Sheryl Kirby

Sunday Brunch – Blue Plate

Blue Plate
392 Roncesvalles Avenue
416-538-7500
brunch for two with all taxes, tip and coffee: $40

How long is long enough?

We’re known for hassling other restaurant critics about not giving new restaurants enough time to find their groove before slipping in for a review. Two or three weeks is usually considered an appropriate amount of time, and we feel we’re adhering to that standard of courtesy when we show up more than two weeks after opening day at Blue Plate, the new restaurant on Roncesvalles where Boho used to be. But while the food meets our expectations, the place very much feels like the staff on the floor and in the kitchen are barely keeping it together.

The two owners – Melissa Fox-Revett in the front of house and Julia Young at the stoves – aren’t unfamiliar with the space. Both were involved with Boho before it was sold to Fergus Munster a couple of years ago. The room got a gorgeous reno when the pair took it over earlier this year, and it’s once again a long, airy room with an open kitchen, and wow, what a floor.

But nice decor doesn’t make up for the constant mistakes.

Continue reading “Sunday Brunch – Blue Plate”

Souped Up

This past Wednesday was sunny and warm – not a day you’d typically consider eating soup. But 400 people lined up at the doors of the Gardiner Museum to take part in Empty Bowls, an annual event featuring local chefs, local pottery artists and of course, great soup.

For $45, attendees not only got to sample soups from 20 different restaurants at the Jamie Kennedy at the Gardiner restaurant, they also got a beautiful, hand-made bowl to take home.

This fantastic event is based entirely on donations – from the chefs donating their time and food, to local potters donating bowls, many made especially for this event. With bread donated from Ace Bakery and crackers from Evelyn’s Crackers, plus water from Gaia and cups from Green Shift, all proceeds from the event go towards Anishnawbe Health Toronto, a charitable organization that provides food to homeless people. Volunteers and Gardiner Museum staff also donated their time, and props, kudos and huge piles of thanks and appreciation must go to organizer Siobhan Boyd who pulls this thing together every year with aplomb.

Continue reading “Souped Up”

Green Gold

When I think of olive oil, like most people, the first thing that comes to mind is Spain or Italy, two regions well-known for producing some of the world’s best olive oils. But at a recent event featuring 22 olive oils from Argentina, it was clear that this country should also be considered a player to watch in the industry.

Like wine, olive oil takes on characteristics of its terroir, and like wine, olive oil ranges in quality and flavour. As Argentina is such a geographically diverse country – ranging from mountainous regions to a long coastline – influences on flavour (as with wine) are great.

Although olive trees arrived in the new world with the Spanish conquest, olive oil production in Argentina is a relatively recent industry – prior to the 1990s, the oil was thought to not be of very good quality and was often used in blended table oils. But by 2003, tens of thousands of hectares of olive trees had been planted, many on modern plantations with drip irrigation, and output has increased to around 100,000 pounds per year.

Continue reading “Green Gold”

Market Mondays – Fiddleheads

There’s a phenomenon on Twitter where people will mention or retweet something and create a buzz, but the buzz fails. For instance, a dozen people will mention a food-related event but none of them will actually attend. The same kind of failed buzz seems to be happening with seasonal produce. I’m seeing piles of people squeeing about ramps and fiddleheads, but none of that excitement translating to blog posts showing what they’ve been cooking with these seasonal glories.

In fact, the only mention I’ve seen about fiddleheads in terms of someone having purchased and prepared the things is pickling. No references to the fresh product at all. Which makes me think that maybe people still don’t know what to do with fiddleheads, even though they’re turning up everywhere.

Up until a few years ago, the few people in Toronto (mostly ex-pat Maritimers) who knew and loved fiddleheads were happy to have one small feed of them each June. There was one produce shop in Kensington Market that would bring them in from Nova Scotia and by the time they made it to the store shelves they were already starting to go off. Sobey’s stores (based in Nova Scotia) would sometime get them in as well, albeit in very small quantities.

While the Ostrich Fern is native to Ontario, nobody seemed to pick up on the fact that the things are mighty tasty until a few years ago – probably after having listened to a Maritimer friend bemoan the lack of them one time too many.

