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All stories relating to Susur Lee

The Dish

Food Events

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Luminato announces lineup for 2012 edition of 1,000 Tastes of Toronto

One of Toronto’s 1,000 tastes, from last year’s festival (Image: Luminato)

On Friday, Luminato announced the full list of restaurants, vendors and food shops participating in its annual 1,000 Tastes of Toronto event, which moves back to the Distillery on June 9 and 10 after last year’s foray onto John Street. Notable among the list of attendees at the street food festival is Bent, the upcoming restaurant headed by Susur Lee’s sons Levi and Kai Bent-Lee (which is slated to open very soon). Other food programming at this year’s Luminato includes Rainer Prohaska’s Toronto Carretilla Initiative, a kind of participatory art installation that’s also a public feast, and a conversation between New Yorker writers Adam Gopnik and Calvin Trillin about Canadian cuisine, a subject both writers have experience waxing charmingly condescending about.

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The Dish

Restaurants

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More details emerge about Bent, the new restaurant from the Bent-Lee clan

The future home of Bent at 777 Dundas St. W.

While the initial hoped-for launch date of Christmas 2011 has come and gone (like every single other hoped-for launch date in the history of the restaurant industry), the new project from Susur Lee and his sons Levi and Kai Bent-Lee is coming along nicely. The restaurant, we’re told, will be called Bent, after Susur’s wife, Brenda Bent, who designed the interior (given the family’s restaurant naming history, with Susur, Lee and Madeline’s, this leaves the names Brenda, Kai, Levi, Jet and Bent-Lee available for future projects). Levi will be in charge of the restaurant’s operations, Kai will run the bar, which will focus on sake, and Susur, naturally, will be in charge of the kitchen, whose menu will apparently prominently feature ceviche. If things go according to schedule, Bent should be open for business in about four weeks.

The Dish

Food TV

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Top Chef Canada recap, episode 6: double trouble

“Hiya boss!” (Image: Top Chef Canada)

TOP CHEF CANADA Season 2 | Episode 6

Six weeks into the competition, the gloves have finally come off. The judges are getting pickier, the challenges are getting meaner (see the quickfire below) and the chefs are getting more than a little testy (last week’s blowups with Elizabeth Rivasplata were child’s play in comparison). On top of all that, last night’s episode showcased the always entertaining Restaurant Wars, during which the chefs divide up into teams to see whose restaurant can screw up the least. We were pretty much glued to the screen.

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The Dish

Restaurants

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Forgot to make a Valentine’s Day reservation? Here are 10 restaurants that still have space

Above: Plan B. Or maybe Plan C (Image: Pizza Pizza)

Hoping to take your sweetheart to Splendido, Scarpetta or Auberge du Pommier for Valentine’s Day? Well sorry, it’s too late. However, we did find some restaurants that have both romantic prix-fixe menus and a few tables left for procrastinators. It helps if said sweetheart doesn’t mind eating a bit early or late. And if all else fails, there’s always Pizza Pizza, which will be serving up heart-shaped pizzas until next week (because nothing says “I love you” like gooey cheese, delivery boys and cardboard boxes).

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The Dish

Food TV

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Top Chef Canada reveals the rather stacked list of guest judges for season two

Remember last year when Chris Cosentino, one of the pioneers of the offal revival, visited Toronto for undisclosed reasons and claimed he could smell Chinatown from three blocks away? Or when Richard Blais, the molecularly inclined winner of Top Chef All-Stars, tweeted about the interesting tasting menu he’d just lunched on in Toronto? Or when Italian food legend Lidia Bastianich dropped in at All the Best Fine Foods? Turns out they weren’t here just because they love us—they’re all guest judges on season two of Top Chef Canada. Other notable judges and tasters include—and let us be clear, this is a bit of a spoiler for those who really like to keep their Top Chef Canada viewing pure—east-coast chef Michael Smith, season one host Thea Andrews (no hard feelings, we guess!), chef-about-town Matty Matheson of Parts and Labour, Leafs assistant captain Colby Armstrong, Susur Lee and his soon-to-be restaurateur sons Kai and Jet Bent-Lee, Toca’s Tom Brodi, Roger Mooking, Top Chef Masters winner Marcus Samuelson, last season’s winner Dale MacKay and his adorable son Ayden, Keisha Chante, Rick the Temp Campanelli, Lorenzo Loseto of George, Charlie’s Burgers mastermind Franco Stalteri, husband-and-wife dynamos Marc Thuet and Biana Zorich, Odd Bits author Jennifer McLagan, Vancouver Indian restaurateur and chef Vikram Vij and assorted competitors from last season, not to mention the somewhat bizarro guests we already told you about, like Alan Thicke and Mike Holmes. (Whew!) Not bad.

