Tag: Keriwa Cafe

Lucky Dip – Tuesday, March 27th, 2012

In Toronto:

Keriwa Cafe (1690 Queen Street West) had updated their website. All the better to see their monthly menu updates.

Chef Justin Cournoyer’s new restaurant Actinolite (971 Ossington Avenue) opens to the public tomorrow (Wednesday, March 28th) serving up a menu with Spanish, Portuguese and Italian influences.

Basilio Pesce of Oliver & Bonacini has left Biff’s Bistro (4 Front Street East) to open his own restaurant in Parkdale.

Mabel’s Bakery (323 Roncesvalles Avenue) is expanding with a new location coming to 1156 Queen Street West.

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Hopgood’s Foodliner Rocks the East Coast Flavours

Anyone who knows me or who reads this site regularly knows my feelings on donairs. Particularly that we don’t have any good ones here in Toronto, and that it’s a crying shame because we do so much to celebrate the street food of other cultures, but we seldom, even within the realm of “local”, celebrate the food of Canada. That goes for all Canadian foods, actually, not just street food, and it’s truly a delight to see restaurants like Keriwa Cafe, and Acadia to some extent (Chef Matt Blondin has a specific niche but there’s definite Canadian influences) and now Hopgood’s Foodliner (325 Roncesvalles Avenue) picking up on Canadian regional cuisine.

Geoff Hopgood has been very quiet about his recent restaurant opening. Few people knew it was even happening until news of the soft opening broke on Twitter and an exclusive with the Globe and Mail’s Chris Nuttal-Smith ran the following day. A website with the most basic info was made in late January, but wasn’t getting indexed by Google as Toronto food freaks desperately searched for more information last Friday.

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Smörgåsbord – Splendido, beer bistro, Keriwa Cafe

I seem to have amassed a sizeable collection of photos of recently-eaten meals that I’ve never gotten around to posting. In part to share the food porn love and to clear out my files before year-end, I’ve got a couple of Smörgåsbords for y’all.

Above, the gloriously luxurious foie gras parfait at Splendido where Greg and I spent my birthday in September.

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Shut Yo’ Mouth – Stuff I Wrote This Week – Saturday, November 12th, 2011

The Windsor Arms goes vegan

Here comes Santa Claus, right past Jamie Kennedy at the Gardiner

Restaurant news – Cafe Belong, Hrvati Bar

Street Fight on Mill Street

Is Parkdale about to get a taste of the Hoof?

Brockton General hosts a pastry chef dinner

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Smörgåsbord – Keriwa Cafe

We talk a lot about seasonal, local food, but the ultimate in this type of cuisine has to be the food of the First Nations people, who predate the rest of us by thousands of years. European settlers relied on help from First Nations communities when they arrived in Canada, but a lot of what we look at as being “seasonal and local” really isn’t at all, it’s comprised of foodways that were imported.

Toronto has never had a restaurant featuring Aboriginal cuisine that I’m aware of, so Keriwa Cafe (1690 Queen Street West) has both a clean slate, and a lot to prove. There is little precedent for Aboriginal dishes in fine dining, but can Chef Aaron Joseph Bear Robe make it high-end enough to bring in an upscale clientele (who will “rough it” into the wilderness of Parkdale for the novelty and trendiness factor, but need to be turned into returning regulars to keep the business running), and rustic enough to keep the cuisine true to its roots?

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