So now they’re everywhere – and people are excited – but still… nobody seems to be doing much with them.

Continue reading “Market Mondays – Fiddleheads”

No Cake For You, Kiddies!

Moderation. Does anybody know what this means anymore?

Schools across the Western world are demonstrating knee jerk reactions to the “childhood obesity crisis” by banning anything at all that includes sugar or fat. School lunches and cafeteria foods are still full of crap and chemicals, but everything else is fair game for an inquisition-like search and banishment. As we saw with Jamie Oliver’s school dinners program in the UK, there is usually a reaction to this, and parents bristle at someone telling them how to raise (and feed) their kids.

There are so many things wrong on every side of this. First, the nanny state that provokes schools to haul a parent in for a talking to when junior pulls a chocolate cookie out of his home-packed lunch. And in retaliation, the parent makes something like a birthday cake a point of contention.

In this piece in the UK’s Telegraph, writer Judith Woods explains how she is baking a birthday cake for her child despite the kid’s school having banned the things. The school’s theory being that if every kid shows up with sweets to share on their birthday then that’s too much crap for the kids to be having on a regular basis. And while I’m a defender of all things cakey – I’m going to sort of agree and reiterate the “moderation” rule.

Because while I agree with and defend Woods’ right to let her kid have birthday cake on their own birthday – I don’t agree that it needs to go to school. In a class of 20 – 25 kids, that works out to a lot of cake over the course of a school year. Not to mention that it looks like a little bit of dick-waving and one-up-man-ship as parents compete for the best and biggest cake (it’s probably cheaper than a party with a bouncy castle, clown and pony rides, but still…). Have a party for your kid in their own home and by all means have cake, but I don’t believe it should be in schools in that context. I can’t remember taking cake or cupcakes to school for the whole class on my birthday – or getting cake or treats for anyone else’s birthday. Despite the fact that they’d provided us with sweet, sweet sugar, any kid who did that in my day would have gotten themselves pegged as a show off. It speaks to society’s obsession with making kids into little stars and reinforcing how special they are – which isn’t good for the kid, or society.

Parties and treats for holidays seem like enough occasions for kids to bring food to school – with someone ensuring that most of the snacks are healthy. In that context, there is room for a slice of cake or some cookies or chips, and kids learn to associate party food with actual parties.

There are people out there who don’t know how to feed their kids, and their ignorance makes life tough for everyone else as authorities work on the lowest common denominator factor and apply condescending rules to everyone. But we also need to ensure that kids aren’t expecting treats and party food at every turn – by allowing kids to take cake to school to celebrate their own birthday, we’re creating a sense of entitlement that is not only fuelling the childhood obesity problem but society’s downfall.

Have a party for your kid; have cake, by all means – but do it at home. Don’t force others to match your efforts, don’t create more reasons to stuff their little faces full of junk, and don’t coddle them into believing that cake for the whole class – for every student’s birthday – is normal or healthy. Moderation and common sense – if more people used these, we wouldn’t need a cupcake nanny state.

Real Food For Real Kids

While the rest of the world has been avidly watching Jamie Oliver challenge the concept of school dinners, and trying to figure out how to translate his ideas to their own kids’ schools, here in Toronto a catering company dedicated to providing children with healthy, nutritious meals has been going strong – and growing rapidly – for the past five years.

Real Food For Real Kids (RFRK) is the brainchild of David Farnell and his wife Lulu Cohen-Farnell. Shocked at what daycare centres were offering as snacks to their charges, the Farnells started sending their son Max to daycare with his own snacks and lunch because they wanted him to have healthy, tasty, nutritious food. The idea grew and RFRK now cooks up thousands of meals every day that are sent out to daycares, schools and camps across the GTA.

At a recent open house for care providers, staff from schools and daycares were invited into the RFRK kitchens for a tour and to sample some of the items on the new menu.

Continue reading “Real Food For Real Kids”

(Per)Fuming

Articles in all the major papers today, telling the world what many of us already knew – perfumes are toxic.

The testing showed that each fragrance contains, on average, 14 chemicals that are not listed on the product label. In total, nearly 40 undisclosed chemicals were found in the 17 products tested. The products contained a total of 91 chemicals, some identified on labels and some not. Of those, only 19 have ever been reviewed by the Cosmetic Ingredient Review, a review body of the cosmetics industry.

