Dundas and Church today from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m..
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Chef Robbie Hojilla, the man of the hour, pictured with his family. (Image: Renée Suen)
Over the last couple of months, we’ve reported on events where cooks and restaurateurs have donated their time and resources to give to others. Last Monday at Frank’s Kitchen, we dropped in on a fundraiser thrown for one of their own: Woodlot cook Robbie Hojilla. Just 25 years old, Hojilla has been diagnosed with heart failure and is currently not able to work. Given that the restaurant business lacks the sort of financial fallbacks of other jobs (like health benefits or sick leave), chef Frank Parhizgar and his wife, Shawn Cooper, the owners of Frank’s Kitchen, decided to help the talented young chef with an industry-wide fundraiser. Donating space, food and alcohol, the couple joined up with the staff of Frank’s and Woodlot to offer a multi-course dinner complete with wine pairings.
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At 3 p.m., the lines continued unabated. (Image: Renée Suen)
Saturday marked the inaugural staging of Food Truck Eats, a street food event organized by Suresh Doss, publisher of Spotlight Toronto, which saw four street trucks and 10 vendors gather at the historic Distillery District. Although a conservative turnout of 500 was expected, more than 3,000 showed up for the long-weekend event (which ended up trending on Twitter). Despite the heat and long lineups, the crowd was abuzz—a sure indication of the city’s readiness for more liberal street food rules. We caught up with the various vendors—Cava, Geoff Hopgood, El Gastrónomo Vagabundo and more—to check out their wares and find out what they made of the day’s success. We also spoke to Doss, who gave us the heads-up on the next two events, which will take place at the on Aug. 20 at the Distillery and Oct. 1 at a new location to be announced, and will feature some surprise guests.
Rob Gentile (Buca), David Lee (Nota Bene), Andrea Nicholson (Great Cooks on Eight), Paul Boehmer (Böhmer), Teo Paul (Union)
Two thousand of Toronto’s food lovers and makers gathered at the ROM on Sunday for the 21st edition of Toronto Taste. The annual fundraiser—which raises money for Second Harvest—saw more than 60 restaurants and 30 beverage purveyors offering their best to the guests. Burgers and tacos might have been the plats du jour, but new restaurant openings seemed to be the hottest item on the plates of many chefs and restaurateurs we spoke to. Here’s what we heard from Buca’s Rob Gentile, Woodlot’s David Haman, Scarpetta’s Scott Conant, Splendido’s Victor Barry, Top Chef Canada contestants Dustin Gallagher and Andrea Nicholson and many more.
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