events and festivals – Page 4

Gathering to Taste the Pacific Rim

Chef Chris Mills stands in front of the assembled crowd, looking only slightly nervous. We’re here to taste the final run-through of his Gatherings From the Pacific Rim menu, the multi-course dinner he will be presenting at the James Beard House in New York on November 20th.

The James Beard House is the home base of the James Beard Foundation, which was founded to further the work of the late chef and food writer, and to promote culinary heritage and knowledge. The Foundation works to promote culinary education, emerging chefs and honour the best in the food industry. An invitation to cook at the James Beard House is the equivalent of a culinary Oscar, and dinners are capped at 74 guests to ensure the best service.

Mills is no stranger to the James Beard House; he presented a dinner there back in 2006. His other turns in the spotlight include an appearance on the original Japanese version of Iron Chef, a fifth place spot in the 2006 Bocuse d’Or, and an array of awards including the Canadian Federation of Chefs and Cooks, the International Wine & Food Society’s Apprentice of the Year and the Pierre Dubrulle Rising Star award.

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Germans Love David Hasselhoff

Greg and I once had this idea to do an anonymous blog about events and restaurant openings. We were going to call it Hors D’oeuvres For Dinner and it was going to chronicle the weird and bizarre things we find ourselves at while writing for TasteTO. Like the event at the hotel where the PR lady was in the lobby having a nervous breakdown because the hotel didn’t shut down regular restaurant service for the media event and she couldn’t tell the paying customers from her media guests. Or the things where you show up, expecting dinner based on the wording of the invitation only to end up eating a couple of canapés and too much wine (hence the title). We never followed through with it because we figured everyone in the food community would eventually figure out it was us, and because we already get in enough trouble for calling people on their crap as it is. But sometimes, there are events so bizarre or “fail” that they need recounting. This is one of those.

Greg attended the German Beer Festival last year and admitted it was a bit of a dud (mostly because there was only 1 beer) but insisted that it was going to be much better this year. So I agreed to go. Normally I don’t bother to attend events that we’re not going to write about, but for some reason I believed him when he said it was going to be good.

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Hanging in the Garden at the Drake

I’m back! We broke down and bought an air purifier and it’s reduced my crazy mold allergy symptoms by about 90%. Definitely working better than any of the meds I was taking. Well, until this morning when it was cool and 14C and we opened the windows to let the cool, “fresh” air in, which of course was full of mold spores. In any case, I haven’t been venturing outside much but one of the things I did do a couple of weeks ago when the mold count was low was to head over to the Drake Hotel (1150 Queen Street West) for their annual garden party.

The garden is actually behind a storefront a few doors down where the Drake has their General Store and ice cream shops. So we got there by heading down a back alleyway. It had rained earlier (rather a torrential downpour) so things started a bit late, but once the rain subsided, it was a decent night.

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Thursdays Are So Tasty

There’s probably nowhere else that you can buy food from Susur Lee and Vesta Lunch in the same place. All for $5 a pop.

Tasty Thursdays returned to Nathan Phillips Square last week and runs every Thursday (11am – 2pm, although some vendors are not ready right at 11am) until August 26th. The premise is a simple one – bring in an array of Toronto restaurants selling food items for $5 or less. Bring in bands to entertain the crowds who have come looking for a cheap and interesting lunch. Presto, instant cool event.

The musical guests change weekly but the restaurants are booked for a month, with some sticking around for the full promotion. Each restaurant serves up samples of their most popular dishes, and at $5 or less, it’s easy to try a bunch.

Above – the guys from Vesta Lunch serving up Greek food.

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Why Cyndi Lauper Looks an Awful Lot Like Macy Gray

As a teenager, I was a huge Cyndi Lauper fan. I loved her music, wanted to look like her, and for a year or so in high school, modelled my wardrobe after the outfits from the videos for her album She’s so Unusual.

By the late 80s though, I had moved on to other types of music and didn’t keep up on everything Cyndi. One night in the summer of ’88, when I was living in Kensington Market, we came home fairly late to find that the streets were blocked off for a film set. This was the summer of that bad vampire detective show Forever Night, which seemed to be filming everywhere in Toronto at the time, so we assumed that’s what it was, and went a few blocks out of our way to get home.

