Results tagged “food”

Isn’t it wonderful when four stereotypical figures can come together in perfect harmony thanks to a humble can of spaghetti? We never suspected that the finest spices from Asia lurked within our sloppy Saturday childhood lunch.

Toronto Association of Business Improvement Areas, you perverts.

Yes, your friends were happy that the iambic pentameter flowing out of your mouth finally sounded naturalistic and not an exercise in word fumbling. For that, you deserved a night on the town!

Being a former child star can become a fate worse than death. Often exploited and then kicked to the curb when the cuteness wore off due to impending puberty, these former moppets spend their adult life trying to detach from the likes of Steve Urkel, Screech, Rerun, and Danny Partridge—and their characters' respective catchphrases.

This past Friday, Torontoist took a sweet trip back in time via a quietly spectacular photography exhibit called "Thirty in Twenty: An Exhibition of Photography, Food, and Wine." These evocative and romantic black-and-white photos were taken with a tiny 35mm camera back in 1973 when then newly married Toni and Ria Harting embarked on a life-changing adventure to eat their way through ten three-star Michelin restaurants in just twenty days. Friday being the opening reception, we not only enjoyed the lovely images, but had the pleasure of meeting the Hartings and hearing their stories first-hand.

The recession may be officially over for the moment, but it is still unclear what the residual effects will be on the everyday life of Canadians. That’s why for Dr. Mike Wood Daly, executive director of Ground Level Youth Ventures, there was much to celebrate as the Ground Level Café opened its doors to the public this Monday, after delays due in part to the recently ended strike.

Reader Ian Simpson sent us this photograph, yesterday, of a newly installed billboard for Bud Light at John and Adelaide streets. It reads: "Torontonians aren't cold. Not in August, anyway." The ad, of course, is a direct response to a Coors Light billboard in British Columbia, which announced that that company's beer was "COLDER THAN PEOPLE FROM TORONTO."

Dario Saleki isn’t happy. In late May, he applied for a Boulevard Café Licence (the city’s fancy term for a patio permit) for his new Italian restaurant, La Veranda Osteria, which is located on the northwest corner of Bloor Street West and Royal York Road. It's August now, and he’s still waiting for his permit. In the meantime, his empty patio is costing him business. Saleki blames the strike (which has created some licensing problems for restaurateurs) and the city’s bureaucracy for his woes, and in a pseudo–grass roots effort has put up several colourful signs in his windows urging Torontonians to complain to the city on his behalf.

Reading about world economies is important, but it can also be dry and boring, which is why the latest Big Mac Index, published by the Economist, caught our eye. The annual Index, which measures "purchasing power parities" around the world, has been around since 1986, but UBS Wealth Management Research has helped shape the more current incarnations. Basically, it estimates how much time an average wage earner must work to make enough money to afford a Big Mac, taking into account local currencies and wages and weighted across fourteen professions and seventy-three international cities.

Torontonians seeking fresh seasonal fruit in the city tend to head to neighbourhood farmers markets or pray that their local grocery store has something other than produce shipped in from faraway locales. But lurking within parks and residential neighbourhood is a wide variety of edible treats growing wild or being nurtured by community activists and green thumbs. For the second year, urban forest advocates LEAF organized an edible tree tour on Saturday to show off the city’s harvest.

It must have been a hard day for David Morelli.

Late last week, Torontoist had the chance to attend an exclusive tasting of the much sought-after, but until now relatively difficult to obtain, miracle fruit—the famous berry that, once ingested, makes sour and bitter foods taste sweet. The berry's properties have been known to Western scientists since as early as the eighteenth century, but it has nevertheless kept a fairly low profile until the past few years when "flavour-tripping parties," like the one we attended, started cropping up everywhere. In late 2008, the berries even made a cameo in an episode of CSI: NY where a flavour-tripper died after unknowingly drinking poison (this is TV; they actually aren't that potent). Curious Toronto gastronauts will be happy to know they don't need to wait any longer to get their fix.

            

While walking around the city recently, we couldn't help but notice the abundance of non-Summerlicious restaurants advertising prix fixe promotions with names that reference the City's program, but carefully avoid infringing on the trademark. It made us wonder just how difficult it is for restaurants to get accepted into the 'liciouses, and how the City decides who's in and who's out.

Canadians are an odd people when it comes to our cultural exports—we apologize to the world for Celine Dion, are ecstatic about the BlackBerry, and we're defensive about Tim Hortons. So it's with a sense of cautious pride that we watched Tim Hortons open nine of twelve new locations in New York City yesterday, including three in a co-branding test with Cold Stone Creamery, because we Canadians know our Maple Dip.

In the shadow of the Dufferin Mall and No Frills, FoodShare is planting the seeds of a radical food system. They’ve dug up the lawn of their new location in a public school on Croatia Street to plant rows of vegetables, nourished with compost made from the waste of their busy kitchen. Staff members are cooking meals to be delivered to the homeless and underhoused, and youth in the Focus on Food program (geared to those facing barriers to employment) are cooking to learn life and job skills. On Saturday, the twenty-five-year-old organization hosted an open house, welcoming the public to become a part of their vision for good, healthy food for all.

They were greeted with less fanfare than the initial four, but nevertheless almost all of the remaining Toronto a la Cart street food vendors are now open for business—just in time for summer (and, sadly, the garbage strike). Torontoist hunted high and low, tracking down the new proprietors—and reconnecting with some old ones—to see how everyone is faring one month into the pilot project. What some of these business owners had to tell us about the program turned out to be slightly more bitter than sweet.

