OK, food nerd confession time: Aside from a small bite from a friend’s overcooked (and overpriced) burger a while back, I’ve never eaten Kobe/Waygu beef. This is mainly due to the fact that I was a vegetarian when the craze first hit, and even though I’ve been back on the meat wagon for a few months, the sceptical and cynical parts of my brain are quite convinced that it simply can’t be of a high enough quality in comparison to other high-end beef to justify the often astronomical price tag.

So I must admit to feeling a good amount of smug satisfaction after reading Amy Pataki’s review of the new ultra-swank - and ultra-expensive - Jacobs & Co. Steakhouse in today’s Toronto Star, as she tags the Wagyu steaks she tries as being her biggest disappointment from an otherwise excellent restaurant:

I’ve come to conclude that Wagyu is the emperor’s new steer. A 6-ounce tenderloin ($71), aged 37 days, has the strong mineral taste of old blood, bordering on the unpleasant. To the other extreme is a 52-day, 14-ounce rib eye. At $91, it is arguably the most expensive piece of meat in Toronto. It is also disappointingly bland. The best way to eat Wagyu is raw. Jacobs does a clean, mild carpaccio ($20) let down by boring mustard sabayon.

Also in the Star:

• Gordon Stimmell finds five highlights amidst a generally lacklustre new Vintages release.
• Susan Sampson reviews Pie, a cookbook with 300 recipes for, uh, pie.
• In the Homes section, the At Home With… feature travels outside of Toronto to profile the Prevost, Quebec home of Cora Tsouflidou, the founder of the popular Cora’s restaurant chain.
• In the Travel section, Jo Matyas visits a Cuban coffee plantation, even though she doesn’t really like coffee. (Insert incredulous comment about spoiled travel writers here.)

Over in the National Post, Gina Mallet lunches at one of Toronto’s hidden culinary treasures, the Gallery Grill at Hart House on the U of T campus. Those who think that university food is all about pizza and pub grub should think again, as chef Suzanne Baby’s menu attests:

[T]he menu brought the gastric juices to a boil with its tantalizingly spare descriptions: no resto-hype here. Right away I was in a quandary. I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to eat fresh local pickerel with Meyer lemon drizzle or the grilled sweetbreads. Don’t see these very often on the mod menu. But wait a mo, what about the flat-iron steak, itself a novelty, with, get this, sweet potato spaetzle and whipped Rassembleu, a boldly salty Quebec blue. I make a virtual melange of sweet potato and salty Rassembleu and feel intensely hungry.

Also in the Post:

• Michael Vaughan gets into the Hallowe’en spirit with complaints about the “frightening” prices on some new LCBO arrivals (well, no surprise there…), and recommendations for a few “treats” from today’s Vintages release.
• Jon Bricker and Kate Swoger find good eats near Woodbine Racetrack at Pakistani strip mall joint The Kebob.
• Sarah B. Hood reports on a few new arrivals in the Queen and Greenwood area, including Kakayo Chocolate Company and a new outpost of i deal Coffee.
• Shinan Govani and Ben Kaplan look back at Bemelmans, the late, lamented and legendary restaurant-bar that is being remembered with the Casey House benefit “Back to Bemelmans” next Friday, November 2nd.
• A. Brouwer & A. Wilson trigger flashbacks of a childhood spent eating Tuna Noodle Casserole and Mushroom Minute Rice when they and their tasting panel evaluate several different varieties of cream of mushroom soup.
• Bonnie Stern gets ready for Hallowe’en with recipes for Ghoulish Goulash, Monster Mash, and some frightening looking girly-drink called a Candy Apple Martini. (Insert “if there’s no gin in it, it’s not a martini!” rant here.)

In the Globe & Mail, Joanne Kates is glad to see Mama Rosa back in the kitchen at the new Eglinton location of Seven Numbers. So glad that she spends two-thirds of the review writing about Mama and the rest of the family that runs the place, and only a handful of paragraphs on the food. But the few comments that she does make are overwhelmingly positive:

Mama Rosa is in better form than ever. Her grilled sardines are fresh and perfectly cooked, and with Rosa’s signature full-flavoured tomato sauce, what could be wrong? A person would be a fool to pass up Rosa’s pasta with tomato sauce, which makes anybody else’s tomato sauce pale by comparison. It’s sweet and strong and redolent of sautéed garlic.

Her calamari are tender, clad more delicately than yesteryear and fried more briefly. Has Mama Rosa been influenced by fusion food? One might think so upon meeting snap pea, artichoke and fennel salad, the fennel lightly grilled, the whole thing delicately dressed. Or farfalle with surprisingly light lentil sauce. Even her pasta dishes seem more sophisticated some days: She tosses tortiglione with chunks of very fresh ricotta and spinach. Rainbow trout is nicely cooked and sauced with tomato and capers.

Also in the Globe:

• Beppi Crosariol skips reviewing wines this week, and instead writes about the unique bottles that some of them come in.
• Lucy Waverman makes a non-traditional but still tasty looking Chicken Osso Bucco.
• A new weekly cocktail feature called Barfly debuts, with a look at Vancouver’s Canvas Lounge and their signature drink, The Great Space. (I’d give a link for it, but it doesn’t seem to be online.)
• Sasha Chapman enjoys a taste of fall in the form of Cinderella pumpkin.
• In the Travel section, Adam Goldman and two “gastro freak” friends spend two weeks and $17,000 eating their way through Spain. (Insert Homer-esque drooling sound here.)