The reviews of Tom Thai’s Foxley seem to be coming hard and fast and are also as varied as can be. Some people hate it, some, like Alan A. Vernon and Denise Balkissoon of Eye, love it. The one thing that everyone seems to remark on is that most of the staff used to work at Tempo, as if that’s some kind of marker of the service. I haven’t been to Foxley yet, but I always found the service at Tempo to be somewhat cold, and I know of a few different people who were treated so rudely (as in - were ignored and left standing at the entrance without being acknowledged - even when they had a reservation) that they refused to eat there.

At NOW, Steven Davey finally discovers Atelier Thuet and adores the place almost as much as those of us who were there on opening day and have been dropping by every week. Davey also dishes the most recent gossip in his Fresh Dish column. Graham Duncan ia all about the beverages this week, with his usual Drink Up column of wine picks (a trio from the Niagara penninsula), and a review of Aroma Espresso Bar.

Aonghus Kealy of Metro touches on beer only briefly this week as he reports on plans to remove a 1948 Canadian Pacific engine called The Hauling Fool from outside the Steamwhistle Brewery at the Roundhouse to make way for… a Leon’s store. Concerned citizens can take part in a letter-writing campaign to both City Hall and Leon’s, but at this point, it looks as if only a few braves souls willing to handcuff themselves to the thing are going to stop the engine’s destruction.

Also in Metro, Jennifer Yang interviews a mixologist who is trumpeting “the return of the cocktail”. Silly me, here I was thinking all those things people were trying to pass off as martinis were actually cocktails. And they were - the cocktail never went anywhere - we just got stupidly pretentious about calling them cocktails because we thought “martini” made us sound all Oceans 11 (the original, not the remake).

Yang’s also got tips on how to pair these fruity cocktails with food. (Note: a real gin martini goes with everything - Barfly Ed.)

Also, it’s Canada Day weekend, so everyone had better eat a hamburger or be considered unpatriotic!! No, not really. I plan on eating lobster, or maybe Italian - Rick McGinnis interviews Carmine Accogli of The Big Ragu.