In the middle of the night we woke up to the same Cyndi Lauper song playing over and over again. It was a song I didn’t recognize but as it was a hot night my roommate Amanda and I left the door to our little attic balcony open to catch a breeze. Restlessly we fell asleep to the sound of Cyndi singing. The next morning, the whole market was abuzz about the Cyndi Lauper video shoot that had taken place the night before. Yep, Cyndi Lauper has been right there, on my street, and I had missed her.

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There’s Good Eating at Afrofest

When people ask me what my favourite food event of the year is, I always answer without hesitation. It’s not the big trade shows with free samples, or the swank events with lots of “celebrity” chefs. No, my favourite food event of the year isn’t actually a food event at all; it’s a music and culture festival that just happens to have awesome food.

Afrofest has been an annual event since 1990. Taking over Queen’s Park for a weekend every July, the festival features bands and performances from musical groups and dance troupes from Africa and the Caribbean. There’s also a large marketplace area selling crafts, books and art.

And then there’s the food section.

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Yes… The New York Dolls… In Burlington!

The reaction was the same every time; “Burlington? The New York Dolls are playing in Burlington?? In the afternoon??” And then I’d go on to explain how, yes, they were playing a music festival in Burlington, along with The Diodes. No one was interested enough to come, though. They were saving their concert-going energy for Iggy Pop the same night, which was a great performance but was a too-crowded, too-hot mess in terms of actually trying to see the show.

But I’ve always been a bigger Dolls fan than a Stooges fan, so while, in retrospect, I’d have been happy to miss Iggy and the Stooges (not that I actually *saw* any of the stage during the show at all, so I sort of did miss it anyway), I was so not missing the Dolls. Even if it meant getting the GO train to Burlington and back.

And it was worth the effort. David Johansen was in fine form, as was Sylvain Sylvain. New(er) members Sami Yaffa (bass) and Steve Conte (guitar) were also sounding great.

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Tastefully Tasty

Greg said it best on Twitter: “sweet merciful crap, there’s more food inside!”

Celebrating its 20th anniversary, Second Harvest’s Toronto Taste fund raiser upped its game substantially this year, doubling the number of chefs involved (from 30 to 60) and taking over part of the Royal Ontario Museum and Queen’s Park (the street, not the park itself). With tickets going for $250 (half of which garnered a receipt for tax purposes), it wasn’t an event for everybody – a fact that won Toronto Taste the teeniest bit of flack over on Torontoist, where they pointed out the irony of having a fancy food event in order to help raise funds to feed the hungry. Especially one where some people would take a bite of something and then pitch it. Yikes! (Next year I’m going with a doggy bag to bring people’s half-eaten leftovers home to my dogs! Can I get away with that at the swankest food event of the year?)

But the fact is that every $250 ticket will buy 250 meals, and Second Harvest delivers over 15,000 meals every day (that’s 6 million pounds of food each year!), mostly from donated perishable food that would otherwise go to waste from restaurants and cafeterias.

And while the following photos are most definitely food porn, we’d like to encourage you to consider the bigger picture. Second Harvest will happily accept your donations – in any amount – even though the big event is over. The Toronto Taste online auction, which runs until June 23rd, includes cool items at every price point. As well, please consider supporting the participating restaurants if you possibly can – they all worked incredibly hard and donated their time and food to the cause.

We’d also like to offer hearty congratulations for a job well done to everyone at Second Harvest – and that amazing army of volunteers. You guys rock.

Shown above: Ontario perch with chorizo, pickled heirloom tomatoes and fava bean puree from Chef Andrea Nicholson of Great Cooks on 8.

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Viva Italia! Celebrating Italy at George Brown Chef’s School

Of the many courses offered at the Chef’s School at George Brown College, the Italian cuisine programme is one of the most popular. Heck, part of it is taught in Italy – what’s not to love about that?

For the second year, the school has opened its doors to the public in a week-long festival of Italian food and culture. Events included tastings, dinners, demonstrations and a gala tasting event that was held this past Thursday evening that featured chefs from both Italy and Ontario serving up food and wine that high-lighted the best flavours of Italy.

These events are wonderful learning experiences for the students as they work with some of the top Italian chefs in preparation for the dinners and tastings. We were lucky enough to be able to attend the gala and sample some of the food and drink.

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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.

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