Category: food

Why the Hart House Craft Beer Festival is Better than the Festival of Beer

Every year, I say the same thing; “I’m not gonna go.” And every year, for a variety of reasons I end up going. Last year it was because The English Beat were the featured band on the Thursday “VIP” night. This year, it was because Greg whined at me. But every single year, I come home from Toronto’s Festival of Beer, swearing to never return.

This time I really mean it.

Okay, I understand that corralling thousands of drunken frat boys is a logistical nightmare, but the event has just never seemed to be on the ball. Getting in as media has always been a hassle. In part because they’re hiring rent-a-cops for security and nobody really seems to know what they’re doing but also, logic just seems to escape everyone involved. I’m not asking for a lot here, I’m not pulling a “do you know who I am” thing, all I’m asking for is appropriate signage and for the entrance we’re told to go through to not be a locked gate only to then be told to walk all the way to the other end of the event area to come back through a maze of fencing to pass through security at a spot less than 50 feet from where we started out. You make me walk all the way back to Medieval Times just so I can end up almost back in this very spot, I’m  gonna keep heading north and go home.

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Stop Walking Past and Come on In

Caffino
1185 King Street West
416-588-9010
Dinner for two with all taxes, tip, wine and coffee: $110

I’ve walked past Caffino a hundred times – literally – without ever going in. When I worked in Liberty Village I would consider grabbing my morning coffee from there, but the Roastery was closer to work and on cold winter mornings, travel time really did count.

Even living 5 minutes away wasn’t compelling enough, especially when hot new places started popping up nearby. Their website didn’t help – the menu page never worked at all and the only thing I could find was a list of celebrities who had eaten there, which is more of a reason to stay away than make a beeline for the place in my book. (Their current website is no better –  it’s just a splash page with a note about it re-launching in December ’08.)

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Sunday Brunch – Globe Bistro

globeswinedine

Globe Bistro
124 Danforth Avenue
416-466-2000
Brunch for two with all taxes, tip and coffee: $60

So here’s a conundrum… where to take visitors who are into eating locally for brunch? There are lots of dinner options out there, but brunch, if the restaurant is even serving it, seems to be a lot of the same old, same old.

Fortunately Globe Bistro fit the bill, and our friends from Buffalo were on board as soon as we started reading the locally-sourced menu to them over the phone.

Upon arrival, we immediately start off with coffee and The Baker’s Basket ($10); an overly generous basket of scones, cornbread and cinnamon loaf with strawberry and pepper preserves. The value for money theme of the warm and flaky pastries is one that runs throughout the meal. Despite using local products, which can cost more, Chef Kevin McKenna manages to offer up hearty servings at a reasonable price. We’re impressed with both the quality and quantity of the pastries – the basket is enough for four of us to split.

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Where Chefs and Farmers Come Together

chefmarket_stjohnsbread

The world of the professional kitchen is a far cry from cooking at home – in so many ways – but the most obvious is the scale on which restaurants work compared to the home cook. Chefs dedicated to offering dishes made from the best ingredients spend a lot of time tracking down the products – and producers – who can consistently provide them with a quality product.

For years, most restaurants have worked with restaurant supply companies or importers at the food terminal, and the idea of working directly with local farmers seemed painstaking and difficult. How could a chef know which local farmer could supply enough potatoes for their famous frites? Or which grass-fed beef was the best?

The idea of bringing chefs and local farmers together has gained momentum in the past few years as the local food movement has taken hold in the GTA. With more than 20 farmers markets for individuals spread out across the city, wouldn’t it be a great idea to set up a farmers’ market just for chefs? A place where farmers and chefs could meet, where wholesale orders of large quantities could be accommodated and where a chef could put in an order and it could be delivered to their kitchen door.

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Sunday Brunch – Morning Glory

morningglorysandwich

Morning Glory
457 King Street East
416-703-4728
Brunch for two with all taxes, tip and coffee: $30

Morning Glory is one of those neighbourhood joints that fly under the radar. A popular Corktown breakfast spot since December 2003, it now tends to get overshadowed by Gilead Café, just around the corner. But on the Sunday morning we visit, the flow of customers is good, with many headed for the small but cute patio out back.

Inside, wooden tables sit in front of the church pews that line one wall. It’s a wee spot, only 20 seats, and the kitchen is smaller than what I work out of at home. A staff member washes dishes by hand while another pulls back an undersink curtain to pull out an iPod attached to the stereo system. It may look all retro and kitsch but they’re embracing technology.

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The Savvy Shopper – The Real Meaning of Local

When someone refers to a pub as their “local”, no doubt we all imagine the same thing; a place where the atmosphere is homey, where the staff greet them by name, and where they probably know at least one other person in the room. Imagine the set from Cheers and that would be just about right.

We call these establishments our Local because it’s probably within walking distance from home – geographically it’s nearby.

When it comes to food, however, local is about more than geography. We are comfortable in our local pub because we’ve formed relationships – with the staff and owners, and with the other patrons, who are more than likely our neighbours. But even when we make an effort to buy local food, to support local producers, we don’t often get that same connection.

It’s hard – farmers are out in their fields, bakers manning their ovens, fishers on their boats. Building relationships with the people who make our food isn’t as easy as it’s made out to be. And I say that as someone who works in the industry and gets to spend time a lot more time with local food producers than the average consumer.

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Missing You

Harvest Wednesdays at the Gladstone Hotel started a couple of weeks ago. They did the first tasting event (similar to a cocktail party where all the growers and partners were present so guests could meet the people who grew their food) and the first prix fixe dinner ran this past week.

Normally during the tasting event and during each of the two seatings for the prix fixe dinners, Gladstone Hotel president and owner Christina Zeidler stands up and says a few words about how Harvest Wednesdays came about, how the partnership between the CSA farm and the hotel works every week to get the food from field to table, and about the general principles they try to follow.

Christina was away last week and I was incredibly honoured to be asked to take her place and do the presentation for the two prix fixe dinner seatings. As TasteTO is a media partner for the event, is was a logical choice, but they still could have gone with a Gladstone staff member. There’s an ongoing joke that because Greg and I are there so often and that we know so many people on the staff, and because we’ve been involved with Harvest Wednesdays for a few years now, that we are considered honorary staff members.

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Sunday Brunch – Nyood

nyoodsmokedsalmonNyood
1096 Queen Street West
416-466-1888
Brunch for two with all taxes, tip and coffee: $50

Those folks that make the clam and tomato juice are on some kind of campaign to make the Caesar Canada’s official cocktail but they’ll get no support from me to do it. The very last thing I want to even think about when sitting down for brunch is the salty burning combination of vodka, clamato juice and celery salt (or whatever it is that goes around the rim of those things). Seriously… no. So we’re not off to an auspicious start when our group of four sits down at Nyood for brunch on a recent rainy Sunday to be presented with an amuse of teeny versions of Nyood’s cherry tomato Caesar. Three of the things sit and taunt us throughout the meal and the lone Caesar drinker at the table is happy to stop after just one.

Coffee, please, all around, and keep it coming. Which, thankfully they do, and it’s even decent stuff.

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The Savvy Shopper – Made With Whole Grains

We all know that we should be eating more whole grains. Fibre is critical to a healthy digestive system and whole grain carbs like whole wheat, brown rice, quinoa or oatmeal help to slow digestion and provide longer-lasting energy.

It would seem that processed food manufacturers are excited to be helping us out – so many products now tout labels that say “Made with Whole Grain”. Isn’t it wonderful that we can eat a handful of cookies and be getting our daily recommended amount of fibre at the same time?

Not so fast. Just because there are some whole grains in the cereal, bread or cookies you’re buying doesn’t mean they’re necessarily good for you. Check the nutritional labels of your purchases. Ingredients on processed foods are listed by quantity, so we’re looking to see that the first ingredients include the term “whole grain”. In the case of a cereal, we want to see “whole grain oats” or “whole grain wheat”, and we want those ingredients to be the first ones on the list, not down with the preservatives we can’t pronounce. Unscrupulous manufacturers may continue to make their products with refined white flour and toss in a small percentage of whole wheat flour as well. Technically that product is “made with whole grain”, but it’s not 100% whole grain.

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Here We Go ‘Round the Mulberry Bush

Everybody on the intarwebs has been all over the serviceberries this past week or so. Also known as Saskatoon berries (we called them Indian berries growing up in Nova Scotia), they became the meme of  local food foraging junkies and everybody had to have the things – right NOW! Except that it seems that nobody actually knew what a serviceberry looked like because they’re actually all over the place, and by the time most people had discovered that they did indeed know the whereabouts of a serviceberry bush, the birds had gotten to most of the berries and devoured them.

Another local berry popular with the birds and overlooked by people (until some local food expert points out that they’re tasty) is the mulberry. Similar in shape but slightly smaller than a blackberry, the mulberry is a popular tree in Toronto neighbourhoods – except during actual berry season when the berries fall off like small purple hailstones and turn everything in their vicinity purple. Beloved by both birds and squirrels, any sidewalk or paving stones underneath a mulberry bush get stained doubly so – once from the berries themselves and again from the bird crap.

It was this telltale purple sidewalk that alerted me to the mulberry bush in the front yard of a house along my regular dog-walking route. The tree was loaded, the sidewalk was covered in the things, and I figured if the owners were just going to let the berries go to waste on the ground, they wouldn’t mind if I helped myself to a few that were hanging over the sidewalk.

I picked about a pint’s worth (didn’t want to be greedy, and the birds were becoming increasingly unimpressed with my presence); not enough to make jam, but definitely enough for a batch of mulberry scones.