Sheryl Kirby

Yes Chef: A Kinder, Gentler, Prettier Chef School

There’s an ongoing joke in the restaurant biz, where executive chefs are regularly asked – who cooks the food when you’re not there? The answer is always given with a smirk – the same people who cook the food when I am there.

Presumably most foodies are wise enough to know that the product emerging from restaurant kitchens is the work of an entire team or brigade of staff, not just one person. Brigades can range in size from two or three people in small, family-run restaurants to hundreds of staff in large hotels. From dishwashers to sous chefs, sauciers to pastry chefs, the average restaurant runs on the concerted effort of many people, and that’s the just the staff at back of house.

Which means now more than ever that a career in just about any aspect of the culinary arts is a hot commodity. Canada’s hospitality sector currently employs over 1.7 million people and will require another 300,000 professionals by 2015 to remain competitive. Sure, some people have a natural talent for cooking, but for most, the key to landing jobs in the top restaurants is more easily attained through proper training.

In Toronto, that means the George Brown Centre for Hospitality and Culinary Arts.

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Sunday Brunch – Niagara Street Cafe

Niagara Street Café
169 Niagara Street
416-703-4222
Brunch for two with all taxes, tip and coffee: $52

I’ve always heard good things about the Niagara Street Café. It’s original incarnation was run by a mother/daughter team who used free-range and organic ingredients. When it transferred hands in 2004, it continued to gain accolades, particularly at brunch.

Everything about the place seems ideal – nice cozy space that would be filled with sunshine if we weren’t in the middle of a run of grey days, great looking menu with interesting options. But there’s an undercurrent of something that wasn’t quite right, especially in terms of the menu. What looks good on paper doesn’t jibe so well when reality sets in.

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It’s All Good at the General Store

Good Catch General Store
1556 Queen Street West
416-533-4664

The success of any retail business is based on its ability to respond to the surrounding community. Can you give the customer what they want? A business that sees itself as part of the community can take that relationship one step further, as it not only supplies the regional customer base with goods, but gives those customers a central place to meet, shop and be a part of things.

In the olden days, that would have been a local general store. In 2008, it’s also the general store, or at least that’s the case in Parkdale.

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Whitey McRedeyes

For many years, there were no known photos of the albino squirrel(s) that live in Trinity-Bellwoods Park. At one point (1998-ish) there were at least three, although in recent years, consensus seems to be that there’s only one remaining, and the critter has gained almost mythical status, despite the fact that it’s now much-photographed. Someone even created a Facebook profile for the albino squirrel, dubbing her Whitey McRedeyes (Not sure how they know Whitey is a girl, but we’ll take their word for it.).

Incredibly used to people, the squirrels in the park seem almost bored at having their photos taken, Whitey in particular. Given the delay of the digital camera, I have a few of Whitey’s tail as she grew bored and wandered away before the shot was done, but these two prove that she does indeed exist. The theory that she brings good luck is probably mine alone.

Fir Bombs

It’s a freakish 12′C in Toronto today. Warmer than San Francisco and Las Vegas, the weatherman says. It’s also about 90% humidity.

All over the neighbourhood, people are throwing out their Christmas trees. They’re tossed onto lawns and sidewalks and driveways awaiting pickup later this week where they’ll be ground into mulch.

The warm humid air is filling the streets with little pockets of Christmas tree smell – pungent pine, sweet spruce, the subtle yet almost minty aroma of fir. Every couple of houses, I’ll get another blast of fragrance, usually smelling the discarded trees before I even see them if they blend into the front yard landscaping. It’s an odd experience; usually at this time of year, everything is frozen.

I can’t decide whether it’s energizing or ever so melancholy.

A Tiny Touch of Tati’s Paris

taticheeseboard

Tati Bistro
124 Harbord Street
416-962-8284
Dinner for two with all taxes, tip and wine: $130

I’m not a fan of science fiction. I’m a grounded in reality kind of gal. So every time I watch the film Mon Oncle by famed French actor/director Jacques Tati, I am always relieved when main character Monsieur Hulot leaves his sister’s “house of the future” to return to his little garret across the market square from the quintessential Parisian bistro. The juxtaposition of the modern kitchen and M. Hulot’s primitive, neighbourhood, family-run bistro speak to generations of people, both in France and elsewhere, who long to retain their cultural roots.