A new farmers’ market has cropped up in the King and Spadina neighbourhood. Launched just two weeks ago, the St. Andrew’s MyMarket will run on Saturday mornings next to St. Andrew’s Park at Adelaide Street West and Maud Street, atop a piece of Toronto history. In the mid-1800s, the block was home to one of Toronto’s three major markets, alongside St. Lawrence and St. Patrick’s. It’s now come full circle—good news for local residents who lack sufficient grocery stores and have been bruising their Ontario strawberries en route home from the farmers’ markets farther afield at City Hall and Liberty Village (the first strawberries of the season are ready and they’re sweet).

Yup, it's that time again. With sun umbrellas spread wide open, customers in shorts and shades, and pitchers of the finest local brews waiting to be poured, Toronto's patio season is back in full swing―at least for most bars. But unfortunately for a few, and a few very near and dear to our hearts (and livers), some outdoor havens are left stuck in limbo.

                     

On Sunday evening, more than thirty of Toronto's most celebrated chefs congregated in the open air of Yorkville Park for Toronto Taste, Second Harvest's biggest and most lavish fundraiser. Honouring its nineteenth year, the event raised $250,000 in just one night—enough to provide 500,000 meals for people in need. Torontoist was lucky to snag a couple of these hot tickets and chat with some of our city's food glitterati who—despite the challenges of running restaurants in this economy—are continuing to do their part to fight hunger.

                                   

At the crack of noon on Saturday, countless food enthusiasts lined up to buy fistfuls of tasting tickets for Luminato's one and only food event, 1000 Tastes of Toronto. Eastbound lanes of Queens Quay between Lower Simcoe and Rees were closed to accommodate the forty-some vendor booths, stretching down the street in front of the beautiful new Simcoe Wavedeck. Some of the city's best-known and respected chefs were there, chatting with patrons and serving up street-friendly versions of their signature dishes. Torontoist was fortunate to sneak in a bit early and partake in this whirlwind tasting tour of Toronto.

Decades before the Chef Jeff Project and Jamie Oliver's Fifteen, a small group of dedicated chefs began an initiative to help Torontonians on social assistance learn the skills needed to work and thrive as professional cooks. Twenty-five years later, the Basic Culinary Skills Training Program's current director Kelvin Ramjattan and his crew of experienced and hard-working instructors—Adam Lariviere, Dan Prewer, and Kathy Marinkovic—are continuing to help change the lives of fifteen new students every three months in a fully equipped, industrial kitchen at the YMCA on Charles Street.

This week's grand opening of the first phase of the Shops of Summerhill wielded a small, but spirited, blow against the encroachment of big-box stores in urban Toronto. Previously known by locals for the past thirty-some years as "The Five Thieves," the European-style shops (a butcher, a baker, a fishmonger, a greengrocer, a florist, and a café) have been undergoing a painstaking restoration and renovation for over two years. Instead of tearing down the previously crumbling nineteenth-century storefronts, Woodcliffe—the shops' landlord and heritage preservation specialists—undertook the expensive and time-consuming project of retaining as much of the original structure as possible while updating the spaces for modern use. The project was long, dusty, and frustrating at times for the vendors, but by opening the new doors of four of the shops—Pisces Gourmet, Olliffe Fine Meats, sweetgrass flowers, MBCo—this week, they offer a small-box experience that will hopefully catch on across the city.

It takes a licking, but it comes back for more. In its seventh year, the “–liciouses” (Summer and Winter) have come under a lot of fire from both sides of the table. Customers complain of miniscule portions and hasty service; waiters groan about small tips and overcrowding. In the end, we’ll all jump in because diners want a deal, and restaurants want business—especially these days. Best of luck to everyone. This year’s Summerlicious runs from July 3–19 with three-course prix-fixe lunches coming in at $15, $20, and $30, and dinners at $25, $35, and $45. Participating restaurants, announced today, will begin taking reservations on June 18, but lucky American Express cardholders can jump the line and book starting June 16.

At long last, four of the eight food vendors who survived the City's rigorous multi-stage selection process for the pilot "Toronto a la Cart" project took to the streets on Victoria Day. Torontoist had the pleasure of visiting with all four proprietors who graciously spoke with us about their new businesses—even while in the middle of frantically setting up their stations for the very first time.

All signs pointed to ice cream. But for some strange reason, our invitation to the Barenaked Ladies' mysterious press conference (held at the top of the CN Tower, we might add) left us in the dark. The banner-dragging bird, the sky-blue background peppered with white clouds and bubble letters—everything about the e-vite seemed eerily familiar. But it took Ed Robertson's unveiling of a giant tub of Ben & Jerry's ice cream—called "If I had 1,000,000 Flavours"—for us to finally clue in.

There can be few pleasures as simple as splitting a bottle of wine with friends. It’s difficult to pinpoint the source of the romanticism, but it could be the systematic pouring from the bottle, the rhythmic swirling of the wine, or the life implicit in something that has to breathe. At the same time, wine can be damn intimidating. There are people who babble on about the 2003 this and how the shiraz from this region just simply can’t compare to the one from that region.

In Saturday’s edition of The Globe and Mail, (in the Globe T.O. section, natch), Sasha Chapman wrote about Slow Food Toronto’s latest coup: the “eco-gastronomic” organization had organized a sumptuous, Slow Food feast at Hart House, and the Ayatollah of the Slow Food movement, Carlo Petrini, was flying to our fair city—from Italy—to attend. But not everyone was equally impressed. In a letter to the editor in Monday's Globe and Mail, Kim Solga of London, Ontario, wrote: "According to Sasha Chapman, the Do It Slow Banchetto dinner 'is open to anyone with $150 to spare.' In other words: Slow-cooked, healthy, locally sourced food is available only to the wealthy among us. That's sustainability for you."