The kicker, of course, for people with “sensitivity” to perfume is that we can’t even get a legal diagnosis of “allergic” because perfume companies are not required to list all of those ingredients. Without a list, doctors can’t isolate the individual ingredients, and to ascertain an allergic reaction, each ingredient would have to be tested. Even then, knowing you’re allergic to, say, lilial, doesn’t really help if it’s out there in the chemical soup that people shroud themselves in.

Continue reading “(Per)Fuming”

Stirring the Pot with Chef Andrea Nicholson-Jack

Since the age of fourteen, Andrea has been consumed by the art of food: as a creator, teacher and connoisseur.

She is a Red Seal certified chef who received her culinary training at George Brown College in Toronto. Her professional experience includes positions in respected Toronto restaurants such as Via Allegro, The Fifth, Sequel, Thirty Five Elm and Trattoria Nervosa, as well as travelling the culinary globe and working with internationally acclaimed chefs. Andrea is currently the only Canadian to hold a diploma from the A.P.N. of Naples, Italy, distinguishing her as a Pizzaiuoli.

Andrea’s passion for food is evident in her masterful creations, which celebrate the purity of local and seasonal produce. Support for Canadian farmers and purveyors is a central tenet of her cuisine. Andrea has received several awards for culinary artistry and has been featured on network television. Her credentials and experience identify her as one of Toronto’s top female chefs.

Andrea is now Executive Chef and Director of Great Cooks Culinary Centre (401 Bay Street, Simpson’s Tower, 8th floor).

What inspired you to become a chef?

How delicious food is and the artistic ability to create.

Continue reading “Stirring the Pot with Chef Andrea Nicholson-Jack”

Stupid PR Tricks – Pay Attention and Read What’s in Front of You

One of the flaws of the Internet is that, despite the great amounts of information out there available to make our lives easier, we don’t really read all of it before taking action. We have become a society of skimmers and at TasteTO we regularly get comments from readers that make us shake our heads. After a month on hiatus where we spent a bit of time cleaning up some back end stuff, I made a post about the changes we had made. We got a pile of comments complimenting us on “our new look”. But – we never changed the look of the site at all. Same layout. Exactly.

One of the things we did change was the manner in which people can contact us. Previously we had a variety of email addresses that were listed all over the site. And we got a lot of spam as bots hit the site and spewed out junk. We also got a lot of unsolicited press releases and attachments for stuff we couldn’t or didn’t want to cover. So we put in a contact form so the emails addresses aren’t out there.

Except that people don’t like contact forms. Especially people who want to send attachments. We could sense their frustration in the message “I need an email address to send you information about a new beverage product.” “Please provide contact info so we can send you a press release about an upcoming food event.”

Continue reading “Stupid PR Tricks – Pay Attention and Read What’s in Front of You”

Market Mondays – Ramps

If you’re wondering why you’d never heard of ramps prior to a few years ago, you’d be in good company. While the allium tricoccum is native to Ontario, it’s only in the past few years that this member of the onion family has become popular. So popular in fact that the foodies are flocking to buy them and the anti-foodies are casting them aside. Which, while the things are darn tasty, may not be a bad idea, given that they’re considered to be a “threatened species” in Quebec and parts of the US.

To many people ramps signal spring – the first bits of edible greenery after a long hard winter. Ramps are considered a special delicacy in the southern US states, particularly in Appalachia where ramp festivals attracting thousands of people take place every spring in Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee and North Carolina. The popularity in local, seasonal and foraged foods means that many high-end restaurants are now serving them as well.

With this many people freaking out over ramps, it’s no wonder they’re considered exploited or threatened in various places. Quebec bans restaurants from serving them, and individuals in that province may harvest no more than 50 bulbs for personal use. Harvesting a ramp means pulling the whole plant, including its roots, out of the ground. Unethical harvesters can clear a whole patch of ramps, leaving nothing behind to propagate for the following year. The recommended harvest per season is no more than 5% to 10% of a wild patch.

Continue reading “Market Mondays – Ramps”