Lucky Dip – Friday, February 24th, 2012

In Toronto:

The Queen and Beaver (35 Elm Street) is expanding northward with a new location in Yorkville called The Oxley, set to open in mid-April.

The College Street location of Mitzi’s (890 College Street) will be serving its last brunch this weekend, shutting down after service on Sunday, February 26th. The Sorauren Avenue location as well as The Sister on Queen Street West will remain open.

Chef Tawfik Shehata announced earlier today via Twitter that he is no longer associated with The Bowery (55 Colborne Street). No word on what he’ll be doing next.

Chef Nick Liu is planning to host a pair of preview dinners for his new Asian fusion restaurant GwaiLo. Dinners will take place on March 6th and 13th, location TBA. Follow GwaiLo on Twitter to find out more details.

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Lucky Dip – Monday, November 14th, 2011

Cooked versus raw – or – maybe this is why people on raw food diets are so slim. [Globe and Mail]

More than 30 years after his death, Colonel Harland Sanders will become a published author – online no less. KFC plans to publish a recently discovered manuscript written by Sanders in the 60s. Part-autobiography, part cookbook, it sadly does not contain THE secret recipe. [Philly.com]

Black Creek Pioneer Village makes a one-mile beer, made with ingredients grown on the museum grounds. [Toronto Sun]

A dirty restaurant bathroom doesn’t necessarily mean that the kitchen is disgusting too. Also, door knobs aren’t that dirty, stop being so paranoid!) [Chow]

I’m a big fan of returning old buildings to their former grandeur, so the plans by Oliver & Bonacini to return the Arcadian Court at The Bay Queen Street to its original art deco elegance get a big thumbs up. The room (along with the sad little cafeteria-style restaurant) will become an event space in 2012. [Oliver & Bonacini blog]

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Lucky Dip – Wednesday, November 2nd, 2011

Maybe Ricky and Julian (and pretty much every hard-drinking Nova Scotian) aren’t so dumb after all – rum is the hot “new” drink, and yes, you can have it with Coke. [Globe and Mail]

If you’ve been following the news in Toronto about how a Halloween party store has had multiple bomb scares during their busiest season, and wondering why on earth anyone would do such a thing, maybe it’s the same freaky sense of competition that compelled two Domino’s managers in Florida to set fire to a rival pizza joint. [Jacksonville.com]

Tomorrow is International Stout Day (yes, it’s a real thing). Celebrate in style with a tasty chocolate version of the beloved elixir. [Toronto Star]

Fried chicken, a presidential scandal and how what we eat might stereotype us. [Slate]

“Cooking is the showy side of domesticity.” Why men like to cook more than scrub the floor. [Globe and Mail]

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Lucky Dip – Monday, June 20th, 2011

It must be State Fair season; people are once again frying things that were never meant to be deep-fried. Like Kool-Aid. [Globe and Mail]

Don’t diss the junk food – it has its place as a guilty pleasure. [The Guardian]

It’s still tough going for women in professional kitchens. [National Post]

The fragmentation of food – while many of us aspire to eat foraged mushrooms around a battered harvest table, most people get their food from a box via the microwave. Plus, getting freekah. Let’s watch a food trend unfold. [The Independent]

Oh sweet merciful crap – someone has started a company making server uniforms for skeezy titty restaurants. [FOX Business]

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Remembering Sher

When I started editing the Fit Fare blog on the Well Fed Network back in February of 2006, one of the first writers we hired was a firecracker of a lady named Sherry Cermak. She had trouble figuring out the blog interface we used and would email me regularly to ask me how to upload something or to fix a technical glitch.

In between work stuff, we also started to chat about other things – food, farmers markets, cats, and  squirrels. When I left Well Fed, Sher was one of the few people I kept in touch with, and still have her blog What Did You Eat? in my RSS feed. Her weekly updates about her cats, as well as the many recipes she posted, kept me well-entertained.

Last Sunday, Sher died suddenly of a heart attack. She had had a couple of health issues when we worked together – I remember some vision concerns that prompted her to ask me to do careful edits on her work because she had trouble seeing what she had been writing – but the heart attack was apparently completely unexpected.

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