The Dish

Restaurants

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Susur Lee to open new spot on the Dundas West foodie mile with his sons

Lee at his last opening, Lee Lounge (Image: Renée Suen)

The comings and goings at 777 Dundas Street West sure have been attracting a lot of attention of late. The one-time home of Le Corner has now been scooped up by none other than Susur Lee. This time, however, there’s a catch: according to Now magazine it’s Lee’s sons, Levi and Kai Bent-Lee, who will be the faces of the joint, with their celebu-dad popping in and out of the kitchen.

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The Dish

Licious

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

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:

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The Dish

People

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Q&A with Hemant Bhagwani: the Amaya co-owner on building his Indian restaurant empire

Although the recession is officially over, its effects—shuttered doors and restaurants offering humbler, more comfort-driven cuisine—can still be seen on Toronto’s culinary landscape. So we were a bit surprised when we heard the news that the Amaya Group is set to open yet another outpost next month, this time on Ossington. With even further expansion ahead, we asked Amaya co-owner Hemant Bhagwani about the secrets to his success and the future of the empire.

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The Dish

Food TV

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Top Chef Canada recap, episode 4: ethnic stuff white people like

The judges get their serious faces on as the losing teams walk out (Image: Food Network Canada/Insight Productions)

TOP CHEF CANADA
Season 1 | Episode 4

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First off, a confession: focusing on Top Chef Canada last night, as the ground-shaking results from the election poured in, was a little tough (we bet this episode’s ratings will agree). But fear not, election junkies–cum–Top Chef fans—we stuck it out so you didn’t have to (and then promptly switched to the CBC to find the Tory win had already been projected). Still, episode four—which featured Susur Lee, Toronto’s ethnic cuisines and, yes, more chefs in their underwear (hi, Dale!)—turned out to be pretty entertaining. After the jump, our recap of the Top Chef Canada episode you were too patriotic to watch.

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The Dish

Food TV

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Top Chef Canada recap, episode 3: Aykroyd’s verboten vodka

Guest judge Dan Aykroyd flanked by his blues sisters, Thea Andrews and Shereen Arazm (Image: Food Network Canada/Insight Productions)

TOP CHEF CANADA
Season 1 | Episode 3

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Was it just us, or was the level of cooking on last night’s episode of Top Chef Canada miles ahead of the safe, bland fare from the first two weeks? Maybe the chefs have gotten over their first time jitters. Or maybe it was the presence of actor, restaurateur, winemaker, illicit vodka purveyor and guest judge Dan Aykroyd that (ghost-)busted them into shape. Whatever it was, the contestants stepped up their game—without sacrificing the all-important smack talk and clowning around in their under things (this time Origin’s Steve Gonzalez did the honours). Here, our recap of the best dishes, trash talk and product placements.

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The Dish

Features

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Susur Lee lite: the celebrity chef is back, but he didn’t bring his A game. Lee Lounge, his latest venture, falls flat

Interior of Susur's Lee Lounge

In the year following the announcement of Susur Lee’s new project in the storied room that once was Susur restaurant, it was tempting to believe that the chef was planning a triumphant return to Toronto. Speaking on his behalf, Brenda Bent, his wife and the designer of his Toronto restaurants, sounded keen to have her peripatetic husband back in the city more often. She even went so far as to enumerate the days Lee is contractually obliged to spend at his restaurants in New York, D.C. and Singapore (a total of 58 per year), adding that her husband wanted to “offer a more intense level of cooking” here at home.