Chef Laurent Brion manages to capture exactly the mood of Hulot’s neighbourhood bistro (okay, minus the pack of dogs out front) in Harbord Street’s newest gem, Tati Bistro. Sporting a logo of Tati’s bumbling postman character atop his bicycle from the film Jour du Fête, the restaurant takes over the location of the former Kensington Kitchen and brings a tiny touch of Paris to downtown Toronto.

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Found a Peanut

I am constantly amused by the extent people will go to adhere to what we’ve sarcastically dubbed in our house “the religion of local”. Because while I support local businesses where and whenever possible, it’s obvious that there are people out there wringing their hands over the lack of local flour, rice and mangoes. In an article in the Globe and Mailover the summer, writer Sasha Chapman tried the 100-mile diet and was bemoaning the fact that she couldn’t get 100-mile peanut butter for her kids. Which made me cock my head and emit an annoyed “oh, FFS!” This gal wins journalism awards, but apparently cannot use the intarwebs to track down local peanuts.

Because yes, Virginia, or should I say, Vittoria; in Toronto, there is such a thing as local peanuts. Kernal Peanuts is the only peanut producer in Canada, and they’re just a couple of hours down the road past Brantford and Simcoe.

I came to know Kernal in an roundabout sort of way. In the early 90s I was dating a guy whose family hailed from the Simcoe, Ontario area. His uncle and aunt lived in a house made from an old tobacco kill next door to the Kernal farm. Every visit home included a trip to the Kernal store to stock up on peanuts, peanut butter and candy. We walked the fields and pulled the green legumes from the soil, we watched the peanuts get dumped into the roasters and be poured into the grinders for peanut butter. When the boyfriend and I broke up, I didn’t miss him much. But I did miss my trips to Simcoe and my shopping sprees at Kernal.

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Sunday Brunch – The Gladstone Hotel

brunchgladstoneflorentine

The Gladstone Hotel Ballroom Cafe
1214 Queen Street West
416-531-4635
Brunch for two with all taxes, tip and coffee: $35

Okay, so to be straight up honest, it’s not actually Sunday when we visit to do this review. It’s the morning of January 1st, and the oldest continually operating hotel is Toronto is serving up brunch – not to weary travellers as it did so many years ago, but to hungover locals and hipsters looking for something hearty and filling to ease them into the new year.

The high windows of the south-facing ballroom cafe normally have warm sunlight streaming through them, but today it’s a grey view of wet snow. The servers are bright-eyed and smiling, however, and water and coffee arrive at our table quickly.

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Good-bye 2007, and Take Your Little Plates and Locavores with You.

Everywhere you look in the media are round-ups of the best and the worst of 2007. Food writers are no exception and over the past week or so we’ve been inundated with Top 10s, predictions, best recipes for the year and more.

Being the crank that I am, here is my list of the Top 5 things from 2007 that I officially deem to be over.

5. Fois gras. Issues of inhumane treatment of geese and ducks aside, I just can’t get into fois gras. I’ve tried, really I have. But it will forever remind me of eating liver-flavoured Crisco shortening. In fact, as disgusting as the concept may be, I think I’d actually prefer to have to eat a gob of plain Crisco.

4. Teeny tiny burgers. 2007 seems to be the year Toronto discovered White Castle without actually having one in our city. The slider hamburger showed up at almost every foodie event I attended this year. Yes, they’re cute. No, I don’t want one.

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To Hell With It – Pass the Cheese

I’m a terrible girlfriend. That is, I am never really comfortable hanging out exclusively with a group of women. I like to cook and I like fashion, but mostly I don’t get women things. I hate when my female friends talk about their partners behind their backs, and I’m never exactly sure what I’m supposed to say when other women start talking about their weight.

Sure, I have a critical Virgoan eye, and I notice physical changes, but – and I don’t want this to sound heartless – I don’t really care. A loss or addition of 5 pounds or 50 pounds isn’t going to make me change my opinion of someone. As someone who has been fat since puberty, I know better than to judge another person by some arbitrary number on a scale. Which is why I so dearly wish other people would stop judging themselves that way.

These thoughts are prevalent in my head at the moment for a couple of reasons. First, because I’ve just finished reading Rethinking Thin: The New Science of Weight Loss – and the Myths and Realities of Dieting by Gina Kolata. When I put that book down the next thing I read was a series of three essays in the most recent Utne Reader, all on the topic of fat politics and fat acceptance. Combine that with the recent discussion with a friend about her need to lose 35 pounds, despite a plethora of other health and life concerns that make that task very difficult, and I’ve got fat on the brain.

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