food – Page 42 – Sheryl Kirby

Sunday Brunch – Sunset Grill

Sunset Grill
1 Richmond Street West (and other locations)
416-861-0514
Brunch for two with all taxes, tip and coffee: $23

People like breakfast. They want it hot, fast and familiar. They’re even willing to stand in line for it if that combination can be guaranteed.

Thus is the business plan on which the Sunset Grill is based. And it seems to be working. Starting with one all-day breakfast diner in the Beaches in 1985, this local chain has grown to 15 locations and counting. Most are known for their line-ups, especially on weekends. That’s a lot of bacon and eggs.

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Chinese New Year Banquet

We headed out in the cold last night to attend an 8-course Chinese New Year Banquet at a local seafood restaurant. Hosted by local foodie walking tour guide, Shirley Lum, the evening was both delicious and informative, as Lum explained Lunar New Year traditions and discussed various aspects of the Chinese zodiac as we ate.

Seated at a table of nine people, I must say, the evening, while festive, wasn’t especially banquet-like. Dishes didn’t come out in order, and for the $50 per person charge, we certainly didn’t leave as full as we normally might have if we had gone on our own. it was an opportunity to try many new dishes, however, and Greg even made a new friend.

Because we were at a large round table with a lazy susan in the centre, I wasn’t able to get shots of all the dishes as they arrived, but I did my best.

Each place setting had two kumquats and two candies. The candies represented the red and gold packets of money traditionally handed out at Chinese New Year, while the kumquats also represented wealth and life.

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Playing Chicken – The Chicken Out Campaign

As a huge fan of British TV, and an openly honest stealer of television shows on the Internets, I was likely one of a small number of North Americans to view the series on Britain’s Channel 4 called Hugh’s Chicken Run in which food journalist and farmer Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall tries to get his entire town of Axminster to switch from intensively-farmed (and cheap) chicken to slightly more spendy free-range chicken.

In a three-part series, HFW sets up a chicken farm in which he raises half a barn of chickens as they would be in an intensive farming operation (no poultry operation would give him permission to film on their premises, so he was forced to create his own), and the other half as free-range, with more space, access to the outdoors, toys and activities, etc. He also trolls the aisles of his local supermarket to try and convince customers to purchase the free-range birds.

This is the point where Greg and I looked at each other and went “Waitaminute!!! Whaaaa???”

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Cheers to Winter – Celebrating the Icewine Harvest with iYellow Wine Club

It’s so very easy to become a snob in this industry. Whether it’s food, wine or beer, a little bit of experience can evolve into an awful lot of ego, and makes the atmosphere at any event having to do with food, and especially wine, more than a little intimidating for newcomers. Which is no doubt why the words “wine tour” conjure up images of high-society folks with haughty expressions and snooty attitudes sipping and slurping and generally thinking very well of themselves.

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The Miracle Worker

Some random thoughts about Barbara Kingsolver’s book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life…

I think it should be a rule that books about food should be written by fiction writers as opposed to scientists or even journalists. Kingsolver is just better at describing everything, and she has the skill to make it all interesting, as opposed to dry and clinical. In terms of inspiring people to eat locally, or grow a garden, it needs to be about more than food miles or vitamins. Kingsolver makes it a spiritual quest, and I think there needs to be more emphasis on that.
However… lady sure can get preachy, which, after you’ve read a dozen or more books all espousing the eat local philosophy, sure can get annoying.
OMG – y’all discussed eating locally while on vacation in Montreal, but drove back to the US via Niagara Falls with nary a peep about Niagara wine? For shame!!!
Inspirations – to bake bread at least a couple of times a week (although not with a bread machine as Kingsolver’s husband does), learn to make my own cheese, and stock my freezer and pantry with the summer’s bounty to last throughout the winter. Join a CSA if I can figure out how to get to one to do my required work time given that I don’t drive.

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This is Where the Magic Happens

My dogs always know when the pizza guy is coming. They go crazy when the door buzzer rings and run around the house in a frenzy. Pizza is their favourite food and they believe it is their dog-given right to the uneaten crusts. They are less happy when the pizza comes from Magic Oven, though, since their share of the crust is minimal indeed. I love my dogs, but when I’m having a healthy pizza with organic ingredients, my pups are outta luck because I’m eating the whole thing.

Which is to say, this ain’t your average pizza.

The concept behind Magic Oven’s gourmet pizza was developed when owners Tony and Abby Sabherwal took a trip to California and visited over 100 pizza restaurants in 16 days. They were enthralled with the use of fresh, high-end ingredients and were determined to recreate the delicious pizzas they had tried in Carmel By the Sea back in Toronto. Continue reading “This is Where the Magic Happens”

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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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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