This was great news for diners craving something more ambitious than Lee, the casual, cash-spinning and comparatively low-maintenance restaurant he has run, albeit often from a distance, since 2004, or Madeline’s, which stood for a couple years in the former Susur space but never came close to being as good as its predecessor.

Could diners dare to dream that the chef might give it his all in a Toronto kitchen again? When the new place, Lee Lounge, opened on Valentine’s Day, after eight months of delays, the first thing you saw inside the door was a black and white picture of Lee as a child with his family in Hong Kong, and the words “Re-Entry Permit” written above the photo on the wall. “Re-Entry Permit” was the theme of the Lee Lounge launch. What else were we supposed to think? Susur Lee was back.

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The Dish

Food TV

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Top Chef Canada recap, episode 1: playing with knives

TOP CHEF CANADA
Season 1 | Episode 1

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Like most fans of the original, American Top Chef, we came to last night’s premiere of Top Chef Canada with some pretty serious expectations. Would the level of competition be as fierce? Would Thea Andrews be credible as the host? Could we blindly trust head judge Mark McEwan the way we do Tom Colicchio? Would the producers be able to cram in as many egregious product placements?

We needn’t have worried. Top Chef Canada is eerily similar to the original—same structure, same music, same sound effects, same stock phrases—but with an extra dash of Canadian hokeyness added in. Here, our recap of the best dishes, quips and insidious sponsorship.

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The Hype

Prime Time

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Dream-casting The Real Housewives of Toronto: seven ideal stars for the Canada-bound reality show

We learned recently that the Real Housewives franchise is officially looking into a Canadian spinoff. No word for sure on which major city will get the nod, but Toronto seems like an obvious choice. According to the Post’s Shinan Govani, our top duelling divas Stacey Kimmel and Suzanne Rogers have already declined offers to participate. Meanwhile, the city’s original glitter girl Catherine Nugent told ET Canada that she “wouldn’t even consider” an offer.

Luckily, not all Toronto socialites have such resolve. Govani reported that Jessica Mulroney, wife to Ben and new mom to the couple’s new chinny-chin twins, is “in talks” (though her hubby later recanted on her behalf). Ainsley Kerr, the best local example of the famous-for-being-famous phenomenon, played coy when asked about her involvement. We thought you had to be married or divorced to be qualify as a Housewife, but maybe not.

Depending on your feelings about trash television, this is either the best news since So You Think You Can Dance Canada, or a sign of the cultural apocalypse. Personally, we think a show like this would be must-see TV. Torontonians are so stiff and serious—a little mudslinging might do us some good. And so—with our fingers crossed and our PVRs primed—we set about coming up with the ultimate cast list for The Real Housewives of Toronto. Our picks, after the jump.

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The Dish

People

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Chuck Hughes becomes the first Canadian chef to beat Bobby Flay on Iron Chef

Chef Chuck Hughes (Image: Cooking Channel)

Chuck Hughes, chef at Montreal restaurant Garde Manger, won Iron Chef America this past weekend, succeeding where few competitors have: Hughes beat culinary master Bobby Flay in the kitchen stadium battle, which featured a secret ingredient of Canadian lobster. Included in Hughes’s winning menu: lobster poutine. Hughes, 34, is the youngest Canadian and second Canuck to win the series, after Vancouver’s Rob Feenie defeated Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto in 2005 (Susur Lee tied with Flay in 2006). Hughes is also the first Quebec chef to compete on the show.

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The Dish

Restaurants

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Six things we learned from the Star’s interview with Momofuku chef David Chang

Momofuku chef David Chang (Image: David Shankbone)

Last week saw a flurry of excitement over the rumours and then confirmation that David Chang, chef and owner of New York’s Momofuku empire, would be setting up shop here in Toronto. But the e-mail Chang’s PR chief sent out was pretty short on specifics about the two new restaurants. Yesterday, the Toronto Star ran a piece by food editor Jennifer Bain with some additional details, straight from the horse’s mouth. After the jump, six things we